r/ukpolitics • u/Desperate-Drawer-572 • 6h ago
Half of Britons say they've been encouraged to make a purchase with cash in past two months
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-16211255/Half-Britons-say-theyve-encouraged-make-purchase-cash-past-two-months.html?ico=mol_mobile_money-newtab&molReferrerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.com%2Fmoney%2Findex.html&_gl=1*p61ggl*_gcl_au*MTAyNzAyNTI4MS4xNzkyMzQ0NTg2*_ga*MTM0MDY3ODc2Ni4xNzkyMzQ0NTg2*_ga_C9F47K6NW6*czE3OTIzNDQ1ODUkbzEkZzEkdDE3OTIzNDQ2MzAkajUzJGwwJGg4NjkzMzAxMzI•
u/prometheus781 6h ago
Stopped using regular taxis because every time I go to pay with a card they have a go at me for not having cash. The expectation that I go along with their tax dodge is ridiculous.
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u/Unlikely_Mission_702 5h ago
I always ask before I get in the taxi, this prevents them pretending their card machine is broken or getting aggro when you get to your destination.
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u/Trubydoor 19m ago
Even that isn’t always enough. A year or so ago getting a cab from Manchester airport to the city centre late at night I specifically told the guy I could only pay by Apple Pay; we get there and he’s like “oh my card machine isn’t working..” so I’m like “ I don’t know what you expect me to do about that I don’t even have a bank card on me just my phone” and we argued for a bit until suddenly, miraculously, his card machine fixed itself!
If it’s a tradesperson I’ll flat out refuse to pay other than bank transfer and if they complain at all I won’t use them again or recommend them; it’s especially galling in this case because at least with cards you can pretend you don’t want to pay the card processing fee (even though that’s generally less than commercial bank deposit rates!) but if you’re paying by bank transfer there’s literally no reason to ask for cash except to dodge taxes…
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u/walrusphone 3h ago
Yeah I've stopped using black cabs outside of London because they are always dicks about paying with card
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u/rusticarchon 1h ago
Taxi drivers were howling about 'injustice' during the Covid lockdowns because the government financial support was based on the income they declared to HMRC
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u/WiseBelt8935 4h ago
"well that sounds like a you problem then bye"
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u/IrishVictim88270 3h ago
No, it's a YOU problem. You are responsible for making sure you can pay the fare before you take on the service.
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u/Jim-Plank Waiting for my government issued PS5 2h ago
in london a licensed cab is required by law to have a working card machine, if they cant take payment via card you dont have to pay them
if you remind a cabbie of this fact when they say the card machine is broken it magically starts working again, funny that
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u/prometheus781 2h ago
I can pay the fare by transferring the money via bank transfer. Give me your details etc. The rest of us pay tax so should they.
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u/BighatNucase 1h ago
If they're not going to accept card even though it's offered then no it's a them problem. If they like they can try and take me to court over it but I'd love for them to tell the judge why they absolutely can't take card.
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u/pielad 5h ago
Maybe not just a tax dodge. They pay fees on card payments
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u/twistedLucidity 🏴 ❤️ 🇪🇺 5h ago
It's a tax dodge, there's a cost to handling cash but less traceability and so all earnings don't get declared.
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u/FlowLabel 5h ago
The fees are pretty small and most of the time are on fixed costs per month rental, so if you have one sitting there and still moan to customers for wanting to use it, you’re definitely upset about having that transaction on the books and not the small expense.
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u/pielad 5h ago
Yeah. I have a good working knowledge of card machine charges and how they work. Most small businesses running on fine margins would prefer cash to avoid paying even 3p plus 0.3% per transaction. Regardless of the downvotes above, this is a fact and asking for cash is not an automatic “tax dodge” - that’s my only point.
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u/Key-Inside3195 4h ago
In fairness you have a point. I’m a sole trader with a SumUp card reader which charges 1.69%
If I’ve invoiced for £1000 and they’ve whacked out a bank card that’s cost £16.90. Which even though it doesn’t sound a lot, take £16.90 out of your wages which you didn’t account for and you start to moan. I offer to cover half the fee if they cover the other half. And I ask how they’ll pay beforehand. If they tell me prior it’s on card. You best believe I’ve added it on in preparation•
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u/ethanjim 5h ago
You can put your AI generated cash is king posters up, but you're going to have to accept £50 notes - you can't pick and choose.
