Potential cashless society and the evil buy it now button.

 if the cash alternative disappears and all transactions are done by card surely personal debt will increase massively?

I'm not making that connection. The day can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned (though I can see why it's not appropriate for all).

Almost 63 btw so I don't think it's purely an age thing.

I generally disagree. With cash, I take £100 out of a cash machine and it generally gets frittered away with no real idea where it’s gone.

Card transactions however get downloaded each month as a CSV file, a lookup table macro assigns a category to each transaction and a pivot table sorts it all out. Takes <10mins a month and I can see exactly where I’ve spent money each month for the last 5 or so years.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I used a cash machine. Certainly not since Covid.

I did have to write a cheque last week. Took me a while to find the cheque book and found it was issued 10 years ago. I think that's 3 cheques out of it now.

The day can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned

That's good as an affluent retiree.

God help anyone you know who's homeless and can't have/don't want a bank account.

Bitcoin perhaps ?

You could have quoted my full post.

How ever they are mutually exclusive views tbh.

It's a bit like saying I want a car free society.....so long as I can have MY car.

Yawn.

Slow day?

What's the requirement for a cash free society that means it can't come soon enough.

Where we are now means it works for all sections of society and jnfact those that choose not to accept cash are actually more of a pain to the wider section of society than those that accept only cash....

Having been down the road of heavy debt due to unchecked spending I can see where you're coming from.

Making it easier to spend your money on a whim is a dangerous path for some people. It's far too easy to lose track of all the little spends (£3 coffee in the morning, £2 snack at lunch, another coffee on the way home) and before you know it £50 has gone with very little to show for it. When I switched from card/cash to Google Pay on my phone I quickly noticed that it was far easier to spend small amounts, especially as I didn't take my wallet to work so couldn't spend anything before.

To use your night out analogy my technique was to take out a defined amount of cash that I was happy to spend and when it was gone the night was over. The visual of seeing the pile slowly go from a few notes to mainly coins to nothing kept my spending in check. There isn't that connect with waving a card or your phone at a reader. It's far too easy to lose track of the costs until your payment is either refused or you see your balance the next day.

It's easy to forget that some people don't have any self-control around spending money. just look at gambling and the issues that can cause for some people.

You seen Klarna both online and in store yet 😂

until recently it took at least 3 weeks for an online purchase to get to where i lived, so i’d been buying locally.

having moved out of the boonies, i made my first online purchase in about 4 years. i was surprised to see that you can buy pretty much anything with free credit by clicking a button in the checkout.

that can’t be good for personal debt.

It costs us a fortune to take your card payment.
When there is no cash it will cost YOU a fortune to make a card payment.

@zippykona out interest what do you get charged for taking a card payment. Are debit cards less than credit cards. I often wonder if using one over the other could save a business money.

The visual of seeing the pile slowly go from a few notes to mainly coins to nothing kept my spending in check.

This is also why casinos make you swap your real money for play tokens and why theme parks sell their own currency sometimes. Yeah technically you can change it back but for most people once they've "spent" it, they've accepted its gone

I did have to write a cheque last week. Took me a while to find the cheque book and found it was issued 10 years ago. I think that’s 3 cheques out of it now.

I have this about once a year when I have my car serviced. It's apparently cheaper for the small garage I use to accept cheques rather than process card payments.

At the start of the school holidays my daughter had her nails done. Given that a lot of places have been card only due to Covid, the nail bar was cash only. Helps raise money laundering suspicions🤔

have this about once a year when I have my car serviced. It’s apparently cheaper for the small garage I use to accept cheques rather than process card payments.

Where as the old guy at my local garage* worked out that by the time he processed them all and got then paid in even using online systems at his assumed hourly rate

he was better off using a card machine as no further man hours were consumed once it was clicked......they also don't tend to bounce.

By offering this he found he also by default got alot less cash to process - but will still take the cash. Win win for him

*Two ramps and an mot inspection pit/3 guys so small but fair turn over In a week

@stainypants
There's a 1p transaction fee for us.
Debit is around .45% credit around .75%
Plus terminal rental ,plus a charge we have to pay for saying that we won't be naughty.
We have a really good deal. Lots of other people are charged 4p per transaction and 2.5%.
Normally we have to pay £200 a month in fees ,probably double that in December.

