To ask if going cashless is a good thing.

[smittenkittten]

Most people I know don’t want to go cashless, but it seems to be inevitable that we are heading that way. Personally I hate the idea. There’s so many occasions when cash is needed, too many to mention, but it’s the little things mainly. Treating the grandkids, summer fetes, bring and buy sales, car boots......all the things where you usually use cash..
Will it just be digits in a bank account? What if you lose your phone? ...What do people think of it all?

I very rarely use cash.
Sometimes at a vending machine and that's about it. I would be totally okay with going cashless.

That said I don't think it is a good idea to go completely cashless for various reasons.
Power outages, vulnerable people etc.

@BeautifulBirds

If we go cashless how do we get cheap cash in hand jobs done?

I rest my case

@AgentJohnson

My Christmas cash bonuses from 2019 and 2020 are still sitting in a jar because it costs me money to deposit money at my bank.

Why would you have to pay?

It's widely acknowledged that many (not all) businesses that trade in cash under declare their income to avoid paying tax. I don't want to make that easy for them. I was surprised anyone would criticise me for that

And an important point that it’s certainly not ALL cash businesses trying to screw the tax man!

There are certainly lots of cash businesses where tax evasion is the least of our worries. Plenty of nail bars and car washes are being used to clean money.

I don't use cash very often. It would suit me if virtually everything was cashless but evidently it's not the case for everyone.

In terms of my services I request payment by transfer to my business account 24 hours in advance nowadays.

I would love to go cashless. Cash is a faff.

Hopefully going forward cash will stay that way people get the choice to use what they want.

@Shade17 i dont think for one second that every xash heavy business declares all their income and I don't bloody blame them either. Why the hell should your average person pay the government anymore than they absolutely have to when you have massive corporations paying hardly anything? Bollocks to that! I will happily pay anyone like a tradesman in cash knowing full well they may not declare it.

Why the hell should your average person pay the government anymore than they absolutely have to when you have massive corporations paying hardly anything?

As much as I get the average person (and pay people in cash so, yeah...), there is a difference between actively hiding money and just paying what you legally ought to. Shouldn't be mixed together

I drew a couple of hundred pounds out at the start of lockdown last year as I was concerned a family member wouldn't have enough money if they had to buy more than one week at a time... I still have that couple of hundred cash. I need to get round to banking it again but there open such silly small hours.

@User018475022

I drew a couple of hundred pounds out at the start of lockdown last year as I was concerned a family member wouldn't have enough money if they had to buy more than one week at a time... I still have that couple of hundred cash. I need to get round to banking it again but there open such silly small hours.

Why not spend it instead of paying by card?

I have cash that I don’t spend as I pay for everything by card.
I don’t spend it because I’d have to remember to take it out with me, and carry it around, on a trip when I am likely to buy something.
I do keep a purse full of silver coins in the car for parking meters though

@User018475022

I drew a couple of hundred pounds out at the start of lockdown last year as I was concerned a family member wouldn't have enough money if they had to buy more than one week at a time... I still have that couple of hundred cash. I need to get round to banking it again but there open such silly small hours.

Or just spend it? I get rid of any cash/change at the self-service machines in supermarkets, then pay the remaining balance by card.

You can also pay cash in at the Post Office.

I never know where I should keep the money as I don’t own a handbag or purse

Cards go into my phone case. Change would just get lost or dropped.

At least with a card you can track what you have spent and if anything goes wrong then you have an extra insurance policy on stuff as you have paid be credit card

Pockets? I don't see that that would lose or drop it unless they're extremely tiny.

I don't take my wallet to the gym/pool - no lockers now and I go there especially - but I take some cash so I can always get a couple things in the shops on the way back for my supper or for breakfast if I'm out or so I can get water if I forget. I'm very often without my phone. I'm almost entirely a cash payer unless forced otherwise.

Precipice

Pockets? I don't see that that would lose or drop it unless they're extremely tiny

Or non existent.
I only have 1 pair of trousers with pockets in and I certainly wouldn’t want to put £20 into those pockets and expect it to be their when I got to pay for something. Equally hoodies have tiny pockets
In fact all women’s clothing seems to have shallow pockets

Just occurred to me, the nightmare of losing your phone with cash cards inside. Probably worse than losing a purse with cash.

The downside to a cashless society as far as I see it is that it massively favours larger businesses and also increases the cost to all of us, because it is us as the consumer that pays for all this card commission in the form of higher prices.

Big businesses can afford to negotiate lower fees, smaller ones cannot, it makes the likes of honesty boxes for farm gate sales impossible. The likes of councils still charge a 'convenience fee' to pay by card, despite it being cheaper for them to accept cards than cash, because they don't have to send someone round to collect and bank the money and they're not at risk of being robbed.

Plus there's the risk of the system going down, I've seen it many times, either across a whole bank, or in a particular shop.

We need a much more reliable system and we need smaller retailers on better contracts for accepting cards so they're not forced to either price their goods based on people paying for bottles of water with cards and we need the law that makes it illegal to charge extra for accepting card to be enforced.

Another point about card commission - almost exclusively it's Visa and Mastercard. Both are American. (In some drop-downs online I see American Express and Maestro, the same applies). I don't want to be always sending a little money (/a fraction) to the Americans every time I make a purchase. I won't claim full-on economic patriotism, but there are some benefits to favouring local enterprises and this flies in the face of that.

I can't remember the last time I used cash or even a debit card. I use Applepay on my phone for everything now

I do draw cash out every now and again and keep in my bag just in case but I think it must be at least 3-4 months since I used a cash machine. I would say since start of pandemic I've drawn cash out 3 times

Apart from my local pub which is cash only, I never use cash at all.

Most of my trousers and skirts have pockets, even some of my dresses, because I avoid buying clothes that don't have them. But some are stupidly shallow, and satin pocket lining is also a bad thing. Nice deep cotton pockets, that's what I want in life.

There's always the risk of the electricity going down. Not so much nowadays but imagine the panic if there was a serious problem - and everyone coudln't go and bulk buy in Tesco for the 'emergency' there'd be serious panic.

If the electricity went down in Tesco could cash be used though? The tills would be dead, nothing could be scanned anyway.

@Pedalpushers

I cannot remember the last time I wasn't able to pay for something by card.

I can - it’s quite often for me.