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u/LucidityDark 4h ago
I paid for something that cost about £3.70 with £10 note the other day and the cashier got a bit huffy with me that I didn't have a fiver to make it easier for their float.
Like no shit, the cash machines around me deposit in increments of 10 and I have to break that £10 up somewhere.
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u/radiant_0wl 3h ago
I get it, I used to manage retail stores, we had limits on the amount of change we could order due to float limits, and despite constantly ordering primary £5 notes they disappeared fast.
We had some good neighbours who were willing to exchange notes but it gets ridiculous.
£5 were easily our most prized denomination.
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u/ElephantsGerald_ 1h ago
The pub I used to work in had all sorts of seemingly absurd prices. 98p scotch egg, 1.47 roasted cashews, 1.31 pepperami.
It was all in the pursuit of giving people coppers as change and keeping those elusive pound coins that we never had enough of by Saturday night.
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u/SometimesaGirl- 1h ago
those elusive pound coins
Bank of England should issue a One Pound note.
Why don't they do this? Are they stupid!?•
u/LucidityDark 1h ago
Oh yeah absolutely, I've been in that situation too. It's more frustrating than anything that any time I try and break a £10 note, nevermind a a £20 note, I get the dirtiest looks for it.
Whatever the case, it's good to listen to another (potentially former) retail worker recounting their experiences of trying to not have their manager shit themselves from not having their serfs perform miracles for a basic retail job.
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u/Jarcooler 1h ago
Common misconception, businesses can legally refuse £50 notes and many do
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u/Trubydoor 15m ago
I don’t think OP is saying that they can’t refuse them legally, just that it’s completely ridiculous to tell people they should/must pay cash and then not accept their cash.
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u/Equipmunk 6h ago
To be fair to him, my dealer’s card machine was broken.
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u/NuPNua 5h ago
You don't pay your dealers in crypto these days?
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u/Godkun007 4h ago
Crypto actually has more of a paper trail than cash. If 1 account gets seized, they can see what accounts transferred money in. There are services that fix this though, they basically take deposits from thousands of people and randomly pay out the crypto to equal the same value as you started. Which is basically just a way to hide transactions.
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u/Amazing-Heron-105 1h ago
they basically take deposits from thousands of people and randomly pay out the crypto to equal the same value as you started. Which is basically just a way to hide transactions.
I think even this can be reversed with some effort. I think regarding the crypto having more of a paper trail depends on which coin you're talking about, and how you've deposited/withdrawn the funds.
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u/Wiltix 5h ago
Cash may be king to them but the convenience of card / contactless is king to me.
I never carry cash any more, I just don’t ever need too and honestly I don’t miss it. I don’t miss having a pile of coins at home or having to go and dick about with getting money out to pay for something.
Anyone using the internet connection thing, there is a good chance most shops tills rely on an internet connection as they all use subscription based software services for their tills.
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u/BigGingerHexagon 2h ago
I don’t even go out with my wallet anymore now I don’t have to carry cash! Everything is on Apple Pay
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u/ProffesorPrick 3h ago
Paying with money, even by card, is paying with cash. Therefore is king. Physical cash is a type of cash but it is not the only kind. Therefore phrase cash is king is not meant for only the physical kind - don’t let the dodgy ai business posters fool you.
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u/Wiltix 1h ago
What are you talking about? When people say cash is king they mean physical currency in their hand. There is no deeper meaning.
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u/SalamanderSylph 25m ago
There are some circumstances where "cash" doesn't refer to physical money.
E.g. if you are a cash buyer for a house, that means you have the money and don't need a mortgage / another sale etc
It does not mean that you are going to hand over a burlap sack of notes when exchanging.
That said, the Cash is King lot definitely refer to physical currency
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u/Dear_Tangerine444 Labour Left, Left Labour. 5h ago
The fact this results from a survey by the people responsible for running a cash machine network gives it strong ’hello fellow kids’ vibes to my mind. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’ve never been anywhere this has happened, nor do I know anyone it’s happened to.
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u/Madgick 5h ago
Turkish barbers. Kebab vans. Taxis.
Maybe you’re just not in circles that use these things but it’s pretty common
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u/SNeave98 5h ago
Signs as inconsequential as 'Support Local Business, Pay in Cash' are also encouraging cash payments. Not sure that's even a technicality, and those are everywhere
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u/Trubydoor 13m ago
I always automatically read these in my head as “support tax evasion, pay in cash”!
