Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
I made 3 cash transactions yesterday (cleaner who is old fashioned and 2 small bits of shopping).
Today I'll make 1 cash transactions because there is little point using a card for a £1.25 bottle of pop.
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Because there will always be a proportion of the population that require cash as they are unable to deal with more modern ways of budgeting.
My wife had a very severe stroke 5 years ago and has left her with tremendous mental issues, she cannot understand the difference between up or down, left or right, forwards or backwards. She cannot unlock doors, she cannot leave the house alone.
But she does have a level of financial independence as each month we take some money out of her bank and over the month she manages her spend as she can touch, feel and see her money.
My wife could not deal with a card (if nothing else her eye sight is so poor she cannot see the numbers on the keypads), take away cash and you take away about the only thing in her life that she has any level of independence over.
My wife may be a very extreme case, but there are probably far more people at that end of the spectrum than you would imagine.
Absolutely - I know a few people who like to use cash for budgeting because paying by card doesn't feel like spending money.
Obviously, people who don't need to worry about having month left at the end of the money can merrily tap away.
I struggle with the veracity of such anecdotes. Do they pay their monthly bills by cash, at a post office? Their TV licence? Their mortgage? Their rent? How many people as a proportion of the UK population operate only in cash – and how exactly do they string a life together?
Bills go out the day after payday, then they withdraw whatever's left in cash and budget accordingly.
You can call me a liar if you want.
I'm not calling you a liar, simply challenging the idea that they wouldn't learn to budget were cash unavailable. People adapt. Seatbelt paradox.
I am curious why you are strident on this issue, most of those saying they should be able to continue to pay cash aren't telling you that you must use cash. They are just saying they want to retain the right to use cash instead of card/phone whatever.
So if no one is saying you have to be made to use cash...why are you so fervent on stopping those that want the option to continue having the option to use cash?
It's going to become a big policy question, probably fairly soon. Cash is dying. A large and growing proportion of the population never or rarely use it. It's like analogue telly – getting the holdouts to switch to digital was vexatious for a while, but it happened. Retaining cash when a tiny proportion of the population use it will be akin to retaining analogue telly.
The number who never use cash isn't even 50% of people. The cashless are still the minority cash users are not a tiny proportion.
The "never or rarely" number was 23 million people last year, with only 15% of all transactions in cash. That's expected to fall to 6% by 2032. At what stage do we have a national debate about abolishing it?
I would be "rarely". That doesn't mean I think abolishing cash is acceptable.
It wasnt rarely that is Anabob misrepresenting "During 2021 there were 23.1 million consumers who used cash only once a month or not at all" is the quote... once or not at all. Rarely is not once
I'm not misrepresenting. If you only use cash once a month then it's perfectly fair to describe that as "rarely".
(And why do you always sound so angry in your posts?)
I sound angry because there are fuckwits like you always on every subject going yes I don't need that and all those poor people they don't need it either they can learn to cope. Sometimes from the left sometimes from the right. I particularly loved the way you batted aside the reference to those that have dyscalculia....presumably not so right on as dyslexia where you would be shrieking like a banshee if someone tried to hold them to account for their spelling and saying they they should just use a spellchecker and learn to cope
So now you resort to personal insults.
A classic sign that you have lost the argument.
Because when its pointed out to you a leftie who is meant to care about the poor and disadvantaged and disabled your cashless utopia will cause them issues your response is....they will have to learn to deal....wow just wow. I as a fairly hard right person have more compassion for them than you so yes you are a fuckwit. You are virtue signalling idiot who cares more about seeming like they are hip and the future than the effect on the people you claim to care for, you remember them the down trodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the poor, the neurodivergent.....your opinion is fuck them they will learn to deal. I can't lose an argument with you because you have no valid point to even argue about you are just a "Aren't I cool I embraced the future" idiot.
I'm struggling to believe you wrote that, and that @Andy_JS 'liked' it.
What vitriolic nonsense.
Again, I haven't said that we should ban cash, simply that if it gets to a position where very few transactions are made in cash we will have to have a national policy debate about it.
That is the reality.
In 20 years, do you still expect people to be counting out cash and coins at Tescos? Rich, or poor? If so, how prevalent do you think that behaviour is likely to be?
Yes I do and frankly it will be more prevalent than your claims meanwhile you keep campaigning to hurt the worst off in society. I love it when you do that it just ensures some government with your views will never be elected. Anyway won't bother with this subject again as you have lost the argument and you are just doing a trump like defence of your position
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Well, we already know that governments around the world want to phase out cash because they can't control its use.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
I made 3 cash transactions yesterday (cleaner who is old fashioned and 2 small bits of shopping).
Today I'll make 1 cash transactions because there is little point using a card for a £1.25 bottle of pop.
Why not? To do otherwise will generate (probably) 75p of change which will just lie around.
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Because there will always be a proportion of the population that require cash as they are unable to deal with more modern ways of budgeting.
