Food places and cafes not accepting cash

[Annoyedtiger]

Yes I understand covid and I normally always pay with my card but today I accidentally left it at home and I went to three cafes including Cafe Nero which wouldn’t take my cash.

We know covid is airborne and everything is mostly back to normal.

AIBU to think everywhere should be tasking cash now?

There are a few ways - card reader, manual processing app, or you can generate invoices / links / QR codes etc

Manually typing in details to any system could generate higher fees, or as a minimum it flags as ‘card holder not present’ and could get a chargeback if challenged

Basic card readers do come at a cost - for example SumUp list their basic model as £29 reduced to £19
(There is a way of getting them for free or £5 etc *)
The basic types need to be linked to wifi or bluetooth. You can type the price into the reader or the app.
With the app you can set up a catalogue of items, then click the items and pull the basket to complete.
You can generate a receipt to be sent by email or text

You can pay more for better card readers, such as with a receipt printer or with its own built in connection to the phone network
These cost more, but the standalone phone network ones can often get a connection when phones are claiming there’s no network
(you don’t normaly pay for the network subscription)

• it’s not guaranteed but if you go onto the websites for SumUp, Zettle, and ‘POS retailers’ then add a basic card reader to the shopping cart and leave it there. After a few days or week or so and you start to get emails reminding you that you didn’t complete the purchase ….. and it may offer you one for £5 or free

When school planned trip to the zoo, parents were told that each child can have £5 with them so they can go to the gift shop and purchase something they would like up to value of £5.
But one of the parent checked with the zoo, and they only take card payements.
So there is 30kids in my DD's class, and I bet every child would have bought something from the gift shop.

Anyway thats loss for the zoo, becouse there is lots of school trips by this time of the year.

It is normal for school trips to go to the gift shop. I have taken and supervised kids. And there is no way I would be doing stuff at the till so everyone can pay on a school card and get the money off each child. You are far too busy watching the kids to make sure none are up to something they should not be or shoplifting. Kids need to be able to pay at the till themselves.
And any gift shop not accepting cash will lose a lot of money from school groups. It does not matter what techy solutions are available. Unless all parents can access them, you are not going to take a group of kids to a gift shop where only some can pay and others just have cash that is not accepted. It would simply lead to some very upset children.