To be annoyed that lots of companies won't take cash

[sicknote26]

Hi,

Been to lots of places that don't take cash, but starting to get really annoyed at not having the option of paying by cash.

Been to a couple of places today, first a well known activity place and a well known restaurant. Both completely cashless.

Aibu or is this a sigh of the times now.

What about the older generation who prefer to pay with cash.

It’s so long since I’ve used cash. I think more and more places will move to cashless. Paying cash seems very antiquated now.

Yep, we got a few hundred pounds of Euros a few years ago to take on holiday, still got most of it, despite several foreign trips, as it's just easier to use a card and we end up bringing most of the Euro cash back with us. I think we spend around 50 Euros in cash every trip, which is probably mostly tips.

I work with a large youth organisation and we went to the beach recently with 30 of them. The only ice cream place open was a chain and they did not take cash. The girls all wanted to spend on average £3 each but it was the end of the month so I didn't have the available funds to sub it and collect the money so we walked out and they missed out on £90 of sales on a quiet day!

I know that schools have also had issues with museum gift shops and zoo gift shops and cafes going contact less. Leaving it up to teachers to have to pay on cards.

In most cases cashless is an ok idea but when large groups of kids are involved it is a bloody nightmare.

People make a lot of excuses that aren't valid any more.

• chip and pin machines have bumps on the keypads so braille readers/visually impaired can use them. The number layout is standard, so even a visually impaired person can just feel for the bump on the centre key and will know where the other numbers are positioned relative to it to input their pin.
• contactless works up to £100 so many older people will be able to get a weekly shop without inputting a pin at all.
• there are other ways eg apple pay where you don't need to rely on remembering a pin.
• i don't know where people are shopping where card machines are "down" regularly. The last time i remember this happening was in a very rural butcher shop relying on satellite signal about 5 years ago. They lost it for 3 minutes then it was back. No one had to go and get cash.
• most people 80+ have been using cards for the last 40 years and are very used to them.

there are other ways eg apple pay where you don't need to rely on remembering a pin.

Other brands are available
Love how the default is always Apple

Yanbu. There are lots of downsides. I use cash every day, I only use my card a couple of times a month. I have a disabled adult child. We’ve spent years teaching him to put the coins together to make the right amount in shops to buy stuff. He’d never understand that a card doesn’t have an infinite amount of money on it but does understand that when the coins are gone you can’t have anything else. It’s not just about old people.

For small businesses card machines cost a fortune in fees.

How young were they? Most teenagers have debit cards.

Homeless people?

I have a ninety year old relative (never been married) who has never had a bank account in her life, let alone a cheque book or debit card.

All her money is in a building society. If she needs a cheque she has to go there for them (I think) to print one out for her, but that's rare - normally she has to go there to get out cash to pay for everything, from food to council tax and everything in between.

There is not a cat in hell's chance that she is going to get used to a cashless society now. She would quite literally starve first!

I've been using cards almost exclusively since the start of the pandemic and even before then 95% of my transactions were by card. And I have never experienced a situation where I couldn't pay.

Several banks now work with homelessness charities to enable street homeless people to use the charity address to apply for a basic bank account. It helps to build financial capability, a really important part of reengaging with society and moving off the streets, applying for benefits, into housing, into work etc; and it’s much safer for homeless people to have a bank account and a debit card than to carry cash which puts them at high risk of mugging and robbery.

I agree. A friend of mine left her abusive husband a few years back. She’d squirrelled money away for a year so she could go just a few quid here and there. If she hadn’t been able to save some cash she would have possibly been stuck there as he had all the cards to their accounts.

You've been lucky then.
In the last two months alone I can think of three times when we've had situations where machines weren't working, twice in shops and once at the petrol station.
That last one was potentially difficult, as DH didn't know the card machine was down until he'd filled the tank, and he had no cash on him. The employee very reluctantly let him leave, on the understanding that he would drive somewhere to get some cash then come straight back to pay. Luckily it was fairly local, so at least DH knew where to go, but it was still really inconvenient.

The shop incidents weren't a problem, as on those occasions we had cash on us. It's never let us down - well, apart for the time many years ago when the shopkeeper informed us that the £20 we'd just given him was forged!

And I have never experienced a situation where I couldn't pay.

This happens a lot on mumsnet.
"it has never happened to me, therefore it doesn't happen ever"

It happened to us earlier on last year when we booked a meal at a local Indian. They told us on the phone their card machine wasn't working, so we just made sure we took enough cash for our meal.

