Cashless everything is annoying and inconvenient

[JazbayGrapes]

Went to London last weekend. A concert in Hyde Park. Nobody in food/drink stalls wanted to take cash. Is this a new normal?

YABU and sorry but obviously haven’t been to an event / London for a while. I don’t even know when I last had cash.

Your friend doesn't even need a card machine; if she registers for Zettle and uses the tap to pay function her phone will work as a card machine

Depends if you still have a proper post office. Ours closed and all we have is an outreach counter within a convenience store that basically just handles post - it offers no banking services. Nearest PO that does banking is a few miles away.

These days most businesses will build the ~1.5-2% merchant fees for accepting credit cards into their margins, so even when you pay by card they're still making the profit they intend to. In some ways, businesses actually make more money from people who pay with cash because they don't have to pay merchant fees - but then they still have to pay with their time in terms of handling it, banking it, reconciling the till etc so it's pretty much a wash.

The statement "cash is cheaper for the buyer" isn't really true at all. Some places will charge a fee for paying large sums by credit card, but in that case you just pay with a debit card for free and it's the same as cash anyway.

Ehhh, the simple truth is that if anyone gets money taken from their bank account when they have proper multi-factor authentication enabled, it's because they did something (either accidentally or deliberately) which allowed that to happen.

The technology is secure - it's just that social engineering is rife and humans will always be the weakest link in any chain. It's sadly quite common for the less technologically aware to get scammed, then blame the underlying technology (or more accurately, their lack of understanding of it)