To wonder if it would be better if we gave up using notes and coins entirely?

[BranchingOut]

I find myself using cash less and less often. I do wonder if there would be benefits to going towards a system where every transaction was automated. I haven't thought through all the issues, but that is why I have come on here....! Obviously there would need to be ways of enabling small traders to have terminals for contactless payments. Plus, I know that many elderly people do prefer to use cash.

I do feel angry when I think of NRP avoiding child maintenance through the cash economy, not to mention the unpaid tax of cash in hand work...

Would the benefits outweigh the dis-benefits?

Yanbu, where possible we pay by credit card every time now. We can track our expenses and get cash back.

I don't like contactless payments. I know you can wave some debit cards and mobile phones at things and it debits your account. That gives me the screaming horrors I am worried that things could be read as you are passing or something or otherwise gathered and amounts taken and how could I prove I had not, I dunno, had a coffee or a sandwich or something. I know that's only little amounts but it's an easy illustration of something it would be so hard to prove you did not buy. How do you prove you did not buy something if they have it down that your watsit scanned it? [paranoid] [elderly]

No. I need cash. I feel safe with cash. [old gimmer]

Have you read 'The Handmaid's Tale' ?

Use cash 99 per cent of time and pay with cheques. Hate credit cards etc. yabvvvvvvvvu sorry

What about market stalls, car boot sales, teaching dcs to count money, piggy banks, the box you save all the money you would have spent on fags?

Hate cash and cheques are so outdated, cards and bank transfers are so much better. YANBU.

I do love my cards and use them a lot but how would I buy things from my £1 fruit bowl man?! Also at lots of places there's a minimum spend on card becaause of what reatailers get charged by the card companies - I think that'd have to be reduced first. Why should the company I'm buying from have to pay a 10p fee if I'm only buying a 50p bag of crisps

watercolourfootballs I came on this thread to say exactly the same thing. I've kept a cash stash ever since A-Level because of that book. Terrifying.

Ooh and also- i went to the corner shop the other day an their card machine was down. I had to get cash from the in store atm at an extortionate cost of £1.75!!! (Not relevant but was shocked). And i cant count the number of times i've heard of banks having technical problems with cards in the last couple of years. Also, an atm in my town was skimmed last week and best friend's card was stopped by the bank. I had to lend her cash. If we were all cashless what would she have done?

I also thought about the handmaid's tale, it would be so easy to take over the money of huge sections of society.

I do use cards as much as I can, but don't like the extra charges some places put on for using a credit card (usually bigger purchases, I admit).
However, there are loads of things I still need cash for....

charity collections
Cake sales
Summer/christmas fetes
Paying teenagers for jobs
pocket money
school dinner money (am aware some schools do this cashlessly, but IMO that doesn't really teach your teens to budget / spend wisely)

Things like vending machines and parking ticket machines and the like could be converted to card use, but not all are so for now, that's another thing

Oh, I read the Handmaid's Tale at about 15 and have rather forgotten that side of the plot. The breeding elements were rather horrifying though...

What happens with the cash?

But hang on, that can happen in any banking system. I think, not totally certain, that it happened to German people who were resident in England during WW2.

totally rely on cash, partly because i struggle to keep my head above water financially, so withdrawing cash on pay day and keeping it at home is the only way I can still have it at the end of the month, and not have it snatched out of y account by bank charges, etc.

Also, so many people require payment in cash, nursery, etc. In theory they accept cheques, but as everyone else pays cash and thy hoard it all up and go to the bank less than once a month, you never know when the cheque will be cashed. They tell me they can't go more often for security reasons.

Also I don't think electronic transfers are necessarily as secure, or as easily traced as people say. Not in my experience, anyway.

YABU, it's much harder to overspend if you have the cash in your hand. Plus I have a jar that I put all my 50ps and 20ps in and by Christmas I have enough to buy the dcs presents. What about school fundraising? All the cake sales etc? Are you going to pay for a couple of fairy cakes with your credit card?

I must admit I really don't like the idea of all this remote stuff. I'm always careful with my debit card but someone still managed to take money from my account. I recently heard of a proposal to change all the parking meters in town so that instead of using coins people will have to pay with their phones. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. What if I lose my phone, will some clever hacker be able to access my bank details through its memory?

I hate using cash, I rarely carry it. Nobody apart from school send to accept cheques anymore

Branching it's been a while since I read it too but I thunk the first step was freezing all the bank accounts with a female account holder.

I never have a bean of cash on me like the Queen. Debit card for everything-I love contactless-even quicker.

Shops that don't take cards really annoy me. I often won't buy in them because of it.

It would be a nightmare for feckless and irresponsible people like me on a night out.

I just take forty pound, leave money for a taxi back on the side at home and leave my bank card at home. Seriously, two drinks and I'm all 'lets have cocktails'....with a forty quid limit I can make a pint of Guinness last an hour!

Also, last year we had a power cut that affected most of one side of town. A lot of businesses lost a hell of a lot of trade as they couldn't take card payments.

I prefer cash. I find it an awful lot easier to spend money on my debit card because you're not actually handing over hard cash! It makes it easier for me to keep track too, I take £100 out of my bank every Friday and anything else in there is for bills.

Lots of elderly people use cash. My GP s use cash because they ve never had a bank account and can't understand cards/cheques etc.

And there are still some people who prefer the anonymity of cash.I know it can be misused, OP mentioned the cash economy and NRPs taking the piss, but how many of us really like the idea of somebody, somewhere being able to track everything we buy?

I don't mind who tracks what I buy. It's not that interesting.

Fine Sparklingbrook but others prefer some privacy. I am of the old-fashioned view that when it comes to the State knowing what the Citizen is doing a rule of strict need-to-know should apply.

How would this work for the Tooth Fairy?

Would our kids have to sleep with a card machine under their pillows?