How does cash back work?

[NachoFries]

I’ve never really tried it but sometimes at the till they ask about cash back. What does that mean? And how does cash back work?

TIA

The can give you up to £50 from the til which gets added to your receipt and charged to your bank. So if your shopping is £6, you get £10 back then your account gets £16 taken from it via your card. Saves you going to the cash point.

Interestingly (OK possibly not very) whilst in the UK the cashback idea has evolved to be that we ask for the amount we want typically in multiples of £5 - in some other countries the typical practice is to ask for the amount to be rounded up to a multiple of 10 and get the odd change.

So if buying goods for £8.72 in the UK you would ask for £20 cashback and pay £28.72 to get £20 returned. In other countries you would buy goods for €8.72 and ask to be charged €30 and given €21.28 in change.

IT reduces the amount of cash at the supermarket which would have to banked and is a target for thieves.