My wife had a very severe stroke 5 years ago and has left her with tremendous mental issues, she cannot understand the difference between up or down, left or right, forwards or backwards. She cannot unlock doors, she cannot leave the house alone.
But she does have a level of financial independence as each month we take some money out of her bank and over the month she manages her spend as she can touch, feel and see her money.
My wife could not deal with a card (if nothing else her eye sight is so poor she cannot see the numbers on the keypads), take away cash and you take away about the only thing in her life that she has any level of independence over.
My wife may be a very extreme case, but there are probably far more people at that end of the spectrum than you would imagine.
Absolutely - I know a few people who like to use cash for budgeting because paying by card doesn't feel like spending money.
Obviously, people who don't need to worry about having month left at the end of the money can merrily tap away.
I struggle with the veracity of such anecdotes. Do they pay their monthly bills by cash, at a post office? Their TV licence? Their mortgage? Their rent? How many people as a proportion of the UK population operate only in cash – and how exactly do they string a life together?
Bills go out the day after payday, then they withdraw whatever's left in cash and budget accordingly.
You can call me a liar if you want.
I'm not calling you a liar, simply challenging the idea that they wouldn't learn to budget were cash unavailable. People adapt. Seatbelt paradox.
I am curious why you are strident on this issue, most of those saying they should be able to continue to pay cash aren't telling you that you must use cash. They are just saying they want to retain the right to use cash instead of card/phone whatever.
So if no one is saying you have to be made to use cash...why are you so fervent on stopping those that want the option to continue having the option to use cash?
It's going to become a big policy question, probably fairly soon. Cash is dying. A large and growing proportion of the population never or rarely use it. It's like analogue telly – getting the holdouts to switch to digital was vexatious for a while, but it happened. Retaining cash when a tiny proportion of the population use it will be akin to retaining analogue telly.
The number who never use cash isn't even 50% of people. The cashless are still the minority cash users are not a tiny proportion.
The "never or rarely" number was 23 million people last year, with only 15% of all transactions in cash. That's expected to fall to 6% by 2032. At what stage do we have a national debate about abolishing it?
I would be "rarely". That doesn't mean I think abolishing cash is acceptable.
It wasnt rarely that is Anabob misrepresenting "During 2021 there were 23.1 million consumers who used cash only once a month or not at all" is the quote... once or not at all. Rarely is not once
I'm not misrepresenting. If you only use cash once a month then it's perfectly fair to describe that as "rarely".
(And why do you always sound so angry in your posts?)
I sound angry because there are fuckwits like you always on every subject going yes I don't need that and all those poor people they don't need it either they can learn to cope. Sometimes from the left sometimes from the right. I particularly loved the way you batted aside the reference to those that have dyscalculia....presumably not so right on as dyslexia where you would be shrieking like a banshee if someone tried to hold them to account for their spelling and saying they they should just use a spellchecker and learn to cope
So now you resort to personal insults.
A classic sign that you have lost the argument.
Because when its pointed out to you a leftie who is meant to care about the poor and disadvantaged and disabled your cashless utopia will cause them issues your response is....they will have to learn to deal....wow just wow. I as a fairly hard right person have more compassion for them than you so yes you are a fuckwit. You are virtue signalling idiot who cares more about seeming like they are hip and the future than the effect on the people you claim to care for, you remember them the down trodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the poor, the neurodivergent.....your opinion is fuck them they will learn to deal. I can't lose an argument with you because you have no valid point to even argue about you are just a "Aren't I cool I embraced the future" idiot.
I'm struggling to believe you wrote that, and that @Andy_JS 'liked' it.
What vitriolic nonsense.
Again, I haven't said that we should ban cash, simply that if it gets to a position where very few transactions are made in cash we will have to have a national policy debate about it.
That is the reality.
In 20 years, do you still expect people to be counting out cash and coins at Tescos? Rich, or poor? If so, how prevalent do you think that behaviour is likely to be?
They'll de dropping a handful into a mini-drawer, as happens now at self-service in some places.
(The only way to derail it is to drop so much in that the machine overflows, which gets embarrassing as the 55 year old clerk tries to repair the machine you just broke.)
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Because there will always be a proportion of the population that require cash as they are unable to deal with more modern ways of budgeting.
My wife had a very severe stroke 5 years ago and has left her with tremendous mental issues, she cannot understand the difference between up or down, left or right, forwards or backwards. She cannot unlock doors, she cannot leave the house alone.
But she does have a level of financial independence as each month we take some money out of her bank and over the month she manages her spend as she can touch, feel and see her money.
My wife could not deal with a card (if nothing else her eye sight is so poor she cannot see the numbers on the keypads), take away cash and you take away about the only thing in her life that she has any level of independence over.
My wife may be a very extreme case, but there are probably far more people at that end of the spectrum than you would imagine.
