To think it’s wrong some big companies won’t accept cash?

[YouDidThisPeterRab]

Just seems a bit shit.

I went to the cinema. No cash accepted. Card only.

Annoying. My preference is cash. But, some people use it to budget. Some people have it as their funds available to spend because they’ve been gifted some cash.

Seems really odd not to accept cash or advertise and make it clear on things like ticket confirmations that you don’t accept any cash

I really doubt that accepting cash will drive them out of business

People do need to keep their bank account where they pay their mortgage and bills separate though to the card they have in their purse, phone, watch, use online, etc. it's much easier if your credit card or second bank account gets compromised than your main one with all the bills.

Having worked in finance in various retail head offices, reconciliation of the cash was always a huge problem and time consuming. Theft/ giving out wrong change etc, not accounting for certain petty cash etc. Then the bank charges of depositing the cash, security of the staff having to carry ££££ to the bank or needing to pay for security vans to collect and deposit cash.

These are all expenses/ concerns a business has when they accept cash.

I agree with you, OP. Also getting cash nowadays is getting harder and harder. I get a manicure and pedicure every two weeks and there is now only one cash point in my town centre. A year or two
ago there were three banks (now there are none) and there was a cash point in the supermarket.

I really worry about the implications of digital only money.

Following up with your link to the article, that’s not the case then

The government is not going to force businesses to take cash payments.

The actual report recommendations of the Access to cash review is to not enforce with legislation - “unlikely to work if they are pushing against commercial incentives”, but to ensure it is affordable to accept cash
(Second recommendation of the report at www.accesstocash.org.uk)

Yes it was a while ago when I read it. Sounds like a good thing.

On the contrary, any retail business that meets the needs of the maximum proportion of its customers is much more likely to stay afloat than a business that rejects revenue because someone wants to pay cash.

I expect one of the reasons is the high cost of paying in cash to a business account. We are a smallish business and if we want to pay cash into our business account, the bank charge us 19% of the amount paid in as their fee. So for every £100 we pay in cash the bank gets £19 of it. That’s a huge chunk of our profit margin just being given away. Where fees for credit cards are a much smaller percentage and debit cards just a few pence per transaction, so makes more sense to accept card payments. We do accept cash but prefer not to.

Not all companies that take cash are tax dodgers. With money laundering laws it’s not as easy to “hide” cash as it once was.

Not that many "thousands of years". Bartering was the prime method of "payment" back in the day for longer in terms of thousands of years, even if it was "bartering" for precious things like gold/silver, jewelry, spices, other commodities, labour, etc., etc.

"Coinage" as such only started to appear in the 7th Century BC.

"Official" Western banks only came into existence in the 17th Century AD.

Any decent business owner/manager will compare the costs of accepting, handling and banking cash against the loss of profits by a few customers not buying stuff who want to pay in cash. They won't be making such decisions glibly without proper thought and due diligence.

It's general advice and also common sense to have more than one bank account, more than one credit card account, etc., with different banks just in case one bank has "issues" with their systems or closes your account or you lose a card, etc. Doesn't mean you have to walk around with a pocketful of cards, but handy to have a card or two at home in case your "main" card/account gets lost/stolen or the account gets closed etc.

I honestly don't know anyone that carries cash nowadays.

I use card for the convenience, but I like the anonymity of cash. I don't like that my bank basically has a running commentary of my life, that each shop knows how many times I've been a customer, that my movements can be reconstructed from financial records. I accept it's inevitable with online purchasing, but I don't want it officially recorded that I visited Costa, then I bought pants in M&S, popped to the co-op, bought petrol and then had a chippie dinner,

I've nothing to hide, but I find it intrusive.

Change your bank then, that’s a ridiculous cost.

Its expensive whichever bank you use

Ok, my business doesn’t handle cash at all, but a 19% charge on cash seems ridiculous.

I was in China recently and noticed loads of places only take Alipay, even little market stalls. It made me realise how quickly things are going cashless in some parts of the world. Still, I get why people are annoyed here.

Some folks don’t want to use cards or phones for every little thing, and cash is still important to them.

I had a similar rant the other day when my local cafe stopped taking cash. I get why some places prefer it, but not everyone has or wants to use cards all the time. I ended up reading more about how money policies are changing on knowledge.antom.com, and honestly it helped me understand both sides a bit better. Still annoying though when cash is just flat-out refused.

Err.... money laundering, crime and tax avoidance?
Not sure they count as 'good reasons' though.

Starbucks wouldn't accept my cash a couple of weeks ago.

I can kind of understand in a busy location, like a railway station for instance, where they're trying to get people in and out as quick as possible. But this is just a local Starbucks on the outskirts of my medium-sized town.

Our local football stadium has just stopped accepting cash, ticket office, merchandise shop and catering outlets are now all card only. Apparently it was costing them tens of thousands of pounds to handle/process/bank/insure the cash which for a National League side is a huge unnecessary expense.

Totally agree. I try to sympathise with those that only want to use cash ( although I don’t understand why) but cash is inconvenient and costly for businesses.