Swinburne University of Technology

(Sarawak Campus)
FOUNDATION
FCL10002 Academic and Communication Skills B

Final Examination Revision

Semester 2, 2019

50% of Total Subject Mark

Time Allowed: 3 hours
Reading time: 10 minutes

Candidate’s ID No: ________________________________

EXAMINER’S USE ONLY

Questions Part Marks Possible Student’s Marks
Section I A+B 10

C 15

Section II A+B 10

C 15

Section III A 25

B 25

Final Mark /100 convert to 50%

= _______ %

*You must answer all questions in BLACK or BLUE ink.

FCL10002 Final Examination

Semester 2, 2019 Page 1 of 13
 Section I: Reading Comprehension (25 marks)
Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow.

In The Rush Toward A Cashless Society, The Poorest Are At Risk Of

Further Exclusion
By: Amy Westervelt

1 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a grand ambition to make his country into a
cashless society. In 2014, he launched a scheme to provide bank accounts to the nearly 40
percent of the population with little or no access to financial services. In November 2016,
he withdrew 500 and 1,000 rupee notes ($7.80 and $15.60), the country’s two most
common banknotes, from circulation.

2 The aim was to clamp down on black-market money and get more people into the formal
economy, but it had a negative effect on the poor, with micro and small-scale service
businesses cutting 35 percent of staff in the first few months, and some families left unable
to afford fruit and vegetables. 

3 Cash is on the decline worldwide; non-cash transactions grew 11.2 percent globally in
2015. But for some, the Modi experiment is a sign that cashless societies will hurt the poor,
and India is not alone in having poor, unbanked populations. An estimated 7 percent of
American households don’t have access to bank accounts, according to the most recent
survey from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. And a government study at the end of last
year found that the U.S. homeless population had risen for the first time since 2010. Given
rising inequality, what happens to those on the margins of the economy when cash is no
longer king?

4 Proponents of a shift away from cash often point to Kenya or Sweden as proof that such a
transition can happen without further disadvantaging the poor. In Sweden, which is on
track to be the world’s first cashless society, a magazine called Situation Stockholm has
equipped its homeless sellers with credit card readers. And M-Pesa, a mobile money
service first rolled out in Kenya, has 30 million subscribers and has been credited with
raising 2 percent of Kenyan households out of extreme poverty.  

5 However, Mehrsa Baradaran, who is the Associate Dean for strategic initiatives and J.
Alton Hosch Associate Professor of law at the University of Georgia, says that given these
countries’ unique context, these examples would be difficult to follow in the U.S.

6 “Kenya had one national bank and one mobile company that had a monopoly,” she
explains. “Everyone was on the same mobile network so they just rolled out M-Pesa on the
mobiles and everyone immediately got on.” The U.S. has a dual banking system (state and
federal) and more than 6,500 banks meaning rolling out mobile banking would require a lot
more coordination, says Baradaran. “Kenya had a different population ― more poverty and
less of a profit model-oriented banking system.”

7 As for Sweden, Baradaran says, “They just don’t have the level of poverty that we do. They

FCL10002 Final Examination

Semester 2, 2019 Page 2 of 13
 have a lot of social services and they’ve transitioned off cash because they have a less-
stratified society.”
8 Economist Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor who formerly served as the chief
economist for the International Monetary Fund, argues in his book The Curse of Cash for a
gradual elimination of cash to get at the black market and to crack down on tax evasion. To
protect the unbanked, he proposes “making free basic debit card accounts available to
everyone, as many countries are now doing,” he told HuffPost. “If India can make free
basic accounts available to everyone, surely the U.S. can do the same.”

9 However, Baradaran points out that U.S. banks have historically refused to do this. “In the
U.S., banks have a monopoly on payments and transactions,” she says. “If you’re
unbanked, you have to operate in cash. All of these fintech providers, like Venmo, PayPal,
etc., they all connect to banks too. So, how do we force people into banks? There have been
so many efforts in the U.S. over the years to get banks to offer free accounts, but [the
banks] refuse because those accounts aren’t profitable for them.”

