Contactless is as well and good but here’s why we must NEVER give up cash
IF Harry Enfield brings back his Loadsamoney character again he’ll have to ditch his battered wads of tenners and just waggle his iPhone finance apps in your face.
No-one uses cash any more, you plum!
Counting out your readies at the till.
What is this, Open All Hours?
It’s all about “contactless” payments now, innit?!
Just tap your phone with Apple Pay, Google Pay and all those other apps with stupid names like Zelle and Venmo.
Even the beggars and the buskers are at it — “Tap here to give £5! No eye contact necessary!”
Cash is dead.
Long live the cashless society.
Only, it’s not dead.
Not at all.
Kebab and a cab
Yesterday we learnt that payment in physical form has increased for the first time in a decade with cash transactions up by seven per cent last year — compared to 2021 – to 6.4billion, according UK Finance.
The reason for this is being put down to us all wanting to budget a bit better in this crushing cost-of-living crisis.
As Adrian Buckle, the researcher who discovered the trend, says: “We do see that some people find it much easier to manage a limited budget if they have cash in front of them, something tangible that they can hold.”
Of course. If you can actually see what money you have, you will know what you don’t have when you’ve spent it.
Take a typical night out.
In the big brown paper tenner days, your night used to last until you only had enough cash left for a kebab and a cab.
Now it’s a hangover from hell as you reach for your phone the morning after and tot up all the lumpy transactions you’d forgotten you’d made while you were getting slowly pickled.
Humans love cash.
The feel of it between our fingers, that comforting sense technology cannot mess with our day.
I’ve even kept a Jersey £1 note in my wallet for about a decade so I’ve always got a note nestling in that big leather mouth.
My parents like cash too because, like many people in their 80s, they don’t have mobile phones and they just don’t trust all this contactless malarkey.
Age UK research showed that in 2020 — before the pandemic — around 2.4million over-65s relied on cash “to a great extent in their day-to-day life” — that’s a fifth of the older population.
More than half of those over 75 — often on small pensions paid in cash — said it was their preferred way of paying.
Lots of small businesses also like cash because it means they don’t have to pay fees to the debit and credit card companies, which can range from 0.9 per cent to a whopping six per cent.
American Express — which charges some of the highest fees — knows this and even admits on its website under small business advice: “In all fairness, there are some advantages to accepting cash. It allows you to keep your prices low because you don’t have to account for credit card-processing fees.”
Some businesses will even offer a small discount if you pay in cash.
The Americans in particular are mad for this idea, with even larger businesses offering such a deal.
And then there is the car boot sale, the local market, the charity tin, the window cleaner, the odd job man . . . to name just a few more who like cash (oh, and no, drug dealers are apparently using chip-and-PIN now).
Of course, while we’re all still using cash, it is vital that we can actually access it.
A staggering 5,600 bank and building society branches have closed since 2015.
ATMs are useful but even they are on the slide, with 16,000 free-to-use cash machines having disappeared in the last five years.
In their place the dreaded £1.50-per-withdrawal digital highwaymen.
So the Treasury’s announcement last month forcing banks to ensure they have a free-to-use cash machine or a branch within three miles of customers is welcome but must be properly policed.
Overpaid City types still insist a cashless society is coming and that, by 2032, only seven per cent of all payments will be in cash.
Debit cards overtook cash as the main payment method in in 2017 and the gap has been growing until the recent cash payments upturn.
Cash is still more popular than credit cards, which of course, many people on lower incomes cannot access.
But I remain hopeful that talk of a cashless society will be looked at like those flying cars and robot butlers you’d see on Tomorrow’s World that would apparently be taking over in the year, ahem, 2000.
Cold sweat
Just a fantasy peddled by overexcited “finance” people who, er, just want to make some cash out of us.
And at its worst a dystopian nightmare where every transaction you ever make is logged and scrutinised and could be held against you, limiting your freedom.
Look up Canada’s freezing of the bank accounts of anti-vax protesters last year if you want to come out in a cold sweat.
You don’t have to use actual money to balance the books, or to save your local shop a few quid — although that would be noble of you.
You might just prefer how it feels.
How it forces you to look a shopkeeper in the eye as you both smile and you work out what change you’re due.
A small moment of contact in a world where contactless is king.
No, for as long as we remain human beings with mouths to talk, and fingers to fold, I think we’ll still be using cash.
I’ll put a crisp tenner on it.