Cash?

[Flutterbybudget]

To think that companies and shops should really be accepting cash again now?
I know that during the last few years, people were being encouraged to use contactless payments “where possible” officially to reduce germ carrying on cash, but NOW with no Covid restrictions and the cost of living soaring, I think that more and more people will WANT to return to paying cash for various purchases (makes budgeting simpler) and it seems bizarre to me that some places are still refusing to accept cash payments.
I, for one, don’t want to live in a cashless society, where every penny that I have can be tracked, traced and taxed. I want to be able to sell an old piece of furniture, without that being questioned and taken as “income”. I want to be able to give my children/ grandchildren coins to put in their money box.

I agree a move to cash less, would be bad for so many people, easier to budget, some people don’t even have cards, they only use cash, it’s all they have known.

Not so long ago shops wouldn’t allow you to use cards for under a fiver, now there is no limit imposed.

I was speaking to a market trader yesterday, when bought my veg, she said she had recently visited a coffee shop in our city and was told card only, she is partially sighted and feels safer paying cash as she struggles to see numbers on the display, etc, she was going to leave when another customer paid for her coffee for her by card, while telling the coffee shop staff, it was wrong not to accept cash.

But like everything in life, unless people use cash, withdraw from banks, atms, not doubt it will disappear overtime. Plans seem well underway, saw a document online from BOE about digital currency, some time ago now, Google it.

I can’t remember the last time I used cash. I use my phone for everything. Even buskers in tube stations have a device for Apple Pay now.

I'm probably going to tell this all wrong, so bear with me🙂
Something I read a few weeks ago:

I have £50 cash. I spend it in the restaurant. The owner uses my £50 to pay the greengrocer, the greengrocer uses it to pay for a haircut, the hairdresser uses it to pay for...... you get the picture. At the end of 30 transactions, that £50 is still £50.

Using a card for the same amount would incur a service charge everytime that £50 was recycled. At the end of 30 transactions, it would be worth nowhere near the original value.

I always use my card in supermarkets etc., but for small businesses and market stalls I tend to use cash.

Card only works for a lot of business and events as cash leaks (in plain language people can steal it). There is also a security cost in collecting and banking it.

As to why a business might be cash only, it can be preference but it might be a sign of a very new business or a business in financial trouble. If you are new or have poor credit a lot of suppliers will only accept "COD" (cash on delivery).

We've just had the annual "there are fake £20 notes around" message at work and one member of staff has already been caught out and accepted one.

Fraud is much, much less likely with card compared to cash.

I took my daughter to a music event recently and was genuinely surprised I couldn't pay with cash for drinks. I tend to separate money out in the bank account for different things and had to stand there transfering money across.

Card fraud is a major issue.

I have had my card cloned when using it to pay at a merlin attraction last year, I wasn’t the only one either there was a very large number of people staying at the same resort hotel who it happened to. Over £800 was taken from my account.

The petrol garage in our local town was in the news a couple of years back for cloning people’s cards when they paid for their fuel.

I have had my card stolen in the post and used before it’s reached me.

I have never received a fake note and use cash 90% of the time. I also worked in retail when I was younger for 8 years where dealing with cash was the way a majority of people paid a few years back and not once did we receive a fake note.

apintortwo
The cashless trend is dangerous. You only have to see what happened recently with the tractors' peaceful protests in Canada. Those in favour of the protests who had sent donations through Go Fund Me had their bank accounts frozen and funds redirected to a different cause. Read about it. It's scary

Yes this is scary. The Chinese now use their phones for payments and all interactions to access many government services. Those identified in recent protests had their phones turned ‘red’ centrally so they didn’t have access to their own money and services. It is the control aspect which worries me. The fact that Canada, a liberal democracy, did this recently shows how dangerous this can be.

But unless you keep your wages in used tenners under your matress, surely most people would be impacted by their bank account being frozen regardless of whether they like to use cash or cards in shops?

Those who use cash would have some money for essentials.

I tend to use a mixture of cash and card but at very large events I completely see why they have card /phone/contactless only as its so much quicker, and expect to use my card. You don't have to have people handling money so all staff can concentrate on food/drinks/serving people and it cuts down queuing time massively.

However a few times recently I've used cash in a shop (quiet, no queue) and the cashiers look quite bewildered, and look like they don't recognise the coins or take an absolute age to count them. (Bear in mind I've paid with a reasonable amount of coins, not like I've paid 3.80 in pennies and 2ps!)

YABU. Very much so given your reasoning is that you want to avoid your true income being taxed!!

My issue is at large rural events where wifi is patchy.

These are exactly the type of events where cash security is an issue

I won't go to these unless I know I can manage if the connection is poor. There are lots of places in the UK where connection is patchy. I have stood at outdoor stalls too many times while the stallholder tries yet again to get a connection.