Absolutely - I know a few people who like to use cash for budgeting because paying by card doesn't feel like spending money.
Obviously, people who don't need to worry about having month left at the end of the money can merrily tap away.
I struggle with the veracity of such anecdotes. Do they pay their monthly bills by cash, at a post office? Their TV licence? Their mortgage? Their rent? How many people as a proportion of the UK population operate only in cash – and how exactly do they string a life together?
Bills go out the day after payday, then they withdraw whatever's left in cash and budget accordingly.
You can call me a liar if you want.
I'm not calling you a liar, simply challenging the idea that they wouldn't learn to budget were cash unavailable. People adapt. Seatbelt paradox.
I am curious why you are strident on this issue, most of those saying they should be able to continue to pay cash aren't telling you that you must use cash. They are just saying they want to retain the right to use cash instead of card/phone whatever.
So if no one is saying you have to be made to use cash...why are you so fervent on stopping those that want the option to continue having the option to use cash?
It's going to become a big policy question, probably fairly soon. Cash is dying. A large and growing proportion of the population never or rarely use it. It's like analogue telly – getting the holdouts to switch to digital was vexatious for a while, but it happened. Retaining cash when a tiny proportion of the population use it will be akin to retaining analogue telly.
The number who never use cash isn't even 50% of people. The cashless are still the minority cash users are not a tiny proportion.
The "never or rarely" number was 23 million people last year, with only 15% of all transactions in cash. That's expected to fall to 6% by 2032. At what stage do we have a national debate about abolishing it?
I would be "rarely". That doesn't mean I think abolishing cash is acceptable.
It wasnt rarely that is Anabob misrepresenting "During 2021 there were 23.1 million consumers who used cash only once a month or not at all" is the quote... once or not at all. Rarely is not once
I'm not misrepresenting. If you only use cash once a month then it's perfectly fair to describe that as "rarely".
(And why do you always sound so angry in your posts?)
I sound angry because there are fuckwits like you always on every subject going yes I don't need that and all those poor people they don't need it either they can learn to cope. Sometimes from the left sometimes from the right. I particularly loved the way you batted aside the reference to those that have dyscalculia....presumably not so right on as dyslexia where you would be shrieking like a banshee if someone tried to hold them to account for their spelling and saying they they should just use a spellchecker and learn to cope
So now you resort to personal insults.
A classic sign that you have lost the argument.
Because when its pointed out to you a leftie who is meant to care about the poor and disadvantaged and disabled your cashless utopia will cause them issues your response is....they will have to learn to deal....wow just wow. I as a fairly hard right person have more compassion for them than you so yes you are a fuckwit. You are virtue signalling idiot who cares more about seeming like they are hip and the future than the effect on the people you claim to care for, you remember them the down trodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the poor, the neurodivergent.....your opinion is fuck them they will learn to deal. I can't lose an argument with you because you have no valid point to even argue about you are just a "Aren't I cool I embraced the future" idiot.
I'm struggling to believe you wrote that, and that @Andy_JS 'liked' it.
What vitriolic nonsense.
Again, I haven't said that we should ban cash, simply that if it gets to a position where very few transactions are made in cash we will have to have a national policy debate about it.
That is the reality.
In 20 years, do you still expect people to be counting out cash and coins at Tescos? Rich, or poor? If so, how prevalent do you think that behaviour is likely to be?
Yes I do and frankly it will be more prevalent than your claims meanwhile you keep campaigning to hurt the worst off in society. I love it when you do that it just ensures some government with your views will never be elected. Anyway won't bother with this subject again as you have lost the argument and you are just doing a trump like defence of your position
Arguing with a blob is possibly even more of a waste of time than going to an ATM.
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Because there will always be a proportion of the population that require cash as they are unable to deal with more modern ways of budgeting.
My wife had a very severe stroke 5 years ago and has left her with tremendous mental issues, she cannot understand the difference between up or down, left or right, forwards or backwards. She cannot unlock doors, she cannot leave the house alone.
But she does have a level of financial independence as each month we take some money out of her bank and over the month she manages her spend as she can touch, feel and see her money.
My wife could not deal with a card (if nothing else her eye sight is so poor she cannot see the numbers on the keypads), take away cash and you take away about the only thing in her life that she has any level of independence over.
My wife may be a very extreme case, but there are probably far more people at that end of the spectrum than you would imagine.
Absolutely - I know a few people who like to use cash for budgeting because paying by card doesn't feel like spending money.
Obviously, people who don't need to worry about having month left at the end of the money can merrily tap away.
I struggle with the veracity of such anecdotes. Do they pay their monthly bills by cash, at a post office? Their TV licence? Their mortgage? Their rent? How many people as a proportion of the UK population operate only in cash – and how exactly do they string a life together?
Bills go out the day after payday, then they withdraw whatever's left in cash and budget accordingly.
You can call me a liar if you want.