I try to pay for everything by phone now. Have notifications turned on so that it reminds me of recent transactions and their value. Like reading your receipt 10 mins or so after you’ve left the cafe… not that I’ve done that for years. More digital tools to help people keep track of, and appreciate, what we are spending are probably needed as we move away for cash.

Where as the old guy at my local garage* worked out that by the time he processed them all and got then paid in even using online systems at his assumed hourly rate he was better off using a card machine

Sounds like a similarly sized outfit to the one I use, I strongly suspect my guy's never fully priced it up. I'm still surprised the per transaction cost is lower for cheques than card though.

Semi related question… do drug dealers still rely on cash or do they use electronic transfers (and if so isn’t that easily tracked evidence)

Card transactions however get downloaded each month as a CSV file, a lookup table macro assigns a category to each transaction and a pivot table sorts it all out. Takes <10mins a month and I can see exactly where I’ve spent money each month for the last 5 or so years.

Lol that's bonkers to me. I don't care what's gone where, I earn it, I spend it, the circle repeats each month.

Lol that’s bonkers to me. I don’t care what’s gone where, I earn it, I spend it, the circle repeats each month.

The voice of the entitled and tone-deaf.

The voice of the entitled

Lol I wish.

It's a well known phenomena that people spend more and think less about what they spend when they can't see the transaction, there are graphs somewhere, for some people it also leads to overspend on credit cards and a dependency on credit in general.
I'm old school cash in my head but like the convenience of contactless in shops, aversion to credit and save up, but if you don't do credit you don't need to save up cos you generally have it..or is that just being tight..same thing maybe.

I was shocked recently to hear that many people go to buy big expensive things like a car or washing machine, and have to check an app to see what they can afford to pay for it per month, this decides which one they can get, this to me would be handing control of my cash/freedom to buy stuff to my bank, stuff that, what is wrong with just having enough money to buy a thing?

Seems a lot of people are riding it hard to adjust to the change/progress. If only we still had shillings and pence eh,.

I was up in York a couple of days ago and went for a walk after seeing my customer. I bumped into a busker who wasn't accepting cash 'due to Covid'. Instead he wanted paying in either Bitcoin or Ethereum! Gimicky perhaps, but cashless society is well on its way. I think Visa and Mastercard are upping the limit of contactless to a £100 over the next few weeks....and Apple Pay is fine for anything below a grand.

Like a few on here, if i get cash out, it just evaporates and i don't really know where it's all gone!!

The £100 contactless limit will come in in October. That's the "legal" limit, card companies/banks don't have to raise their current £45 limit to the £100, they could go to £75 for example but it's more than likely they'll go to £100. Then each shop can have its own limit: £100 limit at a newsagents?

Both the Indian and Chinese takeaways in the village are still cash only, that's just about the only time I "need" cash, so I'll get £20 out, pay for the takeaway then over the next couple of weeks (we don't do takeaways very often) will just use the rest on small transactions.

I really can't remember the last time I wrote a cheque, not even sure where the chequebook is. I've had to bank a few, one of my regular jobs doesn't have a decent internet connection - poor enough that banking sites crash - so he pays by cheque. The others just have my bank details and pay direct into that. Similarly for trades working on the house: "here's my card with bank details"

It's been a bit of a subconscious switch TBH, I've certainly not done it deliberately but nor have I fought against it. I'm 62 BTW so not an age thing.

I think cash is obsolete, we just haven't accepted it yet. As a country we should do what Sweden has done and have a proper plan for getting everyone cashless, leaving no one behind.

Otherwise we'll just go cashless by accident and end up disadvantaging a whole chunk of poorer society even more (but then that is very much the British way).

Performers at the Fringe had card readers, QR codes to scan or took cash.

Excellent cafe near me won't take card payments less than £10. Its what the emergency tenner in my ride pack is for!

I don't even carry cards anymore, just my iPhone with a £20 note in the case for the rare occasions when the card readers are down or a random cafe is cash only. Use it about once a year!

The tooth fairy is going to struggle. We had a blind panic last week trying to find a £2 coin, failed, and had to settle for a £1 coin that serves as a trolley token. Child not happy as going rate is £2 plus.

Not sure a note saying the tooth fairy has transferred you some bitcoin will be the same for a child as a big shiny coin.

@Andy_Sweet have a vague memory of reading about how dealers were taking card payments (using fintechs like square).