1 Grant Kerber, a volunteer with Oakland Omni Commons and Food Not Bombs, says the
0 suggestion to simply bank the unbanked “seems out of touch” with how poor people
actually live. “Things like ID cards, driver’s licenses, these are already incredibly difficult
for people who are marginalised in society to get access to, so the whole digital payment
thing just pushes the goal post even further out.”

1 Not that there aren’t problems with cash. “It’s actually really expensive to be unbanked,”
1 Baradaran explains. “You’re constantly having to pay out part of your income in fees to
turn your cash into other forms of transactional currency ― a prepaid card, for example
― or to turn your cash into checks and back again.”

1 She does have a potential solution. In her book How the Other Half Banks, Baradaran
2 suggests a postal banking system. “There are already brick and mortar post offices in most
neighbourhoods, so my idea was that people could bring cash to the post office, they could
hold it for them and give them a digital account,” she says.

1 Such a system would be appealing to the fintech folks, who might pick up hundreds of
3 thousands of new customers by linking to these postal accounts, and shouldn’t bother the
banks, which have been avoiding dealing with this segment of the population for years. But
Baradaran says she still gets a lot of pushback on it from economists and academics,
mostly middle- or upper-class people who see the proposition of having to stand in line at
the post office to bank as untenable.

1 “But that’s because they’re not the ones it’s for,” Baradaran says. “It’s not for people who
4 are already living comfortably with a bank account and direct deposit, who can just bank
through the mobile app on their phones. It’s for people who have none of that.”

1 “Unless you’re poor, it’s hard to understand what it’s like to be poor,” Baradaran says.
5 “And a lot of people don’t realize that if you go into any water office or electric utility
office in the country right now, there’s a line of people in there waiting to pay their bill in
cash.”

Adapted from:
Westervelt, A 2018, ‘In the rush toward a cashless society, the poorest are at risk of further
exclusion’, The Huffington Post, 16 February, viewed 5 October 2018,
FCL10002 Final Examination
Semester 2, 2019 Page 3 of 13
 <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cashless-society-poor-
exclusion_us_5a857082e4b0ab6daf463c4a>.

Part A: Vocabulary (5 marks)

The words in the table below can be found in the passage above. Match the words with the
definitions provided by writing the selected word on the line next to the matching definition.

unbanked inequality proponents monopoly transitioned

evasion marginalised transactional pushback untenable

a negative or unfavourable reaction or response pushback

1.
a person, group, or concept treated as insignificant marginalised
2.
people who advocate a theory, proposal, or course proponents
3. of action Part B:
Identifying
a position or view not able to be maintained or monopoly True and
4. defended against attack or objection False
Statements
undergone or caused a process or period of change transitioned (5 marks)
5.
Read the
following
statements
carefully and then indicate each as True or False by writing your answer in the blank space
provided after each statement.

1. Three of India’s most common bank notes were withdrawn from __________________
circulation to prevent black market money and encourage investment
in the formal economy.

2. M-Pesa has helped to move 2% of Kenyan households out of extreme __________________

poverty.

3. It would be more challenging to implement mobile banking or cashless __________________

transactions in the US due to its banking system.

4. It is easy for the low income group in the US to get access to identity __________________
cards, drivers’ licenses, and more.

5. The idea of a postal banking system was not welcomed by everyone as __________________
they believe that is impractical to stand in line for banking purposes.

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Part C: Comprehension Questions (15 marks)
Read the following questions carefully and answer them in COMPLETE sentences.
Mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar may be penalised.
1. In 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew the country’s two most common
banknotes from circulation. What were the negative effects of this action? (2 marks)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

2. State one (1) example each for the type of cashless transactions carried out in Kenya and
Sweden which did not disadvantage the poor. (2 marks)

Kenya:_____________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Sweden: ___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

3. Provide two (2) reasons to explain why it seemed easier to implement cashless
transactions in Kenya. (2 marks)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

4. What are the reasons the economist Kenneth Rogoff wants to gradually eliminate the
usage of cash? (2 marks)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

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5. Briefly explain two (2) reasons why the U.S. banks are not keen on moving to mobile
banking or cashless transactions. (2 marks)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

6. What is a disadvantage of being ‘unbanked’? (1 mark)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

7. Briefly describe the potential solution suggested by Mehrsa Baradaran in her book ‘How
the Other Half Banks’. (1 mark)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

8. Why would fintech companies like Mehrsa Baradaran’s suggested solution? (1 mark)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

9. What assumption does the text make about cashless transactions? (1 mark)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

10. Is the text biased? Why or why not? (1 mark)

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

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___________________________________________________________________________

Section II: Reading Comprehension (25 marks)

Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow.