I'm not calling you a liar, simply challenging the idea that they wouldn't learn to budget were cash unavailable. People adapt. Seatbelt paradox.
I am curious why you are strident on this issue, most of those saying they should be able to continue to pay cash aren't telling you that you must use cash. They are just saying they want to retain the right to use cash instead of card/phone whatever.
So if no one is saying you have to be made to use cash...why are you so fervent on stopping those that want the option to continue having the option to use cash?
It's going to become a big policy question, probably fairly soon. Cash is dying. A large and growing proportion of the population never or rarely use it. It's like analogue telly – getting the holdouts to switch to digital was vexatious for a while, but it happened. Retaining cash when a tiny proportion of the population use it will be akin to retaining analogue telly.
The number who never use cash isn't even 50% of people. The cashless are still the minority cash users are not a tiny proportion.
The "never or rarely" number was 23 million people last year, with only 15% of all transactions in cash. That's expected to fall to 6% by 2032. At what stage do we have a national debate about abolishing it?
I would be "rarely". That doesn't mean I think abolishing cash is acceptable.
It wasnt rarely that is Anabob misrepresenting "During 2021 there were 23.1 million consumers who used cash only once a month or not at all" is the quote... once or not at all. Rarely is not once
I'm not misrepresenting. If you only use cash once a month then it's perfectly fair to describe that as "rarely".
(And why do you always sound so angry in your posts?)
I sound angry because there are fuckwits like you always on every subject going yes I don't need that and all those poor people they don't need it either they can learn to cope. Sometimes from the left sometimes from the right. I particularly loved the way you batted aside the reference to those that have dyscalculia....presumably not so right on as dyslexia where you would be shrieking like a banshee if someone tried to hold them to account for their spelling and saying they they should just use a spellchecker and learn to cope
So now you resort to personal insults.
A classic sign that you have lost the argument.
Because when its pointed out to you a leftie who is meant to care about the poor and disadvantaged and disabled your cashless utopia will cause them issues your response is....they will have to learn to deal....wow just wow. I as a fairly hard right person have more compassion for them than you so yes you are a fuckwit. You are virtue signalling idiot who cares more about seeming like they are hip and the future than the effect on the people you claim to care for, you remember them the down trodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the poor, the neurodivergent.....your opinion is fuck them they will learn to deal. I can't lose an argument with you because you have no valid point to even argue about you are just a "Aren't I cool I embraced the future" idiot.
I'm struggling to believe you wrote that, and that @Andy_JS 'liked' it.
What vitriolic nonsense.
Again, I haven't said that we should ban cash, simply that if it gets to a position where very few transactions are made in cash we will have to have a national policy debate about it.
That is the reality.
In 20 years, do you still expect people to be counting out cash and coins at Tescos? Rich, or poor? If so, how prevalent do you think that behaviour is likely to be?
Yes I do and frankly it will be more prevalent than your claims meanwhile you keep campaigning to hurt the worst off in society. I love it when you do that it just ensures some government with your views will never be elected. Anyway won't bother with this subject again as you have lost the argument and you are just doing a trump like defence of your position
Arguing with a blob is possibly even more of a waste of time than going to an ATM.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism? I have said that I don't advocate banning it, simply that it is largely pointless, and actively counterproductive in many cases (see @Leon's points above). You insist on cash if you wish, but you'd struggle around here where many businesses are cashless, and it is rational for them to be so.
Perhaps is is you who is the loony evangelist – for cash. Have you ever considered that?
I doubt I would find anywhere I would want to give my custom too that was cashless in any case. They seem to be the sort of place that needs to get over themselves.
A daft response. Most have given up cash because few if any of their customers ever pay with it, so there is no point retaining it.
I know Wetherspoons in London still take cash.
Even when I lived in the south east last year in slough there was more shops cash only than card only in fact I am trying to think of a card only place in slough before I left in september. Its a purely london phenomenon. The pubs I goto sundays take both happily, so do the buses taxis, takeaways, supermarkets and restaurants and you see plenty using cash
If you use cash in a pub in Truro or Falmouth the bar keepers will look at you quite strangely. And maybe even sigh
Card is absolutely expected and they flourish the machine immediately without even asking “cash or card”. And these are not super posh Gastro oyster pubs
Cash will linger for years but people will become increasingly irritated by those that use it
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
I made 3 cash transactions yesterday (cleaner who is old fashioned and 2 small bits of shopping).
Today I'll make 1 cash transactions because there is little point using a card for a £1.25 bottle of pop.
Why not? To do otherwise will generate (probably) 75p of change which will just lie around.
firstly the shop won't take card payments for less than £5. and secondly I'll spend it in the next few days the next time I go round there.
The pandemic killed my cash habit. I used to use it a lot, far more than most, just liked doing it, nice crisp notes, nice shiny coins, but come Covid and the consequent urge to not touch things others had touched I went card only, and now the thought of carrying cash around seems weird. I took £20 out of a machine in Feb 2020 and I still have it sitting there in a drawer. I think I do anyway ... let me just go and check ... yep it's still there. £20.
