So from my own perspective, I’ve effectively stopped using physical cash altogether here in the U.K. Quite literally for me, it serves no more purpose. Just like physical bank branches, don’t need or use one.
Went to my local Tesco today and the local Rotary Club members were stood outside with charity boxes for Haiti. I heard one woman passing by say she no longer carries cash and the Rotary lady remarked it was a big problem and they might have to consider carrying a card machine.
I know many will disagree, but the sooner physical cash is dumped, the better in my opinion, but sadly I fear, it will be hanging around for a while yet. But in any case, it will eventually disappear in many societies purely because of how mankind will develop.
I’m one of those people who disagree despite not having used cash in a while. The problem is cashless payments don’t replace cash with the same reliability. Until the government gets internet access to every part of the UK with decent speeds, and gives everyone access to a way of paying, cashless payments are going to continue be a problem in some places.
I’m sure the government wouldn’t mind getting rid of cash as well, but they’re useless at considering these problems (there doing the same stupid stuff with other issues)
I too disagree, and like yourself am almost 100% cashless.
My argument for keeping cash is I think people should always have a choice.
I disagree with some of the arguments for keeping cash, but also disagree with some of the arguments in favour of going cashless too.
Hopefully, as cash has been around in some form or other for thousands of years, it will be a very long time before we see it completely disappear.
I’m lucky on that front
My partner wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without some cash in her purse, and if I need to “borrow” some cash I just transfer it back into her account later.
Saying that, we very rarely go anywhere in the UK that requires or expects tips.
It’s not a case of fighting. When you can give me an internet connection reliable enough to make payments every day on every part of the UK. Then we can go cashless.
Until then, if you can’t pay for my fuel or food because the internet went down, then you need cash. That’s still the reality for a lot of people.
As far as population coverage goes for mobile data based wireless connection, all the networks combined probably cover 100%. Even if they don’t, the reliability of them is probably equal to the reliability of being able to get cash out in a remote area where the economics don’t make sense with like 200 people living there.
We can’t fund dead areas just out of pity, there has to be some economical reason for a bank to supply that service. Maybe the communities could adopt something like a homeowners association and use it to rent a cash machine from an independent operator or bank?
Alternatively Which? with all their virtue signalling can cough up the money, since there happy to complain but nowt else.
Also to mention, card payments can be taken offline these days and processed later. So again, the argument doesn’t really hold water.
Keep cash on you that you got from??? I would sooner order online and get it delivered than make a 10 mile trip to somewhere once a month to withdraw a couple of hundred pounds
I also stand by the statement that our connectivity is fine in the United Kingdom.
Sweden is at 9/10 people having not used cash within a year (this was before COVID hit) and their central bank has had to compel branches to handle cash. I refuse to believe a country with far greater environmental and economic challenges (lesser population density and a colder environment) to connectivity, is somehow able to do it while we can’t.
Considering how rare that is I can’t accept that as a reason to not go cashless. When this does happen most people don’t have cash anyway so it doesn’t make any difference. Most people expect to be able to use their card at anytime so they don’t keep cash just in case.
The bank two weeks ago when you drove an hour to the nearest ATM to get the cash you need for the next couple weeks when you were getting your shopping because there is no grocery delivery as an option where you live.
We have connectivity issues mainly because we’ve been so slow at upgrading our infrastructure. We’ve been going at it for years and where still years off being anywhere near reliable and full coveraged enough.
Keep in mind I’m not saying we shouldn’t go cashless, I’m saying we’re not ready. People often only go off their own experience and have never had to deal with connectivity issues or being unable to pay by card. I’ve only recently had less of an issue with that, but it was only a year or so ago that if experience that exactly problem every now and then where I used to live.
Plenty of places have connectivity or reliability issues and it doesn’t take much to all of a sudden be unable to take card payments.
We need more widespread coverage for internet and wireless imo. We’re not that far off, but I wouldn’t get rid of cash yet until that’s 100% foolproof
This is true but there is major work going on in this area at the moment and it is a focus of the government so we might finally be getting this right. Two thirds of the U.K. are expected to have access to a gigabit-class broadband connection by the end of the year, partly due to new rollouts of FTTP and partly due to a set of upgrades that Virgin Media are currently rolling out to their existing infrastructure.
BT has a stake in the OneWeb satellite internet service and that is planned to help the hardest to reach places.
Simultaneously, the rollout of 5G continues at pace and the Shared Rural Network of 4G coverage now covers nearly all of the country with a reliable (but quite slow in some cases) 4G network.
Various other technologies, like microwave-link wireless to connect remote areas, are also being trialled.
It won’t be too long until the whole country does have continuous high speed internet, and you don’t even need a connection that is hugely fast to process card payments. It is actually possible to process a card payment via a dial-up connection.
Plus, as others have pointed out, if the worst happens and the whole thing goes down, it is possible to process card payments manually, via various means.
There is also the problem with retailers not having the means or not knowing how to process card transactions if their POS is down.
Perfect example last week, I went to the cafe at work, problem with the tills, cash only.
(Luckily, they have 2 ATM’s so I still got my coffee and bacon sarnie )
I do not exactly think my town is that relevant and we have this? As well as a few ATMs although most charge £1,50 now
We are speeding this up immensely right now though. The Super Dedication that extends to people investing in infrastructure is an outstanding piece of policy.
BT have said that they’ll be rolling out majorly before this deduction ends as to even out the tax increase they’re expecting.
Our infrastructure will be 90% there by the end of 2022 and I firmly believe by the end of this Parliament there will be no excuse at all for cash to exist even in small numbers.
But as I mentioned, cards can be processed offline for later presentation or details saved for batch processing.
This is going to be contingency for when things go down anyways, so we might as well start now and use it to speed ahead of the rest of the world.
It’s genuinely a cracking piece of policy. If we can shift this country to working on a productivity basis where the majority of non-office/premises req work is done at home we will shift the productivity problem off the nearest pier.
Lots of benefits to this, from medical to competition. It’s something I admire the government for in this instance.
One day hopefully gigabit will be the minimum speed.
This will be standard practice contingency. The devices to do so are actually provided by Barclays etc already when you get a card machine. Downside is it won’t work on non-embossed cards, but we could just change this to fields on the sheet that we write down instead of imprinting.
I believe the policy is already to write the numbers in to the correct part of the slip in the event of a non-embossed card.
Merchants don’t like this as they think the marks from an embossed card are better “proof” of the transaction, but liability-wise they are treated the same.
It will almost never happen. They’ll definitely enable any cross connectivity though.
It’s the same reason you can’t untie open reach from BT, there’s just so much going on it simple isn’t possible. Like the big banks and their mainframes.
When we get there I’m 100% on board with ditching cash. As I said I barley use any, we just have to keep in mind they right now, today, cashless and internet isn’t technically ubiquitous in the UK to say it’s 100% reliable enough
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