The Book of Payments: Historical and Contemporary Views on the Cashless Society

This book examines the nature of retail financial transaction infrastructures. Contributions assume a long-term outlook in their exploration of the key financial processes and systems that support a global transition to a cashless economy. The volume offers both modern and historic accounts that demonstrate the constantly changing role of payment instruments. It brings together different theoretical approaches to the study, re-examining and forecasting changes in retail payment systems. Chapters explore a global transition to a cashless society and contemplate future alternatives to cash, cheques and plastic, featuring the perspectives of academics from different disciplines in conversation and industry participants from six continents. Readers are invited to discover the innovation in payment systems and how it co-evolves with changes in society and organisations through personal, corporate and governmental processes.

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo read economics at ITAM, Mexico, and Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain; history at the University of Oxford, UK,  and received a doctorate in business administration from Manchester Business School, UK). He has been studying financial markets and institutions since 1988. He joined the University of Bangor as Professor of Business History and Bank Management after appointments in Leicester, UK; the Open University, UK,  and Queen's University of Belfast, Ireland. He has combined full time appointments with consulting and executive training in Europe, the Gulf states, Latin America and Asia. Bernardo has written over 35 refereed articles, 3 books and 8 distance learning books. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, research associate of Fundación Estudios Financieros (Fundef – ITAM), and edits a weekly report on new working papers  in payments and financial technology (see http://lists.repec.org/mailman/listinfo/nep-pay).

Leonidas Efthymiou is coordinator of the Business Department at Intercollege Larnaca, Cyprus, and lecturer at UNICAF, Cyprus, since 2010. He received his PhD from the University of Leicester, UK, in 2011 through an ethnographic study on workplace control and resistance. His PhD thesis received the 2012 Best Dissertation award at the Academy of Management meeting, held in Boston, USA. He is interested in a wide range of business phenomena, varying from service workers performing emotional, affective and aesthetic labour to cashless payments in the context of corporate legitimacy and sociology of finance.  His recent publications examine the role of payment infrastructures during banking shutdowns, insolvencies and bank-runs.