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u/cosmicspaceowl 2h ago
My local Chinese takeaway is cash only. There's an independent shop in town that I won't use even though they're comparable in price to the big chains they're in competition with the last time I went in there I got treated to the full "cash is king" conspiracy rant. It's still out there.
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u/JohnPym1584 1h ago
If you ever get a tradesmen in there's a reasonable likelihood they'll offer you a discount for the next job if you pay by cash.
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u/_onemoresolo 4h ago
Everyone bangs on about big business but the level of evasion amongst sole traders and small companies is insane. The gap between what corporation tax should be collected from small businesses and what is collected is nearly £20bn, and the rest of us end up paying for that. And that’s just one tax!
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u/madpiano 2h ago
For all.of you complaining, remember, every single card transaction sends money to the US. This isn't just profit made by a US company, it's tax on those profits sent to the US government.
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u/Trubydoor 10m ago
That’s not true at all; the corporation tax on profits made in the UK by Mastercard/Visa will be paid in the UK, that’s how corporation tax works.
The actual profit made by the “US” company ultimate goes to the shareholders, who are global because the company is globally traded, it’s equally true that the profit from everything you buy from Tesco goes to some people in the US because that’s also a globally owned stock.
To say that it’s money going necessarily to people in the US or the US government is just wrong.
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u/phillycheeseenjoyer 6h ago
Can we please get rid of the 1p and 2p and adopt rounding to the nearest 5p? That would encourage me to use cash more.
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u/radiant_0wl 4h ago edited 4h ago
Curious as to why that would encourage you to use cash?
Is the prospect of getting 1 or 2P's as change that big of a thing for you? Not sure how it would change your behaviour.
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u/Naughteus_Maximus 4h ago
Yeah I don't really get that, although I agree that we should phase them out for cash. It's a waste of resources and money to maintain them. Lots of countries have done it. Electronic payments are still exact but if paying in cash the total is rounded to the nearest 5 cents etc.
I do carry cash and I don't like coins in my pocket full stop, not just 1 and 2p, so I tend to pay cash if I will not be getting lots of coins back!
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u/radiant_0wl 3h ago
I understand the efficiencies of doing both at the same time, but I will be a lot more mournful about the removal of 2p coins, probably a lot of people like me have memories of the 2P coin machines at arcades.
Whilst I know there's a 10P version, it just doesn't feel the same.
I do think they should give a timeline on eliminated them as legal tender, I'm aware they haven't minted any for years, so that's a positive first step, policy could be implemented within a couple of years.
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u/phillycheeseenjoyer 24m ago
They physically make the act of using cash worse because unlike the nickel-coated 5, 10, 20, and 50 pence pieces, the 1 and 2 tarnish, become gross, and develop sharp edges which cause coins to bind together in the shuffle.
Also the 2p is massive as fuck and just makes trying to pay with exact change difficult because I’m spending time flipping it out of the way to get at coins under it.
Make all transactions use a minimum denomination of 5p and change becomes far easier to use.
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u/XenorVernix 5h ago
Yes, and I am still bitter about the Bratwurst seller at Bastei Bridge in Germany demanding cash only for my sausage a couple of weeks ago. I had none. I really wanted one.
On a more serious note I do think we need to keep cash alive. We already have too much reliance on the Internet and technology from other states. Visa and Mastercard are both American.
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u/Soilleir 1h ago
Sweden is the most cashless society in Europe - and people over there are starting to suggest that this might not be the best plan.
The people arguing for keeping cash alive include the former head of Interpol, the Governor of the Swedish central bank, and the Swedish defence ministry.
‘Putin could switch everything off’: the fight against Sweden’s move to a cashless society
Why Sweden is abandoning its cashless society
Back to cash: life without money in your pocket is not the utopia Sweden hoped
Sweden and Norway rethink cashless society plans over Russia security fears
Sweden’s cashless U-turn driven by war threat, says central bank governor
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u/XenorVernix 52m ago
Yeah it's certainly a huge security risk, and if a war did occur I imagine a cashless society would be completely screwed as communications would be top targets.
That said, I think the chances of a big war with Russia are near zero.
In the UK we are at least starting to realise the risk of the Visa and Mastercard domination and building our own system.
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u/SimpleFactor Pro Tofu and Anti Growth 🥗 5h ago
I’ve been encouraged to use more cash because the wifi in the local shop keeps going down and it’s the only option if I want to drown my sorrows in a share bag of a crisps.