Of course it turns out that things like coins and banknotes weren't an important factor in transmitting Covid 19.
Well obviously. Interesting (to me at least) in the last couple of weeks some hold outs with Perspex screens have finally removed them. Much nicer. And they were almost certainly at best pointless and at worst may have increased the risks by reducing air flow. We really failed to follow the science.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism? I have said that I don't advocate banning it, simply that it is largely pointless, and actively counterproductive in many cases (see @Leon's points above). You insist on cash if you wish, but you'd struggle around here where many businesses are cashless, and it is rational for them to be so.
Perhaps is is you who is the loony evangelist – for cash. Have you ever considered that?
I doubt I would find anywhere I would want to give my custom too that was cashless in any case. They seem to be the sort of place that needs to get over themselves.
A daft response. Most have given up cash because few if any of their customers ever pay with it, so there is no point retaining it.
I know Wetherspoons in London still take cash.
Even when I lived in the south east last year in slough there was more shops cash only than card only in fact I am trying to think of a card only place in slough before I left in september. Its a purely london phenomenon. The pubs I goto sundays take both happily, so do the buses taxis, takeaways, supermarkets and restaurants and you see plenty using cash
If you use cash in a pub in Truro or Falmouth the bar keepers will look at you quite strangely. And maybe even sigh
Card is absolutely expected and they flourish the machine immediately without even asking “cash or card”. And these are not super posh Gastro oyster pubs
Cash will linger for years but people will become increasingly irritated by those that use it
Shrugs I am in devon currently and I find most people still passing cash and who cares whether bar staff look at you strange I am used to that so are you I suspect. I often also look at bar staff strangely especially one I had a few years ago who when I ordered a drink said "hi haven't seen you before I am nikki but everyone calls me swamp donkey"
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Well, we already know that governments around the world want to phase out cash because they can't control its use.
Do we know that?
My impression is that businesses want to phase out cash because it's a faff for them to process.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Well, we already know that governments around the world want to phase out cash because they can't control its use.
Do we know that?
My impression is that businesses want to phase out cash because it's a faff for them to process.
Show me a government that doesn't like more tracking of its citizens everymove and I will show you a governement that would not prefer cash phased out
A mortgage broker told us to always pay in cash at the pub, because if the bank sees card transactions to pay for alcohol that will be one point on the risk metric as a potential alcoholic when you submit six months of bank statements for a mortgage application.
That sort of thing is a very good reason to keep on using cash as much as possible. I don't want someone scoring me on the basis of the minutiae of my spending habits.
But if you're comfortable with that sort of surveillance then good luck to you.
One the cash/card debate: I popped into a pub recently while waiting for my train connection, and their internet had gone down so couldn't accept cards. I was overjoyed when I managed to assemble the requisite sum from the small change in various pockets. Otherwise, no drink!
A mortgage broker told us to always pay in cash at the pub, because if the bank sees card transactions to pay for alcohol that will be one point on the risk metric as a potential alcoholic when you submit six months of bank statements for a mortgage application.
That sort of thing is a very good reason to keep on using cash as much as possible. I don't want someone scoring me on the basis of the minutiae of my spending habits.
But if you're comfortable with that sort of surveillance then good luck to you.
A point I have been making....tracking what you spend every pound on and allowing the state and corporations is bad.
The last thing we need is another toxic culture war battle, so I won't be posting about this subject again.
A debate over cash is a 'culture war' now is it?
FFS.
Too much Matt Goodwin in your diet old bean.
Same principle about most 'culture war' accusations - it's usually just a label politicians on left and right use when they don't want to engage about a controversial subject, so instead just call it culture war or toxic. No saints here.
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Because there will always be a proportion of the population that require cash as they are unable to deal with more modern ways of budgeting.
My wife had a very severe stroke 5 years ago and has left her with tremendous mental issues, she cannot understand the difference between up or down, left or right, forwards or backwards. She cannot unlock doors, she cannot leave the house alone.
But she does have a level of financial independence as each month we take some money out of her bank and over the month she manages her spend as she can touch, feel and see her money.
My wife could not deal with a card (if nothing else her eye sight is so poor she cannot see the numbers on the keypads), take away cash and you take away about the only thing in her life that she has any level of independence over.
My wife may be a very extreme case, but there are probably far more people at that end of the spectrum than you would imagine.
Absolutely - I know a few people who like to use cash for budgeting because paying by card doesn't feel like spending money.
Obviously, people who don't need to worry about having month left at the end of the money can merrily tap away.
I struggle with the veracity of such anecdotes. Do they pay their monthly bills by cash, at a post office? Their TV licence? Their mortgage? Their rent? How many people as a proportion of the UK population operate only in cash – and how exactly do they string a life together?
