to be worried that we are heading towards a cashless society?

[WaitingforGalGadot]

I read an article a few days ago about how the Government would like to phase out cash so that everyone is compelled to pay by card or bank transfer, supposedly to make things easier and quicker and destroy the black market.

I actually think this is really ominous as once there is no more cash, there is no more anonymity and your spending habits and lifestyle can be tracked even if you are not doing anything illegal. Big Brother watching your every more.

It also means the banks can impose negative interest rates (where you have to pay the banks to hold your money) on savings accounts to get people to spend rather than see their savings reduced and of course also means that you don't really have control of your own money since the banks can collapse, bail in your money or appropriate it (as has happened in places like Argentina, not too long ago).

Cash is also really useful and personally I don't find it a faff to use cash. I think this is really scary.

Cashpoint*

I would be concerned if there was no cash at all, as it could give banks too much power. Though I am OK with some payments having to be into a bank or building society account, to prevent tax dodging or other unsavoury practices.

I'm reading that almost 20% of purchases in Swedish shops are cash. It's not that disappeared.

Never use cash except for occasional parking meters, taking cabs which are not Uber, local bridge tolls, car boots or local festivals. Everyone takes cards, even our local charity shops. Only get cash out if staying in the countryside or going abroad.

Why did you get him a Go Henry card then?

MSE skeptical about GoHenry cards for young children.

I feel exposed not carrying cash on me, I do use my card but only usually for purchases over £5 and not everywhere takes cards. I usually get £200 out at a time which gets shared with my husband. Cash is handy for paying individuals too, eg window cleaner, market traders etc. I would hate to go cashless.

Oh yes, the window cleaner doesn't have a card machine on him. I live rurally and it is clear that we have more places that don't take cards than larger towns and cities.

Other places/reasons I use cash:
Markets
Tipping
Bake sales
Christmas fairs
Lunches at work (although they do have a card machine now)
Parking
Supermarket trollies
Charity collections/donations
Buying bread from our local baker (I don't think they have a card machine)

All the people panicking that the government will be watching what you do if you only use your card? I guess you don’t have Facebook. They really do know everything about you.

Also, the worry about banks having all the power? Well your wages get paid into the bank regardless.

I think if we went cashless, it would be the end of consumer banks. The bank of England would just run distributed ledgers and that would be that.

If Kenya can run a cashless economy on mobile payments using non smartphones for the last 10 years, then it seems not beyond the wit of (wo)man to imagine how it might be possible to envisage how primarily cashless transactions could work

M-Pesa has just turned 10. I don't believe Kenyan villages of 2007 are inherently more technologically advanced than UK villages in 2017

edition.cnn.com/2017/02/21/africa/mpesa-10th-anniversary/index.html

An economy based out of mobile currency may be a different paradigm, but the concept of how cashless economies could work is not dreamland. It exists.

Well it certainly won't be possible to go cashless until they sort out the mobile signal networks. I live in the SE and there are massive areas around my village with no signal and this isn't unusual. Unless they invent a more modern version of a cheque I suppose?

The only reason I have cash in my wallet is because I have 4 teenagers who bleed it dry! Other than that, I never use cash. Pretty much everything is card friendly. PTA fairs, taxis, my dog walker etc all accept cards or online instant transfer. But I’m not in the UK.

Does anyone remember the flooding a few years ago, and the accounts of all the phone lines being down and shops unable to process card payments. Shops were trying to stay open where they hadn't been directly flooded, but could only take cash.

People who don't keep any cash on them couldn't buy anything, including fuel for the car to go somewhere unaffected.

There's a link to what happened in 2015 when flooding meant no phone lines or broadband in the York area - cash only accepted in the affected area:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/28/uk-floods-2015-york-suffers-phone-internet-outages-cash-machines

I have not read the entire thread so my comments may have been mentioned.

Too much cash and if you come to the attention of the Police - even as a victim - they will red flag you as a potential criminal. This could cause you long term problems - this happened in our family a number of times. We run a taxi business still a largely cash based business any attack on our drivers and we are pushed towards cashless solutions and told our reluctance could be seen as suspicious - a desire to keep cash to cover for illegal activity. At all 7 different incidents in the last 2 years this has been said. Why would using cash make us suspicious?

My concerns is once they have full control of the money - they have full control of the supply of goods and can control prices. If people cannot bypass the state authorised supply - by using cash in the black market - they can restrict the supply of anything. The best way to control the population is keep them scared of not having essential items.

it was the need to create babies after a nuclear holocaust that caused the slavery of the women, not a cashless society?

The cashless society meant that the government could just block all bank accounts that had an F instead of an M. Making women instantly dependent on men.