China Can’t Afford A Cashless Society

by Rui Zhong

A mania for mobile payments is leaving the poor behind.

1 As payment by phone accelerates in China, the reach of the biggest digital
corporations is making its banking regulators uneasy. In Chinese cities, paying via the
ubiquitous WeChat platform is now so common that vendors often have trouble
making change for cash, or sometimes refuse to take it altogether. That has prompted
pushback from the state-owned banks. Anhui province’s branch of the People’s Bank
of China (PBOC), recently began a working group to tackle the problem. Wang
Yazhou, a senior banking official in Hefei, the province’s capital, commented a
thorough cleanup was needed because refusing cash payments would be likely to have
a very negative impact. (opinion)

2 Regulators like Wang are right to be concerned. The growing “cashlessness” of

Chinese cities threatens to expose underlying issues of economic instability. Mobile
payments are carving out lines between young and old, and between the prosperous
urban middle class and those left behind by the boom times. Mismanaged moves to
mobile payments by municipalities could also lock the elderly and the poor out of the
consumption economy.

3 At the same time, the numbers suggest that cashlessness is rising and here to stay.
January 2017 data reported by the Cyberspace Administration of China showed that
469 million users were registered on a mobile payment platform, and found an
increase of 31.2 percent in total registered users compared to 2016 numbers. The
China Internet Network Administration Center, another government bureau that
collects usage data, indicated that the proportion of mobile payment usage in
transactions rose from 57.7 percent to 67.5 percent from the end of 2016 to the end of
2017. In the cities, vendors ranging from brand-name stores to street food stalls have
slapped colourful QR Code stickers from Alipay and Tencent near cash registers.

4 The mega-corporations that run the cashless transactions applications are ramping up
promotional events and municipal lobbying initiatives. In the early 2010s, online
vendors pioneered “shopping holidays,” events such as Singles’ Day when purchases
peaked thanks to deep discounts. The new events build on those, further normalizing
cashless payments. In August 2017, Alibaba, Alipay’s parent company, rolled out
“Cashless City Week” events in its home city of Hangzhou, as well as in Wuhan,
Fuzhou, and Tianjin. Tencent’s WeChat Pay followed suit with a similar promotion
that played off the auspicious date of Aug. 8, naming it an annual “Cashless Day.”

5 The 2017 World Bank Global Findex database, which measures financial inclusion,
estimated that some 200 million Chinese rural citizens remain unbanked, or outside of
the formal financial system. Cashless payment systems by design require formal
FCL10002 Final Examination
Semester 2, 2019 Page 7 of 13
 enrolment in banks, which are then tied to the mobile payment platforms that WeChat
and Alibaba host.

6 When apps are built on the assumption that residents of a specific community are
formally enrolled in a bank or financial institution, the unenrolled are simply locked
out of being able to pay. As a 2017 report from the Consultative Group to Assist the
Poor indicates, close to 70 percent of rural Chinese remain offline and require a
compelling reason to acquire the smartphone and bank account needed to utilize
mobile payments. As these digital platforms attempt to become the default form of
payment, China is facing a critical challenge to get its unbanked citizens caught up to
financial inclusion standards.

7 The question of how accessible cashless payments truly are within China is an active,
vibrant debate within domestic policy circles. A 2017 op-ed (opinion editorial) series
in the Beijing News raised concerns that shifting invoicing systems to cashless ones
without consulting rural communities or individuals would introduce risks: In
communities that are cash-only, if individuals find themselves shut out of the financial
system, they will be unable to conduct economic transactions related to agricultural
equipment, seeds, and other purchases for farming.

8 Even as regulators and finance analysts worry about these gaps, Alibaba and Tencent
remain determined to push cashlessness further into everyday life. In rural areas, both
companies are investing resources and relying on their platforms’ unique
characteristics to try to capture potential market shares of rural users of mobile
banking products. Alibaba, which grew its revenues via the Taobao shopping site and
supply chains, is in the tail end of a 10 billion renminbi spending spree to build e-
commerce service centers in rural China. Tencent, on the other hand, relies on
WeChat’s role connecting migrant workers to family members in rural areas to get
more mobile payment users onboard.

