Why the cash of the future will be digital and decentralised 3 Apr 2021 Digital wallet: Cash may one day be replaced with country-issued cryptocurrencies, suspects Monica Singer of blockchain company ConsenSys. (Luis Tato/Bloomberg/Getty Images) When South Africa’s biggest banks released their year-end financial results last month, it became clear that Covid-19 has sped up the move to digital. Each bank saw an increase in digitally active clients and more transactions were done via online banking. But online banking as we know it is only a small step towards the future of finance, experts say. And for financial institutions, Covid-19 has made this future — in which technology used by cryptocurrencies makes banking faster and central banks dole out digital money — seem even more imminent.