I remember when direct deposit became mandatory at my job. It always felt funny to me that the push for this came from my employer and not from me. I was informed that I wouldn't continue to be paid unless I provided direct deposit info.

I suppose they were probably interested most in cost savings. Their payroll doesn't have to produce paper checks and do mailings anymore.

Banks probably also contributed to the push because they get my business and extra inertia (yet another reason I'm not gonna switch institutions).

People in general may have been asking for it because maybe they didn't like dealing with checks and making deposits (I mean who likes that?)

Governments certainly like it because now they don't have to work as hard to track me.

This is probably true for electronic payments in general. But with so many incentives aligned to expand their use in our lives, it's hard to see how we will be able to preserve freedoms. It is foolish to think democracy will keep governments from tracking our transactions as long as they exist and can be tracked (we aren't voting our way out of the surveillance state).

So it feels like our only hope is to create payments tech that aligns stronger incentives and yet preserves resistance money qualities (particularly, that it is hard to track).

If more people want to use it and it just so happens to be hard to track, then maybe we escape 1984.