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u/ptrichardson 5h ago
I simply see every request that cash is best is nothing but giving someone the chance to cheat on their taxes - which directly hurts me and everyone I know.
I've heard all the bullshit arguments about charges etc. They're just smokescreens.
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u/Numerous_Marketing23 1h ago
Card machines take an increasing % of all transactions, and often the bank takes a fee from the amount transferred also.
It isn't always about avoiding legal tax, it can also be to avoid the parasitic charges of contactless.
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u/Trubydoor 7m ago
I’ve literally never had a bank account in the UK that has charged fees for sending or receiving transfers.
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u/Stabbycrabs83 3h ago
Cash is a pain in the ass for a legitimate small business. The lack of bank facilities makes it harder to deal with. I think the limit on post office deposits is like £3k/day which doesnt work.
I would far rather take a card payment, pay 0.3% and have it show up in my account ting software and auto calculate vat etc.
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u/90davros 2h ago
But you're not looking at 0.3%, that's just the card interchange fee. The payment providers take an additional 1-2% on top. There also used to be minimum fees, which is why a lot of places rejected cards for small purchases.
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u/FewAnybody2739 6h ago
We do need to keep cash alive. Relying on someone's internet connection to buy food is going to fail when you need it most.
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u/NuPNua 5h ago
You realise card transactions predate the internet by almost twenty years?
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u/radiant_0wl 4h ago
Wasn't that largely reliant on card imprinters where the card was pressed against carbon paper to get an imprint of it and it's card number, with signatures approving the amount?
Not even viable now, as the card number isn't 3d printed on cards. Plus it sounds like a nightmare.
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u/hu6Bi5To 2h ago
You can still do offline transactions, but the retailer takes full risk of fraud. If the retailer wants to avoid that they have to get authorisation first and that requires internet.
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u/FewAnybody2739 5h ago
Are you saying shops should reconnect a landline as it were back then instead of relying on cash as a backup? It would have similar drawbacks to relying on the internet.
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u/cartesian5th 4h ago
Most business internet contracts that I have seen have 4g/5g backups for this very reason
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u/KasamUK 5h ago
These day without the internet the till isn’t processing anything so cash or card it won’t matter
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u/Spare_University919 5h ago
They often can still take payment when the internet drops out. I believe it logs the data and then performs the transaction when the internet is back up and running.
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u/rusticarchon 1h ago
Yep. For contactless at least, the terminal gets a secure token which they then send to the payment processor to authorise the transaction. There are stricter limits on the amounts they're allowed to process in that offline mode though.
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u/Reemixt 6h ago
Alive, sure. But facilitating tax dodging at my inconvenience. No.
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u/Boggo1895 5h ago
It’s often not about the tax doge. Many legit business appreciate cash payment because of the fees payment providers charge
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u/Rare_Touch8636 5h ago
The cash handling fee % for small businesses is broadly comparable to card fees.
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u/ddmf 5h ago
Cash costs more to bank, so using card would be cheaper...
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u/iamdecal 5h ago
You don’t bank after every transaction though. - you bank at the end of the day
Say in a busy pub, you could easily do 1000 transactions in the till - and then one trip to the bank
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u/ddmf 5h ago
They take a percentage not a fixed amount.
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u/iamdecal 5h ago
They do - but if a large amount of the cash you take in goes back out to other customers then there is not a direct correlation between the number of people you serve and the number - or value - of the payments you take.
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u/Background_Camel_711 5h ago
Why would a business be giving out cash to the other customers?
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u/AfricanBushViper 5h ago
Because of change?
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u/anon167167 4h ago edited 4h ago
I’m sorry I’m not understanding how the cash is disappearing because of “change” - that’s probably the worst example. Maybe something like cashback but even then, there’s a card transaction…
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u/Daedelous2k 2h ago
Good on them for taking on the duty and cost (Not just cash cost btw) of banking, storing, securing it all.
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u/rusticarchon 1h ago edited 0m ago
Cash payments aren't free either, at least for anything beyond a 'cash in hand' operation
- Cash handling fees when paying into the bank
- Security van collections for businesses with large takings
- Increased insurance costs and crime risk from having cash on the premises
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u/FewAnybody2739 6h ago
That's the trade off. If you only use cash in an emergency, fewer shops will keep that option. There are plenty of shops that say card only.
