To be sick of cashless society

[Ihatepcos]

I prefer to use cash, I always have.

I find budgeting and spending so much easier. If I am tapping away on my card I think nothing of constant £3 £6 etc being spent on things I probably wouldn't buy if I was spending cash.

More and more places simply don't take cash and it's driving me mad.

So you don't mind never going to attractions, events, etc., that aren't just "card only" but where you have to book in advance as there's no "walk up" tickets on the day and no physical "booking office" where you could pay cash to get tickets in advance.

More and more attractions have like that now. Most recent was Knowsley Safari Park with signs on the entrance road saying "online booking only" - their little ticket checking booths were all closed and it was just a single woman walking around with her ipad to scan our phone for the tickets - she had no capability of taking cash for "drop in" customers. Same with Anne Frank House tours in Amsterdam, there's nothing there open to people without pre-booked tickets, you can't even get into the gift shop so no way of buying a ticket by cash - same situation, just someone on the door scanning your phone letting you in!

If you're happy to buy tickets online for events (presumably you do), then why are you so bothered about forcing shops to incur extra costs and time for you to try scoring points by wanting to use cash for trivial purchases?

Which is why general advice is to have accounts with more than one bank. If one becomes unusable for any reason, then you've got a plan B to use another for the short term whilst the problem is sorted out.

They need electronic/online systems anyway, so the costs associated with cash handling are extra, not instead of. It's now a matter of having duplicated systems, one handling cash which is winding down rapidly, and one handling online/electronic which is growing. Your argument only holds water if they decided to stop offering online and electronic banking which obviously would never happen.

It's like the move from petrol/diesel to electric cars. At some point, there will be so few people wanting "liquid" fuel that petrol stations will have to charge a lot more or close down. Once the "critical mass" are using electric cars, then trying to run a petrol or diesel car will be expensive and difficult. In the meantime, we need doubled up infrastructure to cope with both ways.

That's why we don't believe everything on facebook

Gosh how patronising. It's a reasonable argument, made in a group for small businesses.

You may not agree with the premise of it, but please do not be so rude!

Except for the car parks that are app only.

I think the operators concerned need to consider their obligations under the Equality Act. Putting in coins or waving your card in front of a reader is much easier than using an app.

I love a car park app. You just drive out and it charges it to you card. Not even any tapping required.

I use cash only to pay beggars, buskers, drug dealers, and builders. 😊

There’s an NCP car park near me which you can just drive out and pay on line when you get home within 24 hours. They have your number obviously!

Many car parks where I live are app only. I need 3 different apps for them, one of which is barely functional.

No it isn't. I spent 3 weeks in China in 2019. I paid cash everywhere I went apart from taxis which were all booked on an app.

Oh and some buskers do take cashless payments. I assume it's only a matter of time until dealers do too 😁

Yeah, I was in Birmingham recently and a busker had a contactless machine ready to take payments, he even set it up to £5 minimum 😂

Even buskers know what the deal is!

Yes, most of the buskers in London have those little white cube machines. So do market traders, fruit and veg sellers, fairground ticket booths, etc

I'm amazed that so many people still use cash tbh.

What does worry me is most of the teenagers round here pay with their phones. If they lose their phones they've lost EVERYTHING - not just ID and contact but money too. I prefer having separate cards.

It will be a nightmare if we ever go completely cashless. We should resist as much as we can.

London is different. Travel outside and we still have places with poor connectivity. Plenty of places in North Yorkshire only take cash for this reason or say - try and see if it will accept the card but it may not.

The busker would get nothing from me then.

A few weeks ago in our area, Virgin went completely down. The shops that used it were asking for cash. Just one example of how much we need it. We should never ever rely on computers for everything.

I put a £1 coin in the machine when I need air for my tyres. I don't use cash for anything else.

Whilst cash remains legal tender, it should be taken everywhere

How did your country achieve zero identity theft? Which Country is it?

I don’t think you understand what legal tender actually is.

Cash handling is expensive before you've even got it to the bank, you have to rota staff to collect it from the till points, take it to back office, count it, bag it, drive it to the bank, this needs to be two people if it's significant amounts, and stand in line. The alternative is paying for specialist collection services, but it still needs to be processed internally to get to the point of pick up. This is all before the bank have even touched it. Not saying that banks aren't in the business of making money, of course they are, but practially card payments are so much easier for small business especially. Cash has always been expensive to handle, this is not a recent thing.

In addition to the business banking charges involved in cash handling, there are also the indirect costs of time spent cashing up, sorting the amounts to be banked & retained as float, carrying it to the bank (which may or may not need to be in time while it’s open depending on out of hours deposit points), the risk of setting a pattern (to be mugged with your secure cash box, or supposedly anonymous carrier bag) etc

There may be indemnity costs and/or a level of record checking of staff to cover cash handling & insurance requirements etc

@Tomikka In a small business they are no big deal. Our insurance policy covered the small amounts we were handling anyway. The bank was very close and the owner popped there in a break. And staff sorted money and the owner did a lot of books and admin during quiet times. Every business has quiet times.
You also need to do checks for staff with cards. Fraud such as skimming cards for example. Any handling of monies in whatever format needs robust safeguards.

Bigger shops have more costs from cash handling than small shops because small shops can do so much informally. Even when the owner had to take cash home to sort out, I know she did it in front of the TV. She wasn't paying someone to do it.