“I want green mamba,” said my second grader on pet adoption day.
Although there was no green mamba at the event, but every time he watches it on National Geographic, he says, “It’s so cute.”
He is in primary, and green is his favorite color. And he likes cucumbers and kiwis; both are green. He has fallen in love with the green mamba because neither the class teacher nor his friends have incited fear in him for the reptile. Despite his fearlessness, I will never buy a green mamba for him because my purchase decision is linked to the fear of having that reptile in my home. I cannot imagine the slithering of green mambas in my house — the fear of having it has overridden my purchasing ability.
Fear is the most crucial attribute that makes us take action and decide what not to do and what to do. Fear of getting a speeding ticket makes us slow down on the gas pedal; the fear of being marked absent makes us reach the workplace on time; the fear of karma makes us do good. And the fear of death made most of us take the vaccine.
The pandemic has left a long-lasting effect on us and has changed our behavior. One such fear we all inherited during the pandemic was the fear of touching dirty currency notes (the money that all humans love but were afraid to feel during a pandemic). We were scared of touching the PIN pad of the bank card terminals to make digital payments, not just physical money. We were convinced that touching physical cash and the pin pad of a bank card terminal for digital payment is dirtier than having illicit cash in the wallet. As a result, most people moved to contactless payments, a shift in behavior triggered by fear.
Although contactless payment has been available in the market since last century, when the technology debuted with a simple bus ticket (at Seoul Transportation in 1995), the adoption of contactless payment was limited. Fast forward to thirty years later, and that significant event (pandemic) has revolutionized how we make payments today. The pandemic incited that fear of touching contaminated things and moved us to contactless payments. The fear of the pandemic has gone but left their behavioral shift of making contactless payments with us.
Shop regardless, Pay Contactless!
Pandemic has changed the way we make payments
While writing this article, I glanced into the eyes of my second grader and felt that he was trying to tell me, “What contactless payment is to you, the green mamba is to me.”
When I glimpsed into his eyes more profoundly, I felt a jolt in my spine, like he was saying, “I know you will not buy a green mamba for me, but your love for contactless payments and my love for green mamba are driven by the presence and absence of fear, respectively.”
He is right indeed because the pandemic has changed my intuitive mind, and every time I make a payment, my subconscious whispers to me, “I am timid and cashphobic!”
Author: Asif Durrani
Dated: 23 March 2024
https://www.linkedin.com/in/asifdurrani
Also published at Medium
Asif Durrani 