Bills go out the day after payday, then they withdraw whatever's left in cash and budget accordingly.
You can call me a liar if you want.
I'm not calling you a liar, simply challenging the idea that they wouldn't learn to budget were cash unavailable. People adapt. Seatbelt paradox.
I am curious why you are strident on this issue, most of those saying they should be able to continue to pay cash aren't telling you that you must use cash. They are just saying they want to retain the right to use cash instead of card/phone whatever.
So if no one is saying you have to be made to use cash...why are you so fervent on stopping those that want the option to continue having the option to use cash?
It's going to become a big policy question, probably fairly soon. Cash is dying. A large and growing proportion of the population never or rarely use it. It's like analogue telly – getting the holdouts to switch to digital was vexatious for a while, but it happened. Retaining cash when a tiny proportion of the population use it will be akin to retaining analogue telly.
The number who never use cash isn't even 50% of people. The cashless are still the minority cash users are not a tiny proportion.
The "never or rarely" number was 23 million people last year, with only 15% of all transactions in cash. That's expected to fall to 6% by 2032. At what stage do we have a national debate about abolishing it?
I would be "rarely". That doesn't mean I think abolishing cash is acceptable.
It wasnt rarely that is Anabob misrepresenting "During 2021 there were 23.1 million consumers who used cash only once a month or not at all" is the quote... once or not at all. Rarely is not once
I'm not misrepresenting. If you only use cash once a month then it's perfectly fair to describe that as "rarely".
(And why do you always sound so angry in your posts?)
I sound angry because there are fuckwits like you always on every subject going yes I don't need that and all those poor people they don't need it either they can learn to cope. Sometimes from the left sometimes from the right. I particularly loved the way you batted aside the reference to those that have dyscalculia....presumably not so right on as dyslexia where you would be shrieking like a banshee if someone tried to hold them to account for their spelling and saying they they should just use a spellchecker and learn to cope
So now you resort to personal insults.
A classic sign that you have lost the argument.
Because when its pointed out to you a leftie who is meant to care about the poor and disadvantaged and disabled your cashless utopia will cause them issues your response is....they will have to learn to deal....wow just wow. I as a fairly hard right person have more compassion for them than you so yes you are a fuckwit. You are virtue signalling idiot who cares more about seeming like they are hip and the future than the effect on the people you claim to care for, you remember them the down trodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the poor, the neurodivergent.....your opinion is fuck them they will learn to deal. I can't lose an argument with you because you have no valid point to even argue about you are just a "Aren't I cool I embraced the future" idiot.
I'm struggling to believe you wrote that, and that @Andy_JS 'liked' it.
What vitriolic nonsense.
Again, I haven't said that we should ban cash, simply that if it gets to a position where very few transactions are made in cash we will have to have a national policy debate about it.
That is the reality.
In 20 years, do you still expect people to be counting out cash and coins at Tescos? Rich, or poor? If so, how prevalent do you think that behaviour is likely to be?
Given how people still seem to freak out about even getting rid of pennies, which have no meaningful value, I wouldn't bet on it even being phased out in 20 years.
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Because there will always be a proportion of the population that require cash as they are unable to deal with more modern ways of budgeting.
My wife had a very severe stroke 5 years ago and has left her with tremendous mental issues, she cannot understand the difference between up or down, left or right, forwards or backwards. She cannot unlock doors, she cannot leave the house alone.
But she does have a level of financial independence as each month we take some money out of her bank and over the month she manages her spend as she can touch, feel and see her money.
My wife could not deal with a card (if nothing else her eye sight is so poor she cannot see the numbers on the keypads), take away cash and you take away about the only thing in her life that she has any level of independence over.
My wife may be a very extreme case, but there are probably far more people at that end of the spectrum than you would imagine.
Absolutely - I know a few people who like to use cash for budgeting because paying by card doesn't feel like spending money.
Obviously, people who don't need to worry about having month left at the end of the money can merrily tap away.
I struggle with the veracity of such anecdotes. Do they pay their monthly bills by cash, at a post office? Their TV licence? Their mortgage? Their rent? How many people as a proportion of the UK population operate only in cash – and how exactly do they string a life together?
Bills go out the day after payday, then they withdraw whatever's left in cash and budget accordingly.
You can call me a liar if you want.
I'm not calling you a liar, simply challenging the idea that they wouldn't learn to budget were cash unavailable. People adapt. Seatbelt paradox.
I am curious why you are strident on this issue, most of those saying they should be able to continue to pay cash aren't telling you that you must use cash. They are just saying they want to retain the right to use cash instead of card/phone whatever.
So if no one is saying you have to be made to use cash...why are you so fervent on stopping those that want the option to continue having the option to use cash?
It's going to become a big policy question, probably fairly soon. Cash is dying. A large and growing proportion of the population never or rarely use it. It's like analogue telly – getting the holdouts to switch to digital was vexatious for a while, but it happened. Retaining cash when a tiny proportion of the population use it will be akin to retaining analogue telly.