I can assure you that this did happen @pointythings

We've just "converted" my 82 year old mother who has dementia. She sounds like your relative, i.e. constantly going to the building society to withdraw cash and ask for cheques, she'd withdraw a shed load of cash then wonder round town with it, go to the post office to pay some bills, and post cheques for others.

We had to "convert" her because she was losing too much cash. Her passbook would show, say, £500 withdrawn, but a couple of days later, she'd have nothing in her purse. Heaven knows where it went. Probably in the bin as she had a paranoia about people coming into her house stealing things (they didn't) and would hide things in weird places that she'd forget - it wouldn't surprise us if she hid cash in a corn flakes box and then threw it out, or it disintegrated if she hid it in clothes which then went into the washing machine, etc!

We closed her b/s accounts and opened a simple cash card account with the Halifax, got all her pensions paid into it and set up direct debits to pay all her bills. It was hard work, but she "got it" in the end, as we took her shopping and kept forcing her to use the debit card to pay, and eventually, she got the message, managed to remember the Pin number, etc. Now she literally doesn't remember cash at all, she just gets her card out automatically! And with it being set up for nearly everything to happen automatically, she never looks at the account itself (we check the bank statements to check nothing untowards is happening - she's incapable of reading a bank statement).

Major success and we've managed to stop the "leakage" of her cash.

Most of the oldest people have someone (friends, relatives, etc) who helps them with things, and dealing with money is just another thing they need help with. It takes a bit of time and perseverence but is well worth it.

Every kid I know over the age of about 12 has a revolut card or simular. Find it hard to believe you had 30 kids, none of which have a card or a payment method on their phones. That seems very unlikely.

My [debit] card simply works anywhere.

I hired cars 2x in last 10 days in USA: they didn't accept American debit cards. I had to put my British credit card on file but could at least pay at end of hires with my USA debit card. Cash not accepted either, of course.

Literally was impossible to rent a car without a credit card.

My other problem with this USA debit card was 'they' change the PIN on me 10 months ago and even at their own bank machines I can't change the PIN. So... I've written down the PIN in code. My dad said "Just go in person to ATM & take out lots of cash!" Pahlava, using that debit card.

My late dad did his best to 'convert' her, even though he wasn't a blood relative (there is only one 'close' blood relative, a second cousin of a similar age) but she was having none of it, and her heels are as firmly stuck in now as they have ever been. It's quite sad, but there is no way to convince her. She hasn't changed a thing in her life since the 1960s, and couldnt do it now even if she wanted to, though she most certainly doesnt want to.

All that said, she has been almost totally housebound since a bad fall a year ago, and neighbours have been doing everything for her. I am told that she still pays all bills in cash, but quite how that is working in reality I haven't a clue!

I should point out that I live much too far away to be of any help whatsoever.

It is a group for age 10-13
only 3 of them had cards.

@Legallypinkish

For small businesses card machines cost a fortune in fees.

No they don't. You can buy the equipment (reader) for about £25 and processing fees can be just a few pence these days. The market has changed a lot with lots of competition.

Indeed - things like IZettle are very low cost as it can be used on an app on your existing smart phone, so you just need a card reader than can be bought for fairly low cost. A lot of this stuff can be bought from Post Offices.

You don't even need a card reader now, if you use the 'tap to pay' function on iZettle the customer can tap their card on the NFC part of your phone (the same bit you use for Google/apple pay).

Flogged something on Facebook recently and on the doorstep they pulled the old "oops I've not brought enough cash would you take £5 less" routine. Pulled out my phone, had them tap to pay that way and dealt with the nonsense. Don't think they saw that one coming.

If you are going to take cash most businesses will need a vehicle to take the cash to the bank. Card readers are very cheap in comparison.
So many people think dealing with cash is free/very cheap foe businesses when really it's massively expensive.

I am totally intrigued. How does this work? Pretend I'm your CF would-be buyer. Too many acronyms for me to follow, need a breakdown.

What software would I need on my phone to enable the payment, iZettle, NFC (what's that), Apple-pay, "tap to pay" (not sure what this is) or Google pay already installed on my phone?

Would I need data access/wifi on my phone or is it a blue-tooth only thing?
From where would my payment be made, which of my accounts?

You pay as you'd usually pay via any other contactless payment terminal.

For example, SumUp tap on phone can accept credit and debit cards from Visa, MasterCard and Maestro as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay. It uses existing technology on Android phones to do away with the need for a card reader.

No acronyms needed to pay via that method, just your usual payment card.