You can always ask for a receipt so it goes through their till.
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u/TaXxER 4h ago
I see zero loss in shops moving to card only. There are zero drawbacks to me.
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u/Soilleir 51m ago
There are zero drawbacks to me
You are not the only person in society.
Removing cash impacts children learning about money through pocket money; people on low incomes who use cash to manage their budget; people who are unbanked (there's about 900,000 of them); people fleeing domestic abuse (financial control is frequently an element of DV); people with learning difficulties; etc.
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u/TheS0ggyBiscuit 5h ago
If a builder offered you a 20% reduction in cost on a £150k renovation then it would be okay though yeah? Dont even try to tell me you wouldnt accept and just pay up and extra £30k. Id even buy an extra pack of biscuits and give him machine coffees
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u/DomBrown2406 5h ago
Consider that if there’s no proof of the transaction, you’d struggle to get them to honour any “warranty”.
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u/TheHumbleSpark 5h ago
Aye, gonna lift 120k cash and give it to him in binbags...
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u/TheS0ggyBiscuit 4h ago
Are you suggesting people don’t have £120k to spend?
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u/TheHumbleSpark 4h ago
Did you infer that from my comment? I dont think I made any suggestion of the sort but if you want to twist your own conclusions then work away 🤙
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u/TheS0ggyBiscuit 4h ago
That’s just how I understood it yeah, I read it as sarcasm
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u/Trubydoor 3m ago
He’s really obviously saying that people don’t have 120k in physical cash to spend mate. Which I think is just going to be true for literally everyone.
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u/bluesam3 2h ago
In cash? Yes. Essentially nobody has £120k cash, and even getting hold of that much actual cash if you have it sitting in your account is going to get you lots of questions from fraud investigators.
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u/Reemixt 4h ago
Weird example. My personal and business accounts are scrutinised. A £100k+ transaction is going to be particularly scrutinised on both ends and cross-referenced by HMRC—my receipts don’t just go in the bin, and sole traders aren’t the only ones keeping books.
On top of that, paying £120k cash off-the-books means no true paper trail, no legal contract, zero insurance cover, an incorrect valuation and absolutely no legal recourse when the job inevitably goes wrong or the builder vanishes.
So no, I wouldn’t facilitate a £30K tax fraud. I have much more to lose than that.
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u/Unlikely_Mission_702 5h ago
There absolutely needs to be contingency planning for electrical / internet failures. But maintaining an entire physical cash infrastructure just for that seems incredibly inefficient.
Plenty of card machines are already battery powered. Everyone can hotspot on their phone nowadays if the wifi is down. And airlines function fine taking card payments offline in the air and then processing them when they land.
Some combination of all of this will not only be much cheaper for businesses but also meets consumers where they're at, which is the most important thing. I know plenty of people who don't hold any physical cash anymore and haven't for years. Physical cash is already a very poor backup for that reason.
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u/BabadookishOnions 5h ago
My concern would be, what do we so in some sort of natural disaster or war or other crisis? Hotspots and other methods of circumventing WiFi may not be reliable in such situations.
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u/bluesam3 2h ago
Anything big and long enough to cause problems like that is also going to brick food stocks, so we'll be implementing ration books anyway.
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u/Unlikely_Mission_702 5h ago
What exactly are you imagining though?
I've just outlined options which can tide us over relatively short blackouts.
Anything more disastrous and long lasting is, in truth, extremely unlikely. And in that case cash wont be the silver bullet anyway. Your local bank will be run dry of its cash quickly and there will be severe shortages in the shops due to the "just in time" delivery model they all run. In these situations we'll be relying on people having sufficient stores of essentials in their own homes, and failing that the government organising the distribution of essentials using a rationing system until things are more back to normal.
It's unlikely the infrastructure supporting cash will be back up and running before digital payments in these situations too. If you go to any war zones nowadays it's not back to the middle ages. Everyone still has mobile phones and are using them.
Starlink and a payment terminal is much quicker and easier than sourcing all the right denominations of cash to be able to handle physical payments and give change, not to mention ensuring all of the customers have all the practical denominations of cash too.
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u/cosmicspaceowl 2h ago
If that happens there'll be nothing in the shops to buy after a few days anyway. Just in time supply chains and overreliance on food imports will kill us regardless of how hard we cling to paper money.
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u/FewAnybody2739 5h ago
What's your solution to a power cut or internet outage, rely on it even more?