I think cash is obsolete, we just haven’t accepted it yet.

No, it isn’t. Yesterday I had to withdraw cash from a machine in order to buy something, actually fish and chips because the nearest chippy only takes cash, but also some things in town today, because my bank detected fraudulent activity on my debit card on Thursday and have cancelled my card; because it’s a bank holiday, my new card won’t be dispatched until Tuesday, so I won’t have the means to buy fuel for my car, to get to work, or food to eat, unless I use cash, and my only easy source of cash is my building society account, which I can transfer money to from my bank account.
And before anyone jumps in and says use a credit card, I don’t have one, and won’t have one - I got into too much trouble when I had one, and had it cut up by my account manager years ago.

There are cash points everywhere, that is all you need, the rest can be cashless.

It's just another step of many for money, bank notes were invented as a guarantee of payment, a 'note' to pay the lender, an official iou from the bank as it were, meaning the real money could stay in the bank and you didn't need to carry lumps of gold around...we just decided it was going to be the 'real' thing, it became currency, the original thing no longer exists, we trade hours of work for x which is sent to the bank, and the bank lets you exchange it..without it ever existing in real form, it's actually very strange when you think about it.

Now we can take the next step and just have nothing at all in circulation, security of that is the only issue I have, we enter an age where people can access your entire account with a machine for the first time, and it's clear no one is particularly worried about that.

All fine and dandy till there's a power cut.

Plenty of places I’ve paid by phone where the payment device was also working without mains power. Power cuts can be designed around. And physical cards aren’t the real replacement for cash either, just a stepping stone that people find easier to understand than what we’ll end up with very soon.

I've never used my mobile to make a payment. I don't use my mobile for online banking. Saying that, it's become quite rare that I use cash. Chip shop today, barber the other week. But always card in the supermarket, or pay online and collect/deliver. Agree with others, I don't want to have too much convenience to make purchases. As I've got older obviously gained some self discipline around money, but still feel more comfortable with a few small safeguards to delay any impulsive decisions on what I 'really really need right now'.

All fine and dandy till there’s a power cut.

In Tesco?

It will make money laundering harder. I remember as a youth arriving a a local pizza takeaway in a pretty quiet area of Leeds with 7 big black 4x4s outside. This is 30 years ago when they weren’t so common. There was a group of blokes sat around a table and the owner was just dealing out £20 notes to each of the them.

i think cashless will come.
most business places dont want cash nowadays.
insurance is cheaper for then if card only. no cash on premises. where i worked we went account only. insurance dropped.
no risk of banking problems with staff.
no hassle with customer saying i paid x amount to you. moreso with dodgy trade customers claiming they paid x amount in cash on that day.

i like to have cashin my pocket, i can keep tags on what i am spending that way. but it will end sooner rather than later.

Cash is an expensive pain for a lot of legit businesses, costs to handle, store and bank, makes the business a target for thieves and you have be able to provide change.

Cash is going, Covid has accelerated it, much of what needs to be in place already is, basic bank accounts etc. Perhaps people need to wake up a bit regarding personal spending, it's still easy enough to blow cash and have nothing left. Most of the reasons above are pretty tenuous, power cut! Most businesses have electronic tills so being able to pay by cash isn't much use if they can't open the till or update stock, and when was the last time you were in a shop during a power cut.

Plan for the future, it's going, just need to make sure no one gets left behind.

Plan for the future, it’s going, just need to make sure no one gets left behind.

Chip n pin was introduced in 2006, I reckon if you said cashless by 2030 that means someone becoming a pensioner in 2030 would have had 25 years to get used to the idea. You would need to be 90+ to have not experienced chip and pin in your working age life. Even a 100 year old in 2030 would have been in their 30s when credit cards became a thing - in the scheme of things no one can claim this is sudden change.

Interestingly all the tradesmen we've had in the year (plasterer, joiner and arborist) have all actively looked for payment by bank transfer. Not sure sure if that's typical but certainly makes my life easier.

in the scheme of things no one can claim this is sudden change.

Perhaps at the same time we can mandate identity cards so that everyone has access to a bank account.

That is that banks have to verify who you are even for a basic cash account with the most basic cash point card ..and that's not easy without money / official photo Id /fixed address.

