To think that we are being forced into a cashless society?

[rockingthelook]

My parents really don't like to use debit cards, especially the contactless ones, however , due to C19 this seems to be the way forward? They like to take their money from the bank and use the cash rather than cards, really don't want to bank or pay for anything online because they don't trust it, but everything seems to be geared towards contactless. They had a walk today and wanted to buy a cup of tea from a takeaway cafe and couldn't, not only because the place wouldn't take cash, but the cards had to be contactless, and their cards aren't (they asked not to have this feature as frightened of them being stolen and used) It seems to be that the banks etc are using the C19 situation to force things through, my mum was even told by the cashier in the bank the other day to use the cash machine in the bank rather than get the cash over the counter because of the 'risks', fgs it's THEIR money, can't believe Age Concern/UK aren't all over this!

I feel really sorry for elderly people who are struggling with this, but I also think it's a really good example of why you should at least try and keep up a bit with technology. ATMs have been around for decades so I agree that there's no need to let people go to the counter just to get reasonably small amounts of cash, and it's been very clear that online banking and cards was becoming more and more the default for a good while. When your parents actively asked the bank to take away their contactless option perhaps the bank should have been clearer about the fact that this would be increasingly inconvenient for them. It was quite a deliberate choice they made, though.

Fully agree with this. Old people havn't suddenly become old. They weren't old and incapable 40 years ago when cash machines, credit cards, etc started appearing. I got my first credit card in 1983, the year I started working. Even before then, cash machines outside banks were pretty common. That's at least 37 years ago. Someone who is 90 today would have only been 53 back then - easily "young" enough to understand credit cards, be adaptable to change, etc.

Cards aren't a new thing at all in the way some people are making out. Listening to some people, you'd think that debit cards didn't exist until 3 months ago. Have they been hiding under a rock for a few decades?

I have some sympathy for the really old, i.e. 90+ who had their entire working lives without cards of some form, but for anyone younger, they had plenty of years to adapt if they wanted to before they got older and confused etc.

My mother would have been 96 if she was alive today. She died 10 years ago aged 86. Even at that age, back in 2010, she barely handled cash nor even cheques. She'd embraced "cards" and would buy virtually everything using a debit or credit card, her pensions were paid directly into her bank account, she paid all her bills by standing order/direct debit, etc. She barely went near a bank. She was definitely "old school" when I was a lot younger, with numerous pots and tins where she'd put cash every week for the various different bills etc, but when times changed, she embraced it, even though she was retired!

@HisNibs

Had to use cash at the pharmacy today... card machine not working because their phone line is down. Would have been stuffed getting my prescription from there if I hadn't had some cash on me. Next nearest pharmacy is 15 miles away.

Such a good point! Card payments go wrong a lot more often than cash payments! (Can't see how a cash payment could go wrong really!)

(Can't see how a cash payment could go wrong really!)

Carpetdweller Of course cash payments can go wrong. I can think of several ways:

• you’ve been given a fake note and don’t realise, so try to spend it
• you’ve confused foreign change for our own money (more common than you’d think)
• you try to pay with a £50 note and the shop won’t accept it, similarly with other notes that have a high forgery rate ie. Irish notes
• the denominations of change you try to pay with are too high to be considered legal tender and aren’t accepted (ie. more than 20p in 1p coins, or more than £5 in 5p coins)
• the note is damaged/torn and isn’t accepted

(Can't see how a cash payment could go wrong really!)

You could lose your purse or be mugged on the way to the pharmacy.

@heartsonacake

(Can't see how a cash payment could go wrong really!)

