Patti Murphy, our Senior Editor and long-time Insider's Report on Payments columnist, received the following note about her stance on the place of cash and checks in the payments mix:
I just read your article in the Sept. 12, 2016, issue of The Green Sheet: "No cash? No checks? Nonsense." Thank you for taking a contrarian position to the never-ending stream of propaganda from Visa and NACHA that cash and checks are obsolete.
Visa is in for a big wake-up call when the top 200 retailers find an alternative to interchange, which I guarantee will happen in the next few years, or when Apple Pay decides to send the Wells items to Wells directly, the BofA items to BofA, the Chase items to Chase, as well as the other top 10 card issuers, bypassing the Visa rails altogether when someone uses Apple Pay ‒ and now the retailers will be paying 50 basis points for settlement, not 250 basis points.
As for NACHA, their primary success story is direct deposit of payroll and processing government benefit programs. As for Electronic Data Interchange or B2B payments, they have not much to report even after 40 years of work.
As for cash, well, I live near Mendocino County, and I can tell you that in a few months, there will be so much cash rolling around up there that people literally won't know what to do with it, and those people are not taking card payments for their merchandise either.
Brandes Elitch,CrossCheck Inc.
From your vantage point in the payments realm, what do you see as the role of cash and checks going forward? What about new forms of payments that are emerging? Is there something on the payments horizon we haven't covered yet or that we've touched upon but that you'd like us to cover in more depth? Let us know. We always welcome feedback on our content, as well as constructive ideas on how we can continue to be a valuable resource to you in your career. Get in touch at greensheet@greensheet.com. 
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