But nothing is insurmountable and I’m sure they’ll find a system to support tourists in a cash free society.
Card acceptance is better in supermarkets and larger retailers, but I have been to countless restaurants - some quite large - and smaller shops that say “Sorry, we only accept EC Karte”. And hardly anyone seems to pay with cards anyway.
N26 don’t issue accounts/cards to UK residents now, and didn’t issue Maestro to UK residents even when they did offer a service here.
I know the owner of a small tea shop in Germany and the reason he doesn’t accept “foreign” cards - even though his system and package allows it - is that he is terrified of fraud. It’s a cultural thing, I guess. He is certainly not alone in that.
Maybe, but then look at Albert Heijn in the Netherlands. Their smaller shops outside the capital ONLY accept domestic Maestro cards - that’s it. No cash, no debit or credit cards from other countries, just local Maestro cards. I can easily imagine a situation where tourists are limited to using cards in a selection of shops.
Or the tourists may just say we can’t be bothered and go elsewhere, which is exactly what I would do. It’s catch up and modernise or fold in my view.
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I’ve just realised an extra benefit of going cashless - no money in my pocket to waste in the fruit machine in the pub. 
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My trick is to watch someone lose for half an hour and then cheese a win
By 2050…
- Mars will be in the early stages of colonisation
- Earth-bound population will primarily be using electric-based flying vehicles for transport (personal ‘EV-packs’ and multi-person vehicles, both based on large-scale drone tech)
- Earth-bound banks will still exist, but only for the ‘older crowd’ - individuals will be their own financial controller
- Earth-bound cash, cheques, PO’s will be history - pay with retina-scan/ID linked to preferred blockchain
- Earth-bound governments will be disbanded, privatisation and therefore choice of governance will prevail, based on the individual’s wealth
It’ll be the wild west all over again 
Time to watch Elysium once more.
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Back before lockdown, I stuck a quid in one of the machines in the very Wetherspoons in which I am now sitting. Before I pressed any buttons, it flashed up REPEAT? YES/NO. I hit “collect”, it landed on “YES”, and spat out fifty quid.
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Then I hope cash doesn’t disappear 
hopefully drinks are on you?
I never mind buying a round in Spoons, given how cheap it is. I have to hold my nose and ignore the political leanings of the owner, but that’s one for a whole other contentious thread!
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I will remember this if I’m ever travelling outside of my town with the intention to get drunk on someone else’s wallet
Or limit tourists to high end, expensive shops.
And any of that nonsense, and I still wouldn’t go, though there are plenty of people who don’t mind or for whom any expense, is not an issue, so I’m sure they’d support the economy by digging deep(er)
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Given recent inflation and the increasingly disparate nature of cash machines, £80 does not seem like a massive withdrawal.
Clearly, as the machines become less convenient, people will get out of a “little and often” pattern and settle into a “larger and less frequent visit” pattern.
This is for those that do use cash, of course; the lower number of overall visits also probably has something to do with more and more people simply opting-out of using cash altogether.
I’m frankly shocked, though, that before COVID the average adult was visiting a cash machine almost once a week and taking out over £65 each time. People really were “reaching for the cash” without a second thought; I thought I was normal in having had a card-preference for years but obviously not!
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Wonder how much sniff contributes to this statistic
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I had a brief discussion with a checkout assistant in my local Tesco supermarket just the other day. I had mentioned to my Wife that I’d set up my Chase card on Tesco Pay+ for the cashback. The till operator overheard the word ‘cashback’ and assumed that’s what I wanted but then told me I’d have to go to another till because she couldn’t do it on her till. I informed her I was referring to something else and then told her, ‘We don’t do cash, we’ve even almost completely stopped using ATM’s’. This clearly annoyed her because she responded that if everyone did that, the cash machines would disappear. My response? ‘The sooner the better! Cash is just a massive pain in the rear! It’ll be gone within 20 years anyway’. She responded with, ‘Well I’ll be too old to worry about it by then anyway’.
I make no bones about it, I now absolutely hate physical cash money. We don’t keep any in the house and we don’t use it at all for day to day spending. Of course, they’ll always be people who will only ever want to deal in cash, i.e. those in the dark recesses of the economy who only ever work cash in hand and contribute precisely knack all to society through taxation, or those who don’t have bank accounts etc. However, for them, the future doesn’t look bright as far as physical cash is concerned.
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I couldn’t agree more!
That’s a hilarious and frankly bizarre interaction but I’m not surprised at all. For all the talk of cash being doomed in our “fintech bubble” it’s clear that it’s death so far has been greatly exaggerated. Most people still seem to think they need to be carrying at least some around on a daily basis.
I personally also don’t see cash as anything remotely desirable, like you. Talk of “protecting cash” might as well be “protecting muggers” or “help for tradesmen who don’t want to pay tax”, it’s just not something we are likely to need in the long term. The focus on this really needs to shift away from “protecting cash” and towards digital inclusion initiatives instead. That’s not likely without pressure from government, due to the ATM lobby at LINK/Access to Cash Review and Age U.K. where they all seem fixated on solving the problem by maintaining cash machines. I just don’t see the point of that myself.
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What gets on my tits is how the elderly are oft used as an excuse for anything relating to keeping things as they are. Ok, I get it, there are still quite a lot of folks in advanced years, 65 (and that’s even pushing it to classify as elderly these days!) + who still are neither internet/computer savvy nor do they opt to use debit cards on a regular basis. This will all change within the next 20 years anyway, because the middle aged duffers like me (mid fifties) will probably almost all be pretty tech savvy anyway and will quite happily be using a computer, latest smart phones and electronic banking.
Yes, cash has been around since T Rexx troughed his first caveman, but eventually, it’s going to die out. It’s called progress.
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