Nigeria, Jan. 19 -- Like all new frontiers touted as necessary and worthwhile, the cashless society is advertised as a supremely convenient way to facilitate financial transactions while avoiding such silly inconveniences as carrying cash and scouting for a money dispenser. A cashless society also facilitates inequality, manifests a pattern of conduct easily monitored by both private companies and State agencies, and repudiates the notion of valid tender. It also subordinates its users to a digital ecosystem that can, at any given moment, fail.

The literature on the problems of a cashless cosmos is only growing, though it has done little to stem what has been decided as inevitable by the policy wonks. While it is exceptionally zealous i...