The number who never use cash isn't even 50% of people. The cashless are still the minority cash users are not a tiny proportion.
The "never or rarely" number was 23 million people last year, with only 15% of all transactions in cash. That's expected to fall to 6% by 2032. At what stage do we have a national debate about abolishing it?
I would be "rarely". That doesn't mean I think abolishing cash is acceptable.
It wasnt rarely that is Anabob misrepresenting "During 2021 there were 23.1 million consumers who used cash only once a month or not at all" is the quote... once or not at all. Rarely is not once
I'm not misrepresenting. If you only use cash once a month then it's perfectly fair to describe that as "rarely".
(And why do you always sound so angry in your posts?)
I sound angry because there are fuckwits like you always on every subject going yes I don't need that and all those poor people they don't need it either they can learn to cope. Sometimes from the left sometimes from the right. I particularly loved the way you batted aside the reference to those that have dyscalculia....presumably not so right on as dyslexia where you would be shrieking like a banshee if someone tried to hold them to account for their spelling and saying they they should just use a spellchecker and learn to cope
So now you resort to personal insults.
A classic sign that you have lost the argument.
Because when its pointed out to you a leftie who is meant to care about the poor and disadvantaged and disabled your cashless utopia will cause them issues your response is....they will have to learn to deal....wow just wow. I as a fairly hard right person have more compassion for them than you so yes you are a fuckwit. You are virtue signalling idiot who cares more about seeming like they are hip and the future than the effect on the people you claim to care for, you remember them the down trodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the poor, the neurodivergent.....your opinion is fuck them they will learn to deal. I can't lose an argument with you because you have no valid point to even argue about you are just a "Aren't I cool I embraced the future" idiot.
I'm struggling to believe you wrote that, and that @Andy_JS 'liked' it.
What vitriolic nonsense.
Again, I haven't said that we should ban cash, simply that if it gets to a position where very few transactions are made in cash we will have to have a national policy debate about it.
That is the reality.
In 20 years, do you still expect people to be counting out cash and coins at Tescos? Rich, or poor? If so, how prevalent do you think that behaviour is likely to be?
Given how people still seem to freak out about even getting rid of pennies, which have no meaningful value, I wouldn't bet on it even being phased out in 20 years.
I agree there. Copper pennies and tuppences should be just phased out.
King Charles could be the last monarch on a banknote as cash loses its crown
Digital payments dominate amid increasing obsolescence of cash
Halfway through 2024, King Charles III will become only the second monarch to see his portrait launched into circulation on British banknotes. It is feasible that his likeness will be the last one on a banknote that is ever actually used.
The use of cash is collapsing around the world. De La Rue, a firm which designs a third of the world’s banknotes, says global demand for physical currency has hit a 20-year low. Card, mobile and digital wallet payments are replacing traditional payment methods at a swift rate.
Globally, between 2018 and 2022, the value of global cash transactions fell from $11.6 trillion (£9.3 trillion) to $7.7 trillion, a drop of a third, according to financial services firm FIS.
Last year, cash accounted for just 16pc of transactions worldwide. By 2026, global cash transactions will be worth only $6 trillion, making up just one in 10 payments, FIS has forecast.
By this measure, the UK is ahead of the curve: last year, cash already accounted for only a tenth of point of sale transactions.
In the 10 years to 2031, cash payments will slump by another 52pc, according to UK Finance, the lender trade body. Debit card payments, already the dominant method for settling up, will have surged by nearly a quarter in that time.
“We are going to have to start preparing for a very, very low cash society,” says John Howells, chief executive of Link, the UK’s cash machine network.
“Cash will be a store for safety, but as a means of payment it is already dropping fast, and that is going to continue. I think in 15 or 20 years’ time that could have virtually disappeared.”
A mortgage broker told us to always pay in cash at the pub, because if the bank sees card transactions to pay for alcohol that will be one point on the risk metric as a potential alcoholic when you submit six months of bank statements for a mortgage application.
That sort of thing is a very good reason to keep on using cash as much as possible. I don't want someone scoring me on the basis of the minutiae of my spending habits.
But if you're comfortable with that sort of surveillance then good luck to you.
Yup. I’m a few months away from a mortgage application at the moment, and making sure that payments to offies and restaurants are either in cash or on wifey’s card. Don’t let the banks have more data than they need to have.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism? I have said that I don't advocate banning it, simply that it is largely pointless, and actively counterproductive in many cases (see @Leon's points above). You insist on cash if you wish, but you'd struggle around here where many businesses are cashless, and it is rational for them to be so.
Perhaps is is you who is the loony evangelist – for cash. Have you ever considered that?
I doubt I would find anywhere I would want to give my custom too that was cashless in any case. They seem to be the sort of place that needs to get over themselves.