Carpetdweller Of course cash payments can go wrong. I can think of several ways:

• you’ve been given a fake note and don’t realise, so try to spend it
• you’ve confused foreign change for our own money (more common than you’d think)
• you try to pay with a £50 note and the shop won’t accept it, similarly with other notes that have a high forgery rate ie. Irish notes
• the denominations of change you try to pay with are too high to be considered legal tender and aren’t accepted (ie. more than 20p in 1p coins, or more than £5 in 5p coins)
• the note is damaged/torn and isn’t accepted

I can still remember the day I went to get on the bus to go to work. I had been paying for my fare with coins. That morning, the driver said he couldn’t take one of my pound coins as it was fake. I would have had no idea, as I only got change from shops. I was late to work because I had to go back home and get more coins. I started buying my tickets online for a month at a time (this was back in 2008 and in my area back then you could either pay cash or buy tickets on the website to be posted to you). I learned to drive quite quickly after that. Nowadays it’s all on apps and payable by contactless on the bus, and if you haven’t got exact change for the ticket you don’t get any change back.

So yeah, I can see the problem with counterfeit money and being the poor sod that gets caught out with fake money that’s been circulating through shops and elsewhere.

I think it's just one of those things at the moment in order to keep other people safe.
I have to wear a face mask for 13hrs a day at work at moment, it's not something I will ever get used to because it is so uncomfortable but I fully accept that in order to keep the people that I'm looking after safe I have to wear it. Using cash in a shop is putting retail staff at a higher risk, therefor card payments keep them safer. Surely you can see that that's the reason for it rather than the banks forcing people into cashless technology?

Surely you can see that that's the reason for it rather than the banks forcing people into cashless technology?

That's a little naive. Cashless society would save banks loads of money and make a lot of things easier for them, it's been going that way for years, conveniently now they have a good reason of "it's saving the poor retail workers" to hide behind. Never let a good crisis go to waste!

@Carpetdweller you give over a £20 but get change for a £10 and don't realise?

Banks cover fraudulent transactions.

@heartsonacake

(Can't see how a cash payment could go wrong really!)

Carpetdweller Of course cash payments can go wrong. I can think of several ways:

• you’ve been given a fake note and don’t realise, so try to spend it
• you’ve confused foreign change for our own money (more common than you’d think)
• you try to pay with a £50 note and the shop won’t accept it, similarly with other notes that have a high forgery rate ie. Irish notes
• the denominations of change you try to pay with are too high to be considered legal tender and aren’t accepted (ie. more than 20p in 1p coins, or more than £5 in 5p coins)
• the note is damaged/torn and isn’t accepted

Yes those things could happen, (although if you can get confused about foreign money you could also confuse your cards) but they have never happened to me. A torn/broken card wouldn't work either.

I uave never had cash fail, But have been in situations several times where my card or the machine haven't worked.

@Carpetdweller I've been shortchanged but never had an issue with card payment! 🤷‍♂️

A cashless society is really bad for so many reasons. If you can use cash, do it!

my mum was even told by the cashier in the bank the other day to use the cash machine in the bank rather than get the cash over the counter because of the 'risks', fgs it's THEIR money

The bank obviously were not saying they couldn’t have their own money, just to encourage them to use the machine. Probably because the queues are so long at the moment, people coming in taking 5 minutes to fill out a slip and withdraw cash over the counter is so unnecessary when the machine is right there 🤷🏻‍♀️ Also, if you walk out of the bank with £300 cash in your bag and it gets stolen, it’s your loss. If it’s a card transaction that is proven to be criminal/fraud the bank will investigate and usually refund the lost money.

I was a bit uncomfortable about the move to a cashless society but the paranoid, flat earthers on the thread have definitely shown me which side I want to be on.

@KenDodd

I was a bit uncomfortable about the move to a cashless society but the paranoid, flat earthers on the thread have definitely shown me which side I want to be on.

Your opinion was swayed by the erroneous links made by some posters between conspiracy theory and genuine concerns about going cashless?

[quote NannyOggsWhiskyStash]@ScrommidgeClaryAndSpunt, I think you are being wilfully naive if you don't think our data will be sold on. It is already, just search for something and then see how many pop-up ads you get.[/quote]
No, not naive at all. Realistic. Anyone looking at coursing on my account based on card use won't be able to tell much more than which supermarkets I shop at, what brand of fuel I put in my car, and that I am a regular customer at my local tandoori. This has always been the case as I have never paid cash for these things. Selling the information is going to be of fairly limited value given that I have no plans to change my habits and I always ignore the sort of targeted advertising/sponsored posts/paid-for content that you mention.