Hell when you arrive in a new country WITH money and the paper work it can be a challenge to get an account. I've watched it in the UK numerous times with folk coming here long term with family for work from abroad

Systems do crash but they tend to be edge cases rather than the norm. Yesterday I set off for a ride and thought that rather than drive down to the village, get my ride snacks, drive back then ride off in the opposite direction I'd call in at Morrisons and get them from the filling station there. Except their systems were down and they couldn't take card or cash! Ended up at the shop in the next village.

At the café stop, their ordering system was down so it was paper slips only (the computer has "blown up") - the payment systems were working but only at the counter, the mobile card readers weren't.

The mobile card readers have their own power supply so they can take payments but the shop/café can't transfer the details of the transaction immediately but they might be done as a batch at the end of the day anyway. I'm fairly sure the download of details of fraudulent cards is done daily so uploads might be as well.

I have a UPS for my home computer (we get fairly regular power drop-outs) - I'd imagine most supermarkets have something similar, more likely a generator, to take over in the event of a power cut. There are the freezers and chilled goods to keep going for example.

There are cash points everywhere, that is all you need, the rest can be cashless.

Less and less every year, they're no longer profitable to maintain so us cashless lot are subsidising the refuseniks who insist on living in the past 😉

On a serious note, banks are getting rid of them because they're not used enough, hence we're going cashless by stealth / accident. You'll just end up with a few expensive pay to use cash machines in spar shops in poor areas, which even further disadvantages the poor.

Hence the need for a proper strategy.

All fine and dandy till there’s a power cut.

China has introduced their own electronic currency and one of the design features is that you can transfer money between two users using mobiles / card readers offline. The transaction occurs using Bluetooth and then gets actioned as soon as one end comes back online. Does mean that you don't need internet of mains power to use the system, so I could pay a trader in a market using a mobile and a battery card reader.

It will make money laundering harder.

Making the laundering of cash notes harder is not really touching it, and digital laundering presumably easier, the transaction is more visible but nothing insurmountable.

You can turn £200k by buying a house in your sisters name, spend another £100k on home improvements with trades that are your mates, and sell it for more down the line without even paying tax on a second home, etc, etc, digital does nothing to stop it.

It’s a well known phenomena that people spend more and think less about what they spend when they can’t see the transaction,

I'm finding it far far easier to quantify my spending these days than ever before via banking apps.

Of course, no use if you cant afford a smart phone. Or just dont want one.

The only cash I ever need these days is for those tiny campsites that aren't set up for it. There was a handful of local shops/cafes that used to be cash only but all have gone over to card/phone payments now.

Last time i visited my parents my father thrust £2k in cash into my hand, i left it behind, not my problem.

My in-laws give us cash for the boys birthdays. It must be as they like the act of giving something. A 3 year old has no interest in a collection of bank notes apart from waving it around and pretending it's a flag.
I then have the hassle of going to the bank to pay it in. I then transfer the 'cash' digitally.

I like not carrying around cash and the pocket jangling with smash.

I do however miss counting out the Coppers I've saved up.

As I said on a previous thread, I will miss the physical Banks, but I think that'll be more nostalgia than anything.

I still have the same tenner in my wallet I've had for over 2 years.

On a serious note, banks are getting rid of them because they’re not used enough, hence we’re going cashless by stealth / accident.

I use and see the cashline machine at my local supermarket, and its where I park my bike so i also see it in use a great deal, probably hundred+ of times a day, and Newlands isn't a poor area so I dont think its a case of them not being used.
Taking into account the banks, who love, absolutely love saving money, hence fewer branches,fewer staff are the main driving force behind a cashless system. Remove the machines and you force the public to use the cashless options.
So not by accident, by design.
But is it to the benefit of the public ?, well if its being forced with the intention of saving the banks money, I dont see(cynical,cynical) how it is.
Certainly its not good for 'the poor' or for that matter the elderly, who are not known for their acceptance of change.
Plus, I think theres other downsides, though without study I couldn't say exactly what those would be, other than to keep in mind the way the banking and monetary systems operates,l and that certainly isn't for the benefit of the customer, but more of a greed aspect.