A daft response. Most have given up cash because few if any of their customers ever pay with it, so there is no point retaining it.
I know Wetherspoons in London still take cash.
Even when I lived in the south east last year in slough there was more shops cash only than card only in fact I am trying to think of a card only place in slough before I left in september. Its a purely london phenomenon. The pubs I goto sundays take both happily, so do the buses taxis, takeaways, supermarkets and restaurants and you see plenty using cash
If you use cash in a pub in Truro or Falmouth the bar keepers will look at you quite strangely. And maybe even sigh
Card is absolutely expected and they flourish the machine immediately without even asking “cash or card”. And these are not super posh Gastro oyster pubs
Cash will linger for years but people will become increasingly irritated by those that use it
Someone I know delivers building materials. He takes orders for 2 tons of sand or whatever, picks it up in a quarry and goes out to the site to tip it in someone's driveway.
The transaction on delivery needs to be visible to both parties.
So a stack of cash it is. Nothing else works. Most customers don't have some kind of banking app that can zap him money immediately.
He's not going to go through the palaver of getting a remote card terminal for his van, nor would he allowed to I suspect.
I don't see the government shutting down whatever % of the economy is cash based any time soon - particularly as we argue over 0.1% of GDP every month.
File phasing it out under "not happening", even if cash does disappear in a lot of places.
Convert the offices into flats. Each employee gets one of the flats - complete with desk etc - to live in while they work at the company.
That way, everyone is 100% WFH. And 100% in the office. And the commercial real estate market doesn't collapse.
How nice would you be to your boss if they could kick you out on the street?
Company flat... Company Town.... add in a Company Gym and a Company Shop?
I’m just reading a history of Palo Alto and how the Anglos screwed the independent Chinese farmers and Mexicali miners by introducing a company shop policy
Oh yeah. A pattern copied round the world....
By people who cut their teeth in California
I think the company store idea is older than that - wasn't it present in some UK mining villages, in the early 19th cent?
The Truck Act 1831 made it illegal to pay employees in tokens that were only redeemable at the company store. A long time indeed.
It is older.
I was referring more to the exploitative capitalism perfected in California in the 1860s and 70s and then seeded out into the British Empire
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Well, we already know that governments around the world want to phase out cash because they can't control its use.
Do we know that?
My impression is that businesses want to phase out cash because it's a faff for them to process.
Businesses that won't handle card payments are very clearly dodgy. There's a Turkish barbers on Sidmouth High Street that only takes cash. It's such an obvious signal I am surprised the police have not investigated.
A mortgage broker told us to always pay in cash at the pub, because if the bank sees card transactions to pay for alcohol that will be one point on the risk metric as a potential alcoholic when you submit six months of bank statements for a mortgage application.
That sort of thing is a very good reason to keep on using cash as much as possible. I don't want someone scoring me on the basis of the minutiae of my spending habits.
But if you're comfortable with that sort of surveillance then good luck to you.
Yup. I’m a few months away from a mortgage application at the moment, and making sure that payments to offies and restaurants are either in cash or on wifey’s card. Don’t let the banks have more data than they need to have.
As an aside that's why I use only one bank account for gambling.
The one I will not ever borrow money from.
As a secondary aside when you're transferring money into your other half's account do not put down in the reference section things like 'sexual favours' or 'drug money'.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
I made 3 cash transactions yesterday (cleaner who is old fashioned and 2 small bits of shopping).
Today I'll make 1 cash transactions because there is little point using a card for a £1.25 bottle of pop.
Why not? To do otherwise will generate (probably) 75p of change which will just lie around.
My local shop has a 1 pound minimum, which used to be annoying, but then the mail went up to a pound!!!
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Well, we already know that governments around the world want to phase out cash because they can't control its use.
Do we know that?
My impression is that businesses want to phase out cash because it's a faff for them to process.
They're talking about programmable currency, so yeah.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
I made 3 cash transactions yesterday (cleaner who is old fashioned and 2 small bits of shopping).
Today I'll make 1 cash transactions because there is little point using a card for a £1.25 bottle of pop.
Why not? To do otherwise will generate (probably) 75p of change which will just lie around.
My local shop has a 1 pound minimum, which used to be annoying, but then the mail went up to a pound!!!
So the question is what is the lowest amount someone has used a card to pay.
I think I paid 45p for something not so long ago. It seemed ridiculous but not really, on reflection.
Haven't used cash for months to buy anything, barber now gone cashless, no cash in my pockets whatsoever. Have a £20 note in my wallet that I keep there for any particular reason.
Last used it a few weeks ago to tip a bloke from AutoTyres when he went above and beyond helping me one evening after I'd crashed over a pothole.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Well, we already know that governments around the world want to phase out cash because they can't control its use.
Do we know that?
My impression is that businesses want to phase out cash because it's a faff for them to process.
Businesses that won't handle card payments are very clearly dodgy. There's a