Nowadays plastic money replacements such as credit and debit cards are extremely popular, even more than banknotes and coins. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

In

such

an extremely globalized and connected world, alternative ways to conduct payments have emerged and become overused to the point of leading governments to evaluate the abandonment of money as we know it. In

this

essay, I will shed light on both favourable and unfavourable points of view regarding the popularity of credit/debit

cards

and will support them with examples. Among the plethora of advantageous aspects of using plastic money in financial transactions, their convenience is, without a doubt, its strongest one. If one finds himself without one single banknote in his wallet, he certainly would not have an alternative other than going to the closest bank or hunting ATMs nearby.

However

, since businesses (of all sorts of sizes) nowadays accept credit and debit

cards

, customers do not have

further

preoccupations.

Moreover

, purchasing goods with them may bring additional benefits since the card emitter companies usually offer promotions (discounts or cash-backs) and point-based programs in order to incentivize consumerism.

Conversely

, when it comes to coinless payments the security of transactions certainly has to be a prioritized concern.

Although

companies have been investing billions of dollars in cutting-edge technology to keep clients safer, hackers and thieves,

on the other hand

, have been becoming better at stealing not only money but

also

customers' private information. Recent research has shown that the number of buyers who have had their

cards

cloned increased drastically in the past two years. On top of that, sensitive information

such

as card numbers, passwords, social security numbers, and addresses have been leaked and sold on the dark web by these criminals. In a nutshell, the popularity of debit and credit

cards

lies in the practicality of their usage, which characteristic became essential in our non-stopping modern society.

However

, aspects related to security must be closely observed by the customers in order to minimize and/or avoid eventual problems.