Have you gone cashless?

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newts

Veteran
Location
Isca Dumnoniorum
Our local Indian and Chinese take away providers require cash claiming that the can't get their bank apps to work but methinks it might just be for tax planning purposes.
Mary and I use cards for everything else.

Mike in Oz
This appears to be quite common wherever I travel, perhaps the banks have a private agenda & sabotage the banking process for these types of food provider🙄
 

Brandane

Legendary Member
Location
Costa Clyde
ATMs aren't the only way to get cash since loads of shops offer cashback these days.
That will only be the case for as long as they have customers using cash to pay for goods and services though. Once that dries up, they won't have the cash coming IN to hand out as "cashback".
 
Good morning,

.......
ATMs aren't the only way to get cash since loads of shops offer cashback these days.

But how much of that is because some people are still paying in cash?

If a retailer finds that they have to withdraw cash from their bank to offer this service will they still do so?

Being a cynic, the banks will come up with an incentive so that they can close the ATMs and then over the subsequent years make the incentives, less incentivising.

Although there is a strong argument for saying that if you want cash then you will have to cover the cost of using an ATM, in practice this cost seems to be around £1.50-£2 per transaction, but it would likely hit those who can afford it least.

I'm still depressed when I hear about people feeding a family of four on £25 per week and taking 10% of that it an ATM fee sounds outrageous.

I am unsure of the current legal position but a long time back it was different in England and Scotland but money in an ATM was a BoE asset not the banks' until it was issued. So banks could "over stock" their ATMs with cash.

For the commercial ATM operators the cash in the machine is theirs until it is issued and it is as risk of theft, probably a greater risk than the banks' ATM as the locations are less secure.

Let's not even talk about what happens if you card processor goes out of business, as the market opens up this becomes more of a possibility. To cover against this you could of course increase your costs even further by having two or three card processors and hope they have nothing in common.

Or the underlying technology failing, a lot of the internet between home/small business and the backbone can be concentrated into one two failure points. For example your card/phone reader might be internet reliant and you may have two phones that can provide that connection but both carrier mighty be sharing the same mast, the one that was just knocked down by a tractor.

A local pub might be happy to trade on trust for a day, but what about everybody else?

Bye

Ian
 

Chris S

Legendary Member
Location
Birmingham
I visited a dentist last week that only took cash payments. I suspect their bank account is overdrawn and they use the cash to pay their staff (etc).
 

oldwheels

Legendary Member
Location
Isle of Mull
Our local coop frequently has problems with their machines and until they get fixed it is cash only. Power cuts which are not as frequent as they used to be meant machines did not work and as their till could not operate either it was no sales of any kind.
Phone outages which still happen also mean cash only.
When we had a shop we could at least take cash as our till would not work but an adding machine gave the customer confidence they were being charged the correct amount.
 
I visited a dentist last week that only took cash payments. I suspect their bank account is overdrawn and they use the cash to pay their staff (etc).
My dentist used to do this.
The explanation was that all monies paid by patients had to be passed over to the Health Authority in full. If they paid the monies into a bank then there would be charges levied and these could not be claimed back. Ergo, dentist would be out of pocket for collecting monies for the NHS.
Sounds so silly that it is probably true.
Dentist has now stopped doing it and wants card payments only. How they get round the bank fees hasn't been explained, but I'm sure NHS won't have allowed the fees to be claimed back.
Remember to protect the NHS because it won't protect you.
 

CanucksTraveller

Macho Business Donkey Wrestler
Location
Hertfordshire
I've just looked in my wallet and I've got £170 and €50 in notes, I can't recall when I last had a chance to use it. I've been paying it to my daughter as her pocket money, but when she wants something with her savings, I end up ordering it online and she gives me the notes back. :sad:
 

All uphill

Still rolling along
Location
Somerset
I took £30 cash for some bike parts I fitted to a friend's bike. It was still in my wallet last time I looked.

This thread prompted me to check when I did the work - it was last October!

In future I'll ask for payment in cake, that way I get a quick reward.
 

Ian H

Ancient randonneur
Our local coop frequently has problems with their machines and until they get fixed it is cash only...
Funnily enough, so does our local one.

Everyone in the town apart from some market traders now takes contactless, even for small amounts.

A few months ago I had a tow-bar fitted to the car. I cycled down to Exeter to collect it, and realised when I got there that I only had my phone. No cards, no cash. So I tried the phone contactless and to my surprise paid a £500 bill with it. The man looked at me, pointed at the phone, and said, don't ever lose that!
 

LeetleGreyCells

Un rouleur infatigable
I use cash as much now as I did before March 2020. That is to say, not at all with one exception - the window cleaner. I've still got my emergency £20 I have 'just in case' for when out on the bike from 2019. I hope it's still legal tender! I don't know if it's on old £20 note or a new one! I'll must check...
 
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