@Roselilly36

Not so long ago shops wouldn’t allow you to use cards for under a fiver, now there is no limit imposed.

That was because of the card processing fees. Nowadays, the fees are a lot lower, often just a few pence, so it makes sense for shops to take cards for any amount, especially as the costs of handling/banking cash are now generally higher.

My parent gives me cash to pay for their bills. So then I have to make a trek to the nearest banking branch to pay it in (and good luck with finding one, in some areas!).

It can also leave you a bit vulnerable if your card stops working as happened to me recently. It was fine contactless but wouldn't register with cash withdrawal machines. A couple of local businesses only accept cash so I needed it.

Fake notes have been a big problem for decades. We had a newsagents shop on a main road in the 80s and 90s. We'd suffer fake notes on a virtually weekly basis. Yes, we used the ultra violet machines and those marker pens, but they really don't catch all forgeries!

We'd also suffer from tricksters too using real notes but conning you into giving them the wrong change. You have to experience it to see how expert they are at it, we're not talking the simple "I gave you a twenty", we're talking a stage-quality magician performance undertaken by a gang of three swapping money between them in the middle of paying for their shopping, just to confuse the cashier and create "smoke and mirrors" to distract them by sleight of hand. The first time it happened to me, I was convinced I'd got it right and they'd not stolen any money, but I counted the till to check and yes, we were £20 down. Even though I was ultra aware of the scam after suffering it, it would happen on a regular basis, sometimes I'd manage to stand my ground and insist on one transaction at a time to avoid being scammed, but at other times, especially busy times when you're also watching other customers (sometimes they come in with other people who are clearly trying to shoplift to distract you), you can easily get caught.

Taking cards avoids all those types of scams.

@Prettyinpink22

Card fraud is a major issue.

Indeed it is, but as long as you've done nothing wrong, you usually get your money back. Banks are also a lot better at spotting "patterns" of unusual spending, especially on contactless debit cards.

On the occasions when I've lost my purse or had it pickpocketed, I've lost the cash, but never lost out due to card usage by a thief. So I'd rather have cards, so that I wouldn't lose money if my purse was stolen. At least with a card, you've more chance of not being out of pocket. If cash is lost or stolen, your chances of getting it back are pretty close to zero.

If you can be scammed with money you can be scammed with cards.
It sounds like your shop was known as an easy mark.

Yes, it was all over Facebook a few weeks ago, but it's utter garbage!

Lots of suppliers to shops etc don't accept cash. It's not as if your average cafe/shop owners nips to the greengrocer next door for all their supplies! They buy from wholesalers who deliver the goods each morning, and invoice weekly. Most van drivers aren't allowed to accept cash (due to risk of theft and costs of insurance), so the shop/cafe owner has to bank the cash and pay his suppliers by BACS, but of course, the bank charges for handling cash!

In the example, the greengrocer doesn't have £50 for his haircut because he has to pay tax, so he may only have £40. The hairdresser then also has to pay tax, so maybe only £30 for him to spend. So it's never going to be the case that the £50 continues to be recycled, due to bank charges and tax.

Of course, lots of people love cash as it facilitates tax evasion!

Oh I had that. It was ultra busy and the woman said she'd given me a £20 so I wearily opened the till but fortunately for me there were no £20s in there!

She looked a bit miffed and scuttled off.

We never suffered losses from cards as you don't get "chargebacks" as long as you've followed the rules, i.e. in those days, it was checking signatures between the card and paper slip, phoning for authorisation for large amounts over the "floor limit", checking expiry dates on cards, etc.

A shop losing out on a card transaction these days is pretty hard. Certainly doesn't happen to my "retail" clients, who include convenience stores, sandwich shops, B&Bs etc. But they often have "cash discrepancies" in their cash tills. Go figure.

The only time that businesses seem to get caught out these days are the "customer not present" scams when the business hasn't checked the address under which the card is registered, is the same as the postal address of the goods. But that's not the fault of card payment, it's the fault of whoever processing the sale not doing the basic checks.

Its not difficult to see why the government won't encourage maintaining cash.

Its way, way too easy to keep money out of the tax net if you simply never pay it into a bank account. Eg tradespeople paid cash who never pay it in/declare it and simply use it to meet expenses.

That's not a good thing, in terms of government actually getting tax revenue to fund schools and hospitals......

Indeed, through the various reorganisations of tax depts, resulting in HMRC operated from a few huge call centres, they're pretty much given up on trying to check the tax returns of huge numbers of small businesses. 20/30 years ago, they used to go out and check the records to try to find things like unrecorded cash sales, but now, generally they don't, except for occasional special initiatives. If they're not going to check the "books" (and now they can't as they have no local staff to do it), all they can do is hope towards a cashless society where they can check tax returns etc by checking the bank accounts - that's something that can be done remotely by a block full of staff in Newcastle or Aberdeen!