Take a look at the trend, their number and usage has been in decline before Covid came along. The Link Network is only free because banks subsidise it and that won't last for ever.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/291638/number-of-cash-machines-in-the-united-kingdom/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/445076/transactions-at-atms-in-link-network-in-the-united-kingdom/

We have more money, buy more things but use cash less and less for it, so we're slowly going cashless without any plan. Same with bank branches, people use them less and less so they are reducing in number (which is a sensible thing to do if you're a bank). The non sensible bit is there is no plan to migrate everyone to a cashless and branchless future, given our banks are all private companies who need to turn a profit. The current plan seems to be to threaten banks with banning them from closing branches, which isn't really a solution, they'll just be lumbered with empty buildings no one uses which they won't staff properly (as why would you staff up an empty building that occasionally gets visited by someone who could have just used an App). It's all a bit King Canute ordering the tide to turn back....

But is it to the benefit of the public ?

The banks are businesses, not a public service, we've got very used to free banking (not so common in other countries), the banks will cut back services as long it doesn't reduce customers.

Cash is going, if you don't want it to lobby the government (who won't care, there's much bigger issues they don't care about first), you might as well shout at the sky as complain about the banks. They've been reducing physical interaction with customers for years, of course it's by design.

They’ve been reducing physical interaction with customers for years, of course it’s by design.

Chicken and egg though, most people are happy to use Apps / Online banking / contactless which is why branch use / cashpoint use is falling. As that use falls its an obvious cost saving to close branches / cashpoints.

It does seem barking mad, in the modern world, to pay people to sit in bank branches processing cheques by hand - like insisting on using Quills and parchments rather than send an email.....

Is that the same statistics company that said brexit was never going to happen ? 😆 Wouldnt be the banks that paid for that statistic study would it 😆

Last time i visited my parents my father thrust £2k in cash into my hand, i left it behind, not my problem.

£2K in cash is now a 'problem'?

I tried to get advice on renewing a mortgage recently, the RBS is not doing in branch appointments under the pretense that it is a covid risk, and I was directed to a website, sorted eventually but I would have preferred someone to discuss it with before committing to what is a serious decision.

This is part of the shift, banks see the opportunity to dispose of buildings and staff, quite eagerly and visibly, the girl that I spoke to was talking about working from home in the future, she saw the changes as largely positive for her, as someone who has partly always worked from home I didn't want to burst her bubble and thanked her for telling me what I already knew in our online meeting, I think she actually thought directing me to a website was 'work' of the type she will be doing in her future, by the time I need to renew again my guess is she will have been replaced by a system and customers will be fully responsible for making the selections they make, independent finance advisors will pick up where she left off, no free online lunch.

These are the services that can now vanish, banks can disappear from the high street, fine for me, but for those that need it this is a loss, and for the young they just enter a new world of credit offers, the dumb will max out and have no savings and be in that continual cycle their entire lives without realising there was another way.

Digital money is great, but it's not about the money.

the dumb will max out and have no savings and be in that continual cycle their entire lives without realising there was another way.

Nothing new there and nothing to do with banks closing or cash vanishing.

These are the services that can now vanish, banks can disappear from the high street, fine for me, but for those that need it this is a loss

Very few people actually need a branch, the majority who use them I would guess are those who have chosen not to use online banking etc, most of whom will die off sooner or later. The young, as a general rule, have embraced banking via Apps and have no need of branches.

There are cash points everywhere,

Are there ****!

Times ive seen people buying rounds of drinks waving their card not bothering with a receipt

I've frequented pubs since I was in short pants and I can say hand on heart, outside of business expenses claims, I've never asked for a receipt. Why would you, are you planning on taking it back next week because it's faulty?

Shoving bits of paper about in this day and age is crackers. I could have a pile of easily-lost receipts to review because who even knows why I'd want to, knowing that I bought six pints of Old Phlegm Lovelybeer last nice isn't going to make me magically richer. Or I can log in to my online banking and immediately see in one place where every last red cent has gone for the last two decades.

In this age of The War On Straws is properly grips my shit that whenever you make a transaction a bit of dead tree falls out of a machine. I don't want it, I didn't ask for it, and half the time the cashier doesn't even ask me if I want it but just automatically screws it up and bins it. It's utterly stupid. "We've always done it this way" is the worst reason to do anything.

The denizens of STW like to hail the fictional future of driverless cars but for me the cashless, and paper-receipt-less, society can't come soon enough. Banknotes, pointless unless you're in a rural backwater. 1p and 2p coins, pointless, what can you buy for a penny? Have you seen the price of Pik 'n' Mix these days?

