Card vs Cash - Facebook viral post

[MickeyMouseShithouse]

This is the Facebook post I keep seeing everywhere. What’s your opinions?

“Give you something to think about.

Why should we pay cash everywhere with banknotes instead of a card?

• I have a £50 banknote in my pocket. I go to a restaurant and paying for dinner with it. The restaurant owner then uses the note to pay for the laundry. The laundry owner then uses the note to pay the barber. The barber will then use the note for shopping. After an unlimited number of payments, it will still remain a £50, which has fulfilled its purpose to everyone who used it for payment and the bank has jumped dry from every cash payment transaction made..

• But if I come to a restaurant and pay for dinner digitally - Card bank fees for my payment transaction charged to the seller are 3%, so around £1.50 and so the fee will be

£1.50 for each further payment transaction or owner re laundry or payments of the owner of the laundry shop, or payments of the barber etc..... Therefore, after 30 transactions, the initial £50 will remain only £5 and the remaining £45 became the property of the bank thanks to all digital transactions and fees. 👍😉👊

PS: it’s now 4 months since I used my card and I love it. More human interactions, more questions, more conversations about why cash needs to be everyone’s priority. No one needs to know where I shop, how much I spend and what I buy 🤷🏻‍♀️. I am not okay with a digital currency - no way 🚫 #CashIsKing #Cash #smallbusinesssupport #think #interact #keepcashalive”

Why do you have more human interactions when you pay by cash?

If you pay by cash you have to travel to the cash point, there can be issues with change, if it is stolen you have lost it all.

It's not completely accurate - if you pay by cash, the business will be paying a transaction fee every time they deposit their takings at the bank, usually a given amount per £100 or a percentage. So yes, the £50 note is still worth £50, but the business hasn't benefited from the total value.

I've not seen the post but it seems like thebpint is that they £50 doesn't go into the bank so no fees. Each person isn't paying it in and taking it out again are they?

I do think people should be able to pay in the way they choose. It would be too much faff for me personally to keep paying with cash but it is legal tender and I don’t think that choice should be removed.

Card Fees are more like 0.3%, but don’t let facts get in the way of a good meme.

Many places I go now don’t want to take cash any more so no choice but to pay by card. This means that I tend to take less cash out so I don’t always have cash with me even when I am somewhere that takes it.

There is a cost to the business for handling cash...hence why so many have moved to card transactions.
It's not as simple as the quote makes out.

I take out cash to budget for certain things like dance and music lessons because the bill is termly so I take it out in cash monthly and then I have it. It doesn't work for everyone but it works well for me.

The restaurant owner can’t pay cash to the laundry because the laundry firm’s driver isn’t allowed to take cash! It’s too simplistic, the restaurant owner won’t be taking his laundry to the local laundrette and feeding cash into a machine!. Likewise the restaurant owner will pay his suppliers by bacs as again the van drivers don’t take cash, nor does his insurers, utility providers, accountant, solicitor, etc. It only works on a very small scale which is trivial in the bigger picture. It also leads to huge tax evasion.

The business should all be paying the cash into the bank anyway?

My Scout group is looking into a card reader for certain events. Its about a 1.25% transaction fee.

Have you ever worked in retail or hospitality? Shops and restaurants etc don't pay all their money into the bank as they need to always have cash in the tills, that's a normal thing to do

I don't suppose the post is meant to be taken literally it's to make people think about the issues around the decrease in the use of cash

The restaurant needs to pay for change from the bank because not everything comes to £50.
They also need to pay to bank all the notes.
Every cash exchange runs the risk of a fake note. Money can be stolen. Money requires time for someone to count the notes and walk to the bank to deposit them.

Cash should never be removed as a option, imo. But it's not as clear cut as one is by far the best option.

I love the switch that seemed to happen in covid where everyone started to accept card.

We pretty much only use cash for the odd £1 at school now.

Scours and other activities prefer bank transfer (so much less admin for them as volunteers/small business).

Carparks now encourage apps.

So much easier in supermarkets etc. I confess we use amazon a lot too. The whole massive increase in online shopping obviously means less cash on the high street anyway.

Even window cleaner prefers bank transfer....

I have a £50 banknote in my pocket. I go to a restaurant and still have to get my card out because they do not accept £50 notes. I try to use it in the supermarket but they also do not accept £50 notes. I try various other places with the same result. Eventually I end up paying it into the bank so I can actually spend it. The end (based on a true story!)

Criminals don't tend to rob places such as off licences and post offices as they no longer had reliable amounts of cash in their tills. My parents used to run a small shop, walking to the bank with cash takings was always a frightening time.

Violent criminals love cash #think #MakingCrimeEasy #MugOldLadies #SupportViolentThugs

I see what you mean, the barber has ripped off the laundry owner.

However if he had used a credit card and the transaction was over £100 he would have some recourse through 'Section 75: credit card payment protection' and he could jump dry and be happy.

That's it, isn't it?

Urgh, Cash is an absolute ball ache admin wise. Errors happen in change giving. Fakes. Needs counting (and it is filthy, dirty scummy stuff), banking, reconciling.

Electronic is just so much easier.

Insurance costs a lot more for businesses handling cash.

Most insurance firms also insist on extra security, such as safes, monitored alarm systems, also higher-spec locks etc., all of which are expensive.

It also costs time and fuel to take the cash to the bank.

#facebooknonsense

I saw this doing the rounds yesterday and thought it was utter tosh.
Cash costs businesses. They have to pay it in (if everyone paid in cash they'd have too much on the premises). That costs in staff time (counting and balancing the till and physically taking it to the Bank) security risk, increased insurance costs and around here just finding a bank in the first place!
Banks charge to process cash just as they charge to process card payments. Nowhere takes £50 notes due to fraud risk so that was a poor example to use.
For very small (local) businesses I guess cash might work better but for everyone else I'm sure the advantage of card payments outweigh the cost.

The Facebook post is too simplistic and misleading.

How did you get the £50 note? Cash machines don't issue them. If you withdrew at a bank counter, you could have asked for smaller notes. I've never even seen a £50 note, let alone had one in my purse.

Legal tender only means paying a debt. Shops, restaurants, etc don't have to legally accept cash as you're buying goods/services, not paying a debt.

Oh OP I thought this was going to be about how all the restaurant owner, barber etc now have flu having passed it to each other via the note. Nasty dirty stuff cash.

Have you seen the analysis of what's been detected on bank notes - from excrement to poo (from one of the folk in the chain who didn't wash there hands after going to the loo)?

this narrative only works if everyone in the chain is fiddling their taxes and avoiding doing their accounts properly. honest businesses put cash transactions through the books rather than pocketing the cash and spending it, and the overall cost of managing cash transactions properly is broadly similar to managing cards. and very few businesses have such a terrible deal that they lose £1.50 each time. with most retailers they will pay a fixed monthly cost plus a transaction fee which will be no more than 25p on a £50 transaction, in some cases less than 5p depending on the volume of card transactions the business deals with.