@MotherMorph I will cheerfully admit that I was being facetious, because the original premise was such fanciful, tinfoil-hat bollocks that facetiousness was an appropriate response to it.

If the concern here is data on spending habits in whatever form being sold to whoever wants to buy it for whatever purpose, doing that for a population the size of this country is going to be a massive piece of work. Plus as I said to someone else, an analysis of my spending habits based on card transactions isn't going to yield much of any use to anyone, because I'm not likely to change those habits just because someone figures out how to pop up an ad for Shop B to try and tempt me away from Shop A.

If the concern here is more along the lines of your example of using it to penalise benefit claimants, I would merely look at the attempts to get a track and trace app in place earlier in the year and made a total pig's ear of it. To do the sort of things required to harvest and use data on the scale required here would cost very large sums of money and require sustained, focused effort by a large number of people. Current government might manage some of the first of those but it is unlikely to achieve the second.

Out of interest, how do you people who say you never carry cash manage if you want to use a trolley at the supermarket? Some supermarkets - Sainsbury, Aldi at least - require you to put a pound coin in to release the trolley. Do you just shun supermarkets that require this?

Out of interest, how do you people who say you never carry cash manage if you want to use a trolley at the supermarket? Some supermarkets - Sainsbury, Aldi at least - require you to put a pound coin in to release the trolley. Do you just shun supermarkets that require this?

No, I use one of the many trolley tokens that the charities sell, or an "old" pound coin!

Do you really seriously not know that you don't need to have a continue stream of cash to provide for a trolley and have to "shun" those supermarkets!!

Fucking beam me up!!!

I’ve got a trolley token and a £1 coin lives in the car. Same one’s been there for over a year.

@exiledfromcornwall

Out of interest, how do you people who say you never carry cash manage if you want to use a trolley at the supermarket? Some supermarkets - Sainsbury, Aldi at least - require you to put a pound coin in to release the trolley. Do you just shun supermarkets that require this?

my nephew 3d printed a "key" that fits trolleys I also have one of the aldi coins on my keys

you’ve been given a fake note and don’t realise, so try to spend it

exactly
I was a carnie, one show about 10 different stall holders got stung with fake 50s, they didnt notice as it was night and busy. Only noticed counting up at the end of the day, some stalls lost a few hundred dollars.
The next day i was visably making sure every note was real before i accepted it as payment, i got some dirty ass looks for not trusting people

Those saying that the bank pays back for fraud and card loss, don't you have to pay the first £50 on some occasions so you are not completely without loss. I am not a cash used but don't think it should be completely cashless

I think if my purse was stolen and all my cards were used I would be out of pocket by about £300 for my cards, I would never carry that much cash.

Cashless society would save banks loads of money

Banks charge businesses for handling cash, so they may actually profit from it.

Those saying that the bank pays back for fraud and card loss, don't you have to pay the first £50 on some occasions so you are not completely without loss. I am not a cash used but don't think it should be completely cashless

You have no liability at all if it's used after you've reported it stolen so you just need to make sure you ring your bank as son as you know it's gone.

You "may" be liable for the first £50 on a CREDIT card if it's used before you report it stolen but banks usually waive it if you report as soon as possible.

In practice, pickpockets (like endemic in Rome) don't use cards - they just want the cash. Banks often have CCTV monitoring cash machines and shops often have CCTV on their tills, so it's now very high risk for thieves to use stolen cards. Cash is a lot more useful to pickpockets. (Of course some try to use cards, but they prefer cash!). The thief, if they do want to use the card, will also try to do it virtually immediately as they won't want to risk using one already reported at stolen if they're too slow - after, say, an hour, it's useless to them.