There's perhaps value in carrying some loose change to chuck in a paper cup for the bloke sat outside ASDA with a dog on a string, or for car parking where it's likely easier to drop a quid in a slot than install your 76th different parking payment app, but these are surely increasingly becoming fringe requirements. I for one do not miss walking round with bulging pockets of shrapnel like ED-209.

"We don't take cards," well, you've had thirty years to work it out, frankly you deserve to go out of business. Add 5p onto the price of your Mars bars like everyone else, problem solved, next question?

like insisting on using Quills and parchments rather than send an email…..

Ah, I see we share a solicitor.

"Please stop putting sheets of paper in envelopes, it's wasteful and time-consuming. You have my email address, use it."

"Certainly sir. Find the attached form on this email, please print it out, fill it in by hand, sign it and then scan it back in. Also, we'll need the paper originals posting back out to us."

Electronic forms exist. Digital signatures exist and are a swearword of a lot more secure than a scribbled signature that even I don't recognise any more. Is it the 1900s again already? For the money I'm paying you, this shit should not be challenging.

Times ive seen people buying rounds of drinks waving their card not bothering with a receipt

One of the great things about digital money is you don't need a receipt, my phone just lists everything I've spent.....

Pre-Covid on business trips I'd have to get a receipt and then snap a photo with the expenses App (concur) and then leave the receipt on the table. Always seemed a bit stupid as Concur was linked to our corporate Barclay cards so could see the transaction, but corp policy was we had to have a photo of a paper receipt as well.....

Concur, shudders, what a crap system. It seems to me the very people who main about races to the bottom regarding working expectations are the very same people who hold back society because a small minority can't cope with modern society. It's always been this way, difference is today we have people who care about the bottom 5% of spciety who cant keep up. Things will keep miving forward, people will get left behind, we need to minimise that but accept holding back the vast majority for a small minority, many of whom have made that choice rather than have it forced on them.

Yep it's called the *I'm ok jack society*

Or possibly reality, moan all you want about it aint fair, its happening, deal with it.

I think your find it's called empathy.

There for but the grace of God go I and all that.

As I said. Its all well and good from an ivory tower.

There are a number of articles online about how Sweden's not the utopia painted by many above.

Very few people actually need a branch, the majority who use them I would guess are those who have chosen not to use online banking etc, most of whom will die off sooner or later. The young, as a general rule, have embraced banking via Apps and have no need of branches.

Sure, but why the defense of banks giving you less? there seems to be an attitude that anyone that doesn't do everything digitally is somehow behind the times, I'm all for closing all high street banks but using digital banking as an excuse to remove services is hardly something to embrace.

Concur, shudders, what a crap system. It seems to me the very people who main about races to the bottom regarding working expectations are the very same people who hold back society because a small minority can’t cope with modern society. It’s always been this way, difference is today we have people who care about the bottom 5% of spciety who cant keep up. Things will keep miving forward, people will get left behind, we need to minimise that but accept holding back the vast majority for a small minority, many of whom have made that choice rather than have it forced on them.

What is it you feel held back from?

I had a contactless debit card in 2007, I didn't resent anyone else not having one.

I work for a business that is constantly asked to provide cash solutions along side contactless, the cash solutions cause us a lot more issues and costs, all because some people can't work a debit card.

when was the last time you were in a shop during a power cut.

May this year. I was working as an overnight shelf stacker at a well known supermarket. We had a power cut that lasted for just under an hour. All the self service tills needed resetting before the store opened at 6am. If the cut had lasted 2 hours a lot of chilled stock would have gone in the bin.

there seems to be an attitude that anyone that doesn’t do everything digitally is somehow behind the times

The truth is that they are. However, they can and should be supported but you shouldn't halt progress because a few people haven't kept up with it.

And by progress I mean things like being able to pay for an item using my secure phone payment system, seeing that payment has worked immediately and seeing all my transactions by checking on a secure application on my secure phone. Can also send money, check receipt of money, setup payments and so on just with that phone.
Compare that to how it all worked 30 years ago and I call that progress. In case you are not old enough I would have had to fill in bits of paper, send/take to bank, wait days or weeks for completion, wait for monthly statements etc,. etc,

@cougar wins this for me with

“We don’t take cards,” well, you’ve had thirty years to work it out, frankly you deserve to go out of business. Add 5p onto the price of your Mars bars like everyone else, problem solved, next question?

