This article reviews the possibility of a cashless society and its effect on financial crime and suggests that although physical currency is obviously used in money laundering (especially in its more unsophisticated emanations), it is naïve in the extreme to expect that a business, industry or country ceasing to use physical currency will do anything other than displace any financial crime away from that particular methodology. It then goes on to argue that the only real beneficiaries of a cashless society are the financial institutions and suggests that a more appropriate approach to deal with financial crime is to resource better the various agencies involved in the investigation and prosecution of financial crime.