9 Older users are another critical demographic targeted in cashless platform promotion
campaigns. Because older users tend to struggle learning to use mobile devices, for
example, Alibaba takes advantage of filial piety to encourage children to recruit
parents and elders into getting on the apps. In a recent campaign to get more elderly
users up to speed on using Alipay, Alibaba mimicked the language of a heartfelt child-
to-parent note as an introduction to a tutorial on setting up mobile payments.

1 Alibaba and Tencent can issue lofty mission statements about bringing more users into
0 the fold. But to them, the size of coverage disparities aren’t an overall problem as
long as urban users keep the money flowing through their respective apps. They lose
nothing substantial when lower-income, lower-technology, or unbanked users struggle
to participate, because mobile transactions are still a massively growing sector.
However, PBOC branches do, because lower spending and renminbi circulation
reflects poorly on different provinces’ economic numbers—and, eventually, on the
economic health of the whole country. When corporate needs and government
objectives clash in China, however, the government tends to win. Yet the attraction of
investment and the glamour of tech may give the payment firms the leverage they
need to keep reaching for revenue opportunities.

1 If China goes cashless without widening the opportunities to participate, the end result
1 may exacerbate economic inequality in China even further—and leave rural provinces
FCL10002 Final Examination
Semester 2, 2019 Page 8 of 13
 frustrated even as the country’s biggest corporations thrive.

Part A: Vocabulary (5 marks)

The words in the table below can be found in the passage above. Match the words with the
definitions provided by writing the selected word on the line next to the matching definition.

ubiquitous underlying proportion peaked auspicious

compelling rural migrant demographic disparities

a part, share, or number in comparative relation to a whole

1.
proportion
in, or related to the countryside
2.
rural
great differences
3.
disparities
can be found everywhere
4.
ubiquitous
reached a highest point
5.
peaked

Part B: Distinguishing Facts and Opinions (5 marks)

Read the following statements taken from the passage and indicate if they are facts or
opinions by writing Fact or Opinion in the blank space provided.

1. Vendors refusing to return change in cash or refusing cash

altogether will have a very negative impact.

2. User registrations on mobile payment platforms increased greatly

in 2017.

3. A large portion of rural Chinese citizens remain offline.

4. Alibaba is actively trying to expand its’ rural user base.

5. If nothing changes and China goes cashless, the economic
inequality will widen.

Part C: Comprehension Questions (15 marks)

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Semester 2, 2019 Page 9 of 13
Read the following questions carefully and answer them in COMPLETE sentences.
Mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar may be penalised.

1. Why should regulators be concerned about the growing “cashlessness” of Chinese cities?
(1 mark)
The growing “cashlessness” of Chinese cities threatens to expose underlying issues of
economic instability

2. What proof is there that the cashless economy is on the rise and will be here to stay?
(2 marks)

found an increase of 31.2 percent in total registered users compared to 2016 numbers. rose
from 57.7 percent to 67.5 percent from the end of 2016 to the end of 2017.

3. List three shopping holidays pioneered by vendors. (1.5 marks)

a. Singles’ Day

b. Cashless City Week

c. Cashless Day

4. What is the inherent characteristic of cashless payment systems that locks out some 200
million Chinese rural citizens? (1 mark)

the inherent characteristic is Require formal enrolment in banks, which are then tied to
the mobile payment platforms that WeChat and Alibaba host.

5. What portion of rural Chinese remain offline according to a report from the Consultative
Group to Assist the Poor? (1 mark)
Close to 70 percent

6. What is Alibaba doing to reach rural users? (1 mark)

Alibaba spent 10 billion renminbi to build e-commerce service centers in rural China.

7. What strategy did Alibaba use to reach older users? (1 mark)

Alibaba mimicked the language of a heartfelt child-to-parent note as an introduction to a
tutorial on setting up mobile payments.

8. Why does the author think that the size of coverage disparities is not a problem to Alibaba
and Tencent? (1 mark)
Because they rely on the urban users to keep the money flowing through their respective
apps.

