Cash is king in Myanmar. Almost no transactions at all – 0.5% to be exact – are carried out electronically. A cash-based economy means it is hard to monitor transactions or prevent tax avoidance, and keeps the country’s payments system at rudimentary level. Transactions take longer to execute and are often not executed safely.
This almost complete reliance on cash goes hand in hand with the high number of financially excluded citizens in Myanmar – a mere 10% of the population has a bank account.
