Firstly, in regards to this, we should remember where the report came from, namely a bank that is closing many of it's branches and refusing to accept cheques and cash over it's own counters in the future, this is not an unbiased report.
Secondly, it's easy to say that savings can be made in terms of bank cashiers etc, but that is another way of saying that hunderds, if not thousands of people could loose their jobs. Who is going to be paying for those?, the taxpayer via social welfare payements
Thirdly, since CHIP and PIN was introduced, the protection given to account holders for dubious transactions has been greatly reduced, if you query a possible fraudulent transaction, first standard response from the bank is that you must have allowed your PIN to be seen/copied in some way or had it writen down. Invariably, the customer has to push strongly to get reimbursed.
This report also does not go into the significant investment required to move to a cashless society. Laser and card payments are too slow, especially at peak periods. . Imagine paying for your morning paper and everyone was paying by card, how long would it take you to get served and out. Fees are often incurred as well by the retailer, driving up costs which they are already passing on for web transactions, eg Ryanair and Ticketmaster.
I'm not saying the move to less cash and cheques is not a bad thing, however it is far from the panacea that NIB paint it out to be