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Semester 2, 2019 Page 10 of 13
9. Who usually wins when corporate needs and government objectives clash in China? They
author thinks the opposite will happen in this situation. What reasons does the author give
to justify the different outcome? (1.5 marks)
The government. The author think that the attraction of investment and the glamour of
tech may give the payment firms the leverage they need to keep reaching for revenue
opportunities.

10. In Paragraph 3, the author cites data from the Cyberspace Administration of China and
the China Internet Network Administration Center. Are these sources reliable? Explain
your answer. (2 marks)
Yes, because they are government bodies.

11. In Paragraph 11, the author says “ … and leave rural provinces frustrated…”. What does
the word frustrated here mean? (2 marks)
The word ‘frustrated’ means isolated, as the rural person who are not going to become
cashless will become isolated.

Section III: Writing from Non-linear Information (A) (25 marks)

The table shows the payment solutions offered by online merchants in Southeast Asia in
2016. Write a text of about 150 to 250 words describing the information shown.

Payment Solutions Offered by Online Merchants in Southeast Asia in 2016

Percentage of Percentage of Percentage of

Merchants Offering Merchants Offering Merchants Offering
Country
Payment by Payment by Payment by
Credit Card Bank Transfer Cash on Delivery
Singapore 100% 38% 19%
Malaysia 100% 50% 17%
Thailand 90% 81% 52%
Indonesia 84% 94% 43%
Philippines 95% 65% 80%
Vietnam 60% 88% 82%

(____________________ words)

Section III: Writing from Non-linear Information (B) (25 marks)

The bar graph shows the number of Internet users in Southeast Asia in 2015 and 2020. Write
a text of about 150 to 250 words describing the information shown. Make any relevant
comparisons and contrasts.

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 The table above shows the payment solutions offered by online merchants in
Southeast Asia in 2016. It can be observed that almost all the countries’ percentage of
merchants offering payment by credit card is the highest compare to the other two.

Firstly, the overall percentage of merchants offering payments by credit card is the
highest by comparing with the payment by credit card and payment by bank transfer. The
countries that have the highest percentage of merchants offering payments by credit cards are
Singapore and Malaysia, which is 100%. Besides, the second highest of the offering
payments by credit cards is Philippines, which is 95% and the third highest is Thailand which
is 90%. The percentage of merchants offering payment by bank transfer is the second highest.
The highest countries of this payment solutions are Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, which
is 94%, 88% and 81%. The overall percentage of merchants offering payments by cash on
delivery is the lowest by comparing with payment by credit card and bank transfer. The
highest percentage is 82%, which is Vietnam and the second highest is 80% which is
Philippines.

In conclusion, the percentage of merchants offering payment by credit card is the

highest by comparing to the other two payment solutions.

Internet Users in Southeast Asia

Internet Users
(million people)
250
215
200

150

100 92 93 82
55 59
50 44 38
22 28
5 6
0 2015 2020Thailand
(predicted)
Indonesia Philippines Vietnam Malaysia Singapore

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The bar above shows that the number of internet users in Southeast Asia in 2015 and the
prediction of 2020. In general, the number of internet users in Southeast Asia is predicted to
be greatly increased in 2020, except of Singapore.
Firstly, Indonesian is the highest number of the internet users in Southeast Asia in 2015,
which is 92 million, and the number are predicted to be 215 million in 2020. This is followed
by Philippines, which was the second highest country with 55 million internet users in
Southeast Asia in 2015, and the predicted number of internet users in 2020 is 93 million.
Besides, Vietnam has 44 million internet users in Southeast Asia in 2015 and the number is
predicted to be 82 million in 2020. Although the number of Thailand is predicted to be
increased from 38 million in 2015 to 59 million in 2020. It is still not increased greatly as the
previous countries, which are Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam. In this way, Malaysia also
similar to Thailand which is 22 million of internet users 1n 2015 increased to 28 million of
users in 2020. Lastly, Singapore is the lowest number of internet users in Southeast Asia,
which is 5 million of internet users in 2015 and predicted to be 6 million in 2020.
To conclude, the above six countries is predicted to be increased in 2020, especially
Indonesia will be largely increased in 2020.

- End of Exam Paper -

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