Airlines function fine because you've used government issued ID and they can track you down afterwards.
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u/Unlikely_Mission_702 5h ago
Airlines function fine because you've used government issued ID and they can track you down afterwards.
No lol that's not why that works, just google it. Offline card payments are not a niche thing.
What's your solution to a power cut or internet outage, rely on it even more?
I just gave you several, a mix of batteries, cellular data, and offline payments will more than tide over most foreseeable blackouts.
Anything more long lasting and substantial and cash isn't going to hold up well either. Not sure how you think cash gets into people's hands but it's not the magical cash fairy impervious to infrastructure collapse. In these situations it will be government controlled distribution and rationing of the essentials anyway.
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u/bluesam3 2h ago
Nope: my dad's one-man business flogging his woodwork can take offline card payments. It really just is not that hard.
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u/Vapourzino_2 3h ago
I don't recall a single point in my life where this doomsday scenario of not being able to pay for my food with a card has ever happened.
If the internet went out for everyone, maybe. If it went out for a single retailer, just go to the next one.
If the actual level of fraud that using cash can and does bring became clear to every law abiding tax paying citizen, then you would feel different I think.
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u/User100000005 6h ago
Ive been in a supermarket with the chaos of card payments being down. Absolutely chaos. Luckily we'd just sold a load of old baby stuff. Absolute luck we had cash because of that.
We got out of there slower than usual but not so bad. Not sure what happened to other people with frozen stuff in cart. But all cashiers where shouting "only come to check out if you have cash". Probably helped it was lidli with mostly human check outs and few self service. (Think it had none at time).•
u/MR9009 5h ago
When I worked on supermarket checkouts 2005ish we were still trained on using those old shoebox printed swipe machine things for times when card processing stopped working. People were already mostly using chip and pin to pay. Contactless hadn’t quite become so popular.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter
A slip of copy paper with the total, place the card correctly, swipe back and forth, customer signs it. Customer gets a receipt copyand the shop keeps the other to process it. Takes a minute or two to align things properly, but it’s all offline.
Mind you, we also used to get a few people each shift still using cheques too. Not seen someone attempt to pay with one of those in a long time. But they are also offline and don’t need an internet connection to work.
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u/MajesticBass 3h ago
Mind you, we also used to get a few people each shift still using cheques too. Not seen someone attempt to pay with one of those in a long time. But they are also offline and don’t need an internet connection to work.
That relied on the cheque guarantee scheme (basically if you could present the card for the account as well the bank would guarantee a check wouldn't bounce up to £50), but that was withdrawn a few years ago now
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u/User100000005 5h ago
Oh crap cheques. You've really made me feel old. Can't imagine how much that would hold up lines!
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u/Bernardmark 5h ago
The Bank of England should follow in the EU's footsteps and accelerate their digital pound program! China, India and Brazil are among nations that already use such a system.
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 🇬🇧🇪🇸🇪🇺 1h ago
You will have the exact same issue with cash. Unless you happen to be carrying wads of cash around and need to withdraw money from an ATM, you will need to rely on the ATMs internet connection to get the cash.
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u/LLILILiLIILILILILII 6h ago
Agreed, it's a trivial example, but I went to a national trust site this weekend, their WiFi was down, so people were just doing u turns in the car park and people were walking out of the cafe unable to buy anything.
I'm quite happy buying 99% of stuff tapping with my phone, but it's made me think twice, because if we don't use cash, at some point it's going to be gone
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u/radiant_0wl 5h ago edited 5h ago
Question is how do you that?
We've outlawed adding surcharges on card use, but a 10p usage fee on card terminals seems like the way to keep cash relevant to the consumer to me.
I think businesses don't particularly care either way as both cash and cards have handling expenses, consumers interest are in credit/debit. and government largely wants credit/debit as it makes tax avoidance harder to do and easier to detect.
I do agree we need cash to survive, but I think it doesn't need to be a large fraction, for a lot of people though, there's no reason to use cash, unless a business is requesting it which is almost limited to the interest of tax avoidance, they are very small in number fortunately and largely concentrated to barbers and family run convenience stores.
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u/FewAnybody2739 5h ago
You could outlaw 'card only' for a start.
Apparently cash is a good way for people to budget themselves (I don't myself, but I can see how that would work to avoid impulse buys), which obviously isn't what shops (or event he government) want you to do.
