IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Nowadays plastic money replacements such as credit and debit cards are extremely popular, even more than banknotes and coins.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this. Include your personal opinion and examples based on your own experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer:
Plastic money, in common parlance, refers to the hard plastic cards, which are used prevalently in everyday instead of bank notes or coins. With the advance of technology, most banks offers their customers debit card, credit card that can be used for withdrawing money and making purchase as well; online as well as offline. Plastic money, however, has some inconveniences that one must be cautious about.
Plastic money has several benefits to be mentioned. First and foremost, it eliminates the need for carrying cash, which in turn reduces the risk and inconvenience. This means that one needs not to carry out heavy wallet, hence, there is no chance of theft.
Likewise, plastic money has the distinctive advantage and convenience of using it anytime, anywhere across the country, even abroad. That is to say that one can withdraw or debit the demanded cash in case of instantaneous want for money.
Apart from that, people are now able to buy on credit or pay later with the help of credit card. In addition to this, consumers are offered miles on every purchase using credit card. Let me elaborate a bit more. On every purchase by credit card, a consumer gets points which get aggregated in his account. When the consumer has a good amount of points, he can use these points for purchasing any commodity or product for free.
Last but not the least, consumers can use cards for fund transfer and various other transactions. They, now, do not have to wait for bank to open, but can make any transaction online with help of cards.
Having said that, plastic money has some drawbacks. Consumers cannot purchase from small retail outlets by cards due they do not accept these cards. Besides, plastic money cannot be used for all daily needs, for instance milkman or servant payment. So, consumers can use it only in supermarkets and hypermarkets. Moreover, many outlets charge additional service charge for the cards. To cap it all, cards are just a plastic which can be stolen or lost. This may lead to serious incident. Take my father for example. He lost his credit card during a trip, but he was not aware of it. One fine day, my father found that $5000 worth of purchase has been made on his credit card when he checked his bank account.
Summing all of the above, it seems reasonable to assume that plastic money is a double-edge sword. Consumers should take the all advantages of plastic money, while they also ought to be careful about its limitations.