And

Electronic forms exist. Digital signatures exist and are a swearword of a lot more secure than a scribbled signature that even I don’t recognise any more. Is it the 1900s again already? For the money I’m paying you, this shit should not be challenging.

The second especially as I'm trying to buy a house.

@cougar wins this for me with

So double whammy. Homeless with no card and minimal money....and now not only can you not pay with cash - you need more money to pay with the money you can't pay with. .....

Seems like a poorly thought out solution to me.

They could just shoplift. (-:

Anyway, that isn't what I said. In fact I literally wrote the opposite, I cited beggars as an example where cash was still relevant.

It must be a challenging time for the genuine homeless where "sorry mate, I've no change" is increasingly likely not to be a blatant lie. I rarely have cash on me aside from an emergency banknote just in case I find myself in Victorian England, any change I wind up from breaking that goes into a jar as soon as I get home.

Someone said earlier that their monthly transaction fees were £200. From their own figures and my GCSE maths, their takings must've been North of ten grand. So I'm rather thinking that "we can't take cards" is closer to "we can't be arsed to take cards" than folk would care to admit. I've been to a yarn festival held in a cattle market in the middle of a load of fields where sole traders took cards, a high street shop has no excuses.

A cashless society isn't likely to happen any time soon. But a cash-only society is moronic. And the more that people embrace this new technology from the 1980s, the more likely the transaction fees are going to go down / away completely.

So double whammy. Homeless with no card and minimal money….and now not only can you not pay with cash – you need more money to pay with the money you can’t pay with. …..

Seems like a poorly thought out solution to me.

Doesn't matter one jot whether it's fair or decent.  Its happening. Solutions to support those in need need to/should be found and tossing a handful of change at the homeless every now and then has never been a solution itself anyway. If society ever really cared there would be virtually no homelessness already.

Someone said earlier that their monthly transaction fees were £200. From their own figures and my GCSE maths, their takings must’ve been North of ten grand. So I’m rather thinking that “we can’t take cards” is closer to “we can’t be arsed to take cards” than folk would care to admit.

That's always been a weird argument. Businesses pay a fee to deposit cash too. For the most part, it looks like it's *more* expensive for them to pay cash in than to accept cards. That's not even including having to pay someone to go and actually make the deposit.

If I want to get a fish supper from the chippy along the road, or a kebab after the pub, then I need to have some cash, because neither take cards, but on the other hand, I found myself in the situation over the last few days of having to pay cash for everything, which was fine, until I was in Bath this afternoon, and the first two cafes I went to didn’t take cash. Fortunately I found a lovely little cafe in the centre which did take cash, and the food and coffee were outstanding!
My debit card got compromised last week, I had it cancelled, but I won’t get a new one until probably the end of this week; fortunately I have access to cash from my building society account.
I’ve got so much into the habit of using contactless or my phone, needing cash is a bit of a PITA.

there seems to be an attitude that anyone that doesn’t do everything digitally is somehow behind the times

Of course they are!

Eg look at all the new bank licenses given out for digital only banks eg Monzo, Revolut etc. No one has applied to open a brinks and mortar in person bank and all of the smaller players are merging as its too expensive to have a branch network unless you're massive and have millions of accounts to subsidise it.

The writing has been on the wall for some time.

I use and see the cashline machine at my local supermarket, and its where I park my bike so i also see it in use a great deal, probably hundred+ of times a day, and Newlands isn’t a poor area so I dont think its a case of them not being used.

Just because a cash machine is busy doesn't mean it'll stay. They are increasingly now only being installed/left at sites where customers use nearby premises and pay in cash. Some shops have to pay to have one installed on their premises or nearby, especially in rural areas. Any other machine is just a pure cost and risk to the provider and they would want rid of it as soon as they can. The vast majority of machines are now at banks or shops, it's rare to find a free one in the middle of nowhere. Every machine a company has costs a lot of money to have installed, filled, serviced and insured against attack. They make a small amount of money from the fees they can charge other banks to allow their customers to use them but there are no machines that actually make money for the company that runs them, only the ones that charge you £1.99 to make a withdrawal turn any profit.

Banks really want a cashless society as it will remove a big layer of costs for them that they cannot leverage to make money.