Imagine the situation in which we don't have any physical money and every currency is digitalized. The US dollar is now a token, the Japanese Yen is only in the network and the British pound is a fast-moving digital coin. What are the consequences of such an economy for the poorest of the population? Do you think that a few people can influence the digital wealth of people and wouldn't hackers be the best people to have as friends?
It's kind of like we're moving to a cyberpunk future without the cool parts of cyberpunk, really. If you look around these days almost everyone own a smartphone of some kind, even the poorer folks of society are having more and more alternatives to an iPhone, and much cheaper alternatives that can run as low as $300 and still be an effective phone. A better-implemented "Obamaphone" scenario would further cement this and everyone would have access to this digital banking.
This is the end goal for trying to keep a populace passive, as your account could be frozen at any time from wrongthink or anything along those lines. Not a good scenario, but they also would never have a reason to not do something like that, stating costs or whatever as a reason.