Places that encourage cash increasing

[ItsAllAboutTheDosh]

I am finding more restaurants, bars and shops are encouraging cash payments due to the card payment costs. These are always independent places with the owner on site actively involved.
Just wondering if others are finding the same?
Although if you never or rarely go to small independent places that would be helpful to state. I find chains prefer card payments.

Very few delivery drivers are allowed to take cash these days due to the insurance costs, risk of them being attacked/robbed, staff theft, etc. Fair enough for maybe a local butcher or greengrocer delivering meat and taking a hundred quid or so, but certainly the larger firms won't do it.

A hairdresser I used to go to moved over completely to cash only as she lost money in the pandemic and a new credit card machine cost too much she said. They still charg e a deposit for all bookings and that is by debit card so maybe that machine is cheaper who knows.

Tradesmen are also pretty keen to accept cash these days to avoid VAT too! We phoned only last week to get a shed re-roofed and the guy openly said on the phone that if we paid cash he wouldn't need to add the 20% VAT! That's after we had car repairs last year after an accident when two bodyshops both quoted a "cash without VAT" price, one being £1500! And a bit further back, we had scaffolding put up by a firm that offered to knock off the 20% VAT if we paid in cash and that was £2k! So obviously and these days it's so open! In the past they tended to "suss you out" in person before offering a nudge-nudge discount for cash, but now they offer it freely and openly. Bank charges aren't 20% so it's clearly tax evasion when they knock of such a large amount.

Small shops and takeaways do it too to stay under the £85k VAT threshold as they lose a shed load of money if their declared turnover goes over the £85k - thousands lost, until they grow enough so that there turnover is over, say, £100k which puts them back where they were at £84.5k. So lots manage to stay just under the £85k by not declaring some of their takings. Easy when it's cash, impossible when it's card!!

Money launderers probably DO want people to pay by card as they'll already be putting enough dirty money through the business, so will need an amount of card payments to "balance" it out and look more legitimate if ever investigated as very few businesses will genuinely be cash only these days.

I'd say very few rural shops would want to insist on cash as they're the ones who probably don't have a bank nor post office to pay it in, so will be stuck with potentially large amounts of cash (and having to pay higher insurance premiums to cover it, plus a safe, security alarm, etc) and then more wasted time on a longer journey to take it to the closest bank/PO which could easily be several miles away meaning losing an hour or two! There are even small towns these days without a bank at all and with only a "postal" only post office counter in, say, a convenience store, without banking facilities.

As others have said, bank charges for handling cash can now sometimes be higher than card processing fees, especially with the new, cheaper, competitors such as sumup, lopay, etc. And it's not just bank charges. insurance is expensive to cover cash, both in the premises and in transit, for anything more than trivial amounts of a couple of hundred as petty cash!

That makes no sense as you can buy a machine from the new competitively price merchant services firms for £25-£50. You can even accept cards in person without a machine as you can now set up a smart phone with an app to "read" the card details by touching it (just like a machine). Things are evolving very rapidly with card acceptance industry. Yes, it used to be costly but that was when it was a monopoly of the High Street banks, but now it's a very competitive market with lots of options that are easily affordable.

Surely the charges on digital payments, from customers but also to pay the cleaner etc are minimal or non existent? I'm suspicious of places that prefer cash.

I did go to one place recently that had a sign 'cash preferred', but still so many more 'card only'. I think I've made one cash payment in the last six months, and that was because I needed to break a bill. I don't carry a wallet anymore so have no place to put change.

Oh ok. I haven't been for a good two years as I now cut my own hair. At the time she said it would have cost her about £2k. She may have changed her policy since.

Card machines have never cost £2k, not even a decade or two ago when it was dominated by the expensive high street/big banks. The most I remember them being was around £300-£500 when it had to be a proper piece of kit, wired to the mains, wired to the phone system via a modem, etc., but even then, most small businesses just rented them for around £25 per month.

Usually direct payments by BACS or similar between banks are free. Card payments do carry a nominal charge - sometimes it's something like 10p or 25p per transaction (for small amounts) or maybe 0.5% or 1%. Lots of choice depends on number of transactions, average transaction value. Like everything else, you need to do comparisons between different providers as to which is the best for the particular business.

I don’t see that in my area; if anything it’s the reverse. Even taxis, who were one of the last to take cards, only take payment by card nowadays. Pre Covid takeaways, hairdressers, taxis and car wash places all only took cards begrudgingly. Now, they see cash in the same light. Likewise my cleaner / window cleaner / gardener just want bank transfers. I took £50 out of the cash machine in December as I thought I’d need it for a New Year’s Eve taxi, and I’ve still got all of it.

I have pretty much stopped carrying cash and any businesses that insist on cash only simply do not get my custom. I make an effort to shop locally and to use local producers. Even micro businesses in my local area perfectly easily run card payments, and as far as I am concerned, choosing not to do this is inconvenient for customers and looks dodgy.

For businesses, card payments are safer, more secure, easier to keep track of and less costly. If you do not wish your customers to pay by card, the most likely reason for that is that you are not declaring all of your income. I would rather give my custom to businesses I am satisfied are operating legitimately.

Dh is a tradesman, bank run done weekly. All taxes paid, credit card costs are an extortionate cost, he tries encouraging transfers instead.
the bank run is getting harder with branches closing.

we do need to keep using cash for it to remain. It’s a choice we have to make as a society, for me, I like knowing what I have in my hands to spend.

You can get very very cheap card payment systems now that link to a smart phone. Taking card/digital paymemts is much cheaper these days. Pretty much all the market stalls and street food stalls round here use things like iZettle and Sum Up.

'Fine you are all going to talk about larger businesses now. If you are paying staff to cash up and bank then yes cash is more expensive to handle'

What? You think small businesses do not get staff to cash up and take money to the bank? 😄

Cash is a faff to bank and handle but it depends on the average transaction value. If you're somewhere like a basic cafe selling bacon rolls and cups of tea where the average customer pays a fiver, then cash all the way as the card fee is a high percentage of that money. If you are somewhere selling proper meals where the average spend is £30 or more, card is easier.

Definitely not something I'm aware of. I rarely use cash now. I have a tenner in my purse which can literally last me months

Takeaways here take card or online payments, coffee shops etc take card. Hairdresser, cleaner, nail technician all take bank transfer

I was in Bristol recently and couldn’t spend cash I had on me for love or money. The hotel, restaurants and bars were all card only. The only place that took it was Harvey Nicks. And then they had three people to count it!

But card costs are far from extortionate today, they are minimal. Even a relation’s under 16s girls’ football team, run by volunteers is card only for membership.

There is no reason to retain cash. Minting coins is costly as with the security required to print bank notes.

Where we live the only place that doesn't take cash is Mcdonald's!

It is definitely a transaction cost issue if you are a very small business. The machine alone and high cost per transaction have gone up massively.

Had a quick look online as was curious. Can use your existing phone, or buy a terminal for £40-80. Transaction fees were 1.69%.

Doesn't seem too outrageous for a small business? Sure, is a bit less money in the till at the end of the day, but would you want to risk putting off customers who only had card?

Yes you would think £40 is doable.

My friend is in a band. They play weddings, pub gigs that kind of thing. He’s got a card reader on his phone to take payment.

My hairdresser runs it all through an app. So I book the appointment through the app and it takes payment too. Both the small independent cafes that I use most frequently are card only.

That's a bit of a worry. People should have the option to pay with both, especially in large businessess. The death of cash can have serious consequences. One might dismiss this as conspiracy theory nonsense but you only have to look at COVID to see how malleable people became.

Yep, I’ve noticed the same. Fine with me, it’s much easier for the customer.