I've been privileged to work with some truly innovative people. People who have helped develop technologies that have changed the way we do things. As an outsider to these thought processes one question that always arises is which came first, the solution or the problem? I suppose history is full of accidental discoveries where scientists were looking for the solution to one problem and found something that had quite a different application. There have also been inventions for which the public was not ready. They were not 'of their time'.

In consumer facing industries the challenge is not just will something work it is also will people use it? The biometrics industry is just one example where such issues have been debated for over thirty years. As well as the question of false reject rates and the potential for people to feel insulted, there is also the question of how people would feel using solutions such as voice recognition or retina scanning in particular environments. Secure access solutions for buildings or particular functions etc might not be acceptable to the general public in a retail environment, however accurate they might be.

What makes people want to adopt a new solution? Is it a sense that the new way of doing things in some way improves their well-being (for example it improves their personal security) or indeed makes their lives easier or could they be just be influenced by fashion and a fear of being left behind - and is there a tipping point for such behaviour.

All these things could be applied to a cashless society. Why would people abandon cash? Is it because they feel other forms of payment are more secure or indeed easier to use or in some instances are there more subtle forces at play here? If we are continually told something is inevitable at what point does this become accepted truth and how does that impact our behaviour. After all, nobody wishes to be thought old fashioned or irrational or just different. And yet for many people of course their continued use of cash is completely rational and yet others have no alternative.

Now don't get me wrong, I think contactless payments are a great innovation and as a regular user I’m well aware of the benefits. What I'm talking about here is choice and the marketing and hype surrounding cashless payments. Only recently we have seen headlines that have implied that cash will disappear in two years and there is a need to confront such errant nonsense.

The recently published Access to Cash Review acknowledges the continued importance of cash as a means of payment. Eight million people say cash is an economic necessity and the report stressed the need for government and regulators to ensure cash remains viable.

Innovation is key to the evolution of payments as is the adoption of new technologies. Marketing efforts may impact the speed of adoption but independent research by UK Finance indicates that cash will still account for 16 percent (6.4 billion) of all consumer transactions by 2027, and that's not hype!