OREANDA-NEWS. February 7, 2012. Ann Cairns, President, International Markets of MasterCard held a lecture at Campus of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO. The topic of the lecture was “World beyond cash”.

Cashless settlements is one of the main topics of today’s world not only for companies like MasterCard and Visa, but also for any country’s government. MasterCard’s analysts calculated that on issue of paper money and coins governments spend about 0,5-1,5% annually. McKinsey’s research, made in 2010, says that if the government of India started to use plastic cards for all utility payments, it could save about 22 bln dollars annually.

While in today’s world the share of electronic payments doesn’t exceed 15%. As Cairns said, it is not a problem for MasterCard to provide technological support for all the operations with plastic cards. The main problem is to change the customers’ mindset. A simple poll, held right in the auditorium of SKOLKOVO business-school showed that almost all the people, who were at that lecture, at least once in a lifetime paid for their goods, bought by Internet, with plastic cards. But none of those present ever tried to return those goods, even if they didn’t like them after all. “The system can’t be changed just by changing the rules. It has to be each person’s own choice”, - said Cairns in the end of the lecture.