Cashless Economy
A cashless economy relies primarily on electronic payment rails, cards, bank transfers, wallets, and digital records instead of physical cash.
Financial-technology terms for digital money, virtual currency, electronic money, and distributed-ledger infrastructure.
Digital money and ledger technology terms describe monetary value, payment records, and transfer systems that exist in electronic form rather than as physical cash. This branch covers digital money, digital currency, virtual currency, cashless-economy concepts, and distributed ledger technology.
Use these pages when a payment, stored balance, wallet record, ledger entry, tokenized asset, or settlement workflow depends on the form of money and the system that records it. The practical issue is usually transferability, custody, redemption, settlement evidence, price volatility, operational risk, or legal classification.
| Term | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Digital Money | Monetary value stored, transferred, or settled through electronic systems. |
| Digital Currency | Electronic currency or money-like value, including bank balances, e-money, stablecoins, and central-bank digital currency concepts. |
| Virtual Currency | Online, platform, or crypto-linked representations of value rather than physical cash. |
| Cashless Economy | Financial systems where cards, transfers, wallets, and digital records displace most cash use. |
| Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) | Shared ledger architecture, transaction records, validation, and reconciliation design. |
Start with what the value represents. A bank balance, prepaid balance, wallet balance, stablecoin, virtual currency, and distributed-ledger record can all be digital, but they may have different issuers, redemption rights, transfer rules, custody arrangements, and risk exposures.
Choose a subsection first. Deeper term pages live inside each subsection, which keeps large topic hubs readable.
A cashless economy relies primarily on electronic payment rails, cards, bank transfers, wallets, and digital records instead of physical cash.
Digital currency is currency or money-like value that exists electronically, including bank balances, e-money, stablecoins, and central-bank digital currency concepts.
Digital money is monetary value stored, transferred, or settled electronically through bank systems, wallets, cards, payment apps, or digital ledgers.
Distributed ledger technology records transactions across shared synchronized databases rather than relying on a single central ledger.
Virtual currency is a digital representation of value used in online, platform, or crypto-linked systems rather than as physical cash.