I feel safer with my son having a Go Henry card as it can be cancelled if lost, and I prefer cards these days - many things from my childhood are now obsolete e.g. typewriters!

I think comparing the declining use of cash to The Handmaid's Tale is a bit far-fetched.

It's nice Kenyans have had access to cashless payments since 2007. This is what else happened in 2007.

Fake news and botnets: how Russia weaponised the web
The digital attack that brought Estonia to a standstill 10 years ago was the first shot in a cyberwar that has been raging between Moscow and the west ever since
amp.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/02/fake-news-botnets-how-russia-weaponised-the-web-cyber-attack-estonia

About 97% of the country uses digital banking. The Estonian national ethic is built on the idea that every citizen is transparent and the state is too. This makes Estonia extremely efficient – and extremely vulnerable. “We live in the future. Online banking, online news, text messages, online shopping – total digitisation has made everything quicker and easier,” Priisalu said. “But it also creates the possibility that we can be thrown back centuries in a couple of seconds.”
[...]
Vast “botnets” – networks of captured and linked computers – were attempting to bring down computer systems with automated queries as part of a large DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack. “Mail-bombing” email barrages and volleys of status and location queries overloaded servers across the country, bringing crucial parts of the Estonian internet to a halt. Some websites, according to the BBC, were “defaced,” redirecting users “to images of Soviet soldiers and quotations from Martin Luther King Jr about resisting evil”. “War dialling”, in which automated phone calls target a company or institution, placed a virtual blockade on phone numbers for government offices and parliament. On 10 May, Hansabank, Estonia’s biggest bank, had to cease online services and international card transactions temporarily.

I pay my window cleaner directly into his bank via my phone. It's really not difficult. Staying in just in case he comes and then giving him a tenner would be ridiculously inconvenient.

We're at least 2/3 decades away from becoming a cashless society, if ever. There are too many issues to overcome, so it's not something I'd worry about.

The arguments about small traders/shops etc has been done to death, so I'm not going there.

But, having suffered 4 days of complete power loss and 2 subsequent weeks of disrupted power supplies in Storm Desmond, I saw, first hand, how we are too reliant on electric and internet. Firstly, nearly all shops were shut because their tills needed electric. Secondly, the power outage shut down both mobile and landline phone networks, so no comms at all. The only shop open was a private bakery run by a couple of older women, who (shock horror) could add up and work out change in their heads, so they opened to sell whatever stock they had on the shelves (bread, milk, bottled drinks, cakes, etc). The other shops couldn't open and as a result suffered huge losses of perishable items from their fridges/freezes. People were stranded away from home as they couldn't access any cash to pay for taxis/buses (cash machines didn't work) and no-one could accept card payments (due to lack of mobile broadband).

Even when power was restored after 4 days, the shops/transport providers were without card processing facilities due to either the intermittent emergency power supply or unreliable mobile comms. It was a good 2 weeks before everything was back to normal. Those with cash were grateful to have it because it was the only way to buy stuff or go anywhere for several days.

Given the closure of old power stations and unreliability of green alternatives, not to mention increasing need for electricity when we all have electric cars that need charging, and not to mention ageing infrastructure, I think power outages will become a lot more common in the next decade or two. Add in to that, the unreliable mobile broadband in huge parts of the country, not to mention many areas not even having fibre broadband yet. We're a long way from having an electric/internet infrastructure that could facilitate a cashless society.

And another thing. It's not long ago that we were being told that we all had to buy digital radios and that the analogue signal would be turned off. That's gone quiet hasn't it? Does anyone know how many years it's been kicked into the long grass for, or has it been forgotten forever?

Lots of "tech" solutions seem good in the research facilities, but once they're rolled out into reality, there are usually loads of unforeseen consequences that take a long time to overcome, if ever.

Another similar one is driverless cars - I'd bet good money on that never happening across the UK in my lifetime.

There's a massive chasm between what works in theory and the real down to earth practicalities to make in happen in real life.

What karriecreamer said.

Cashless payments are an incredibly useful additional service.

But they're not good enough as the ONLY form of payment in a country.

How much cash do people keep on them/ in the house as a buffer against emergency? I normally have about £300 in the house and about £50 in my handbag.

Actually that’s mostly how I notice how little cash I actually use. I very rarely replenish it.

One of the greatest challenges to our way of life is tax revenues plummeting. There are two ways in which the government can address this. Firstly, reduce some of the more artificial loopholes (plenty are not artificial - tax incentives are a way of getting investors to invest in certain sectors) and tax large corporations where their customers are (and deny payments to parent companies as tax deductible) would be a start. Also, we all know certain sectors of the economy operate as if they too are above the law. We've all had builders try and quote less for cash.