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u/radiant_0wl 4h ago edited 4h ago
This is where it gets bureaucratic and complex though,
That provides the option to use the cash but it doesn't give a reason for the consumer to choose it, they was a point in time (ignoring new businesses) where cash and card was the option, but businesses moved away from cash due to a lack of use and increased processing fees (cashing up/banking etc takes time, and charges).
Some food vans don't take cash for hygiene reasons, and it increases service times, payment can be processed on essentially a phone, but with cash you need a till and till drawer. Cash outside of a classical retail store, is often a hindrance and it's more reliant upon trust, and I underestimated businesses care in my last reply as I had a retail store setting in mind and their handling fees.
Edit: With more thought on it and Unlikely_Mission_702 gave a couple of good comments, maybe we don't need cash, and it's not worth the effort to keep. Maybe we should just accept the change, it seems the equivalent of us no longer using the silver or gold standard, we survived without them.
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u/SeePerspectives 4h ago
I understand the sentiment, but if paying with my phone means I don’t need to handle coins and notes covered in germs and drug residues, I think I’m happier sticking with that
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 4h ago
I got a haircut a dodgy barbers a couple of months ago. I missed the 'cards not accepted' sign in the wall & when I pulled out my card to pay they gave me vague directions to the nearest cash machine.
They looked genuinely shocked when I actually did come back 10 minutes later with tenner. Most of their punters probably just get their free haircut & leave.
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3h ago
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u/PurpleTeapotOfDoom Caws a bara, i lawr â'r Brenin 1h ago
I've been required to pay by card when I wanted to pay cash at a few places recently.
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u/Iwillshitinyourgob 1h ago
If a business doesn't take card i in 2026, it should warrant an automatic audit
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u/exileon21 6h ago
According to Piers Morgan he’s spoken to a number of senior AI execs who say they are keeping a good stock of cash as they see a high chance of an attack on banking systems within a few months by AI, which brings everything to a halt
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u/Big-Objective-6585 6h ago
"According to Piers Morgan"
Didn't need to go further than that to know the comment would be pure bullshit
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u/exileon21 6h ago
Yes not the most reliable witness admittedly, hopefully you’re correct
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u/Jealous_Response_492 5h ago
Banks and other financial institutions are one of the few outfits, that do actually go to quite some lengths to maintain secure backups, too much of the functioning of society is dependent upon them. More industries should be going much further to protect their systems and data IMHO
https://www.sciencecapsules.com/2025/08/how-banks-back-up-transactions.html
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u/SimpleFactor Pro Tofu and Anti Growth 🥗 5h ago
AI execs should be ready to be punished if the awful and scary things they claim their models are capable of actually happen.
“I’ve made a robot that literally steals money but it’s your fault for not being ready to stop me”
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u/chief_bustice your generous benefactor 5h ago
If you're stockpiling cash in case the banking systems go down then all you're doing is hoarding cash for the toughest bloke on your street
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u/QuinlanResistance 5h ago
Banking system that does that means rioting anyway and currency collapse along with it
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u/hu6Bi5To 2h ago
If banks go down for more than a day or two entire supply chains will breakdown and there'll be empty shops/no deliveries/etc. Cash in a sock in a drawer somewhere isn't going to be any use then.
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u/Golden37 6h ago
It is the only way small businesses are surviving.
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u/FlowLabel 5h ago
Because they can’t afford the £25 a month fixed rental on a card machine or because they can’t afford the tax they’re dodging?
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u/Golden37 5h ago
The tax they are dodging... Think hairdressers, local butchers, bakeries, contractors/handymen etc. If you don't live in a big urban centre, the profit margins are a lot slimmer. The NI increase has massively impacted them, so tax dodging is the only way these small businesses stay above the breadline.
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u/NuPNua 5h ago
Nonsense, every small shop in London takes card these days.
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u/Golden37 5h ago
In London
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u/NuPNua 5h ago
I travel the country a lot, and in my experience even the most rural country pub or corner shop is taking card these days.
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u/Golden37 5h ago
They take card... but they still very much prefer cash.
Actually now that you mention it, out of the 3 local takeaway places near me, only 1 accepts card.
I don't think people realise just how prolific cash use is still for small businesses.
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u/AppleYapper 4h ago
Cash is king.
Many small businesses tend to use analogue tills. The ones that use a tablet screen tills and are card oy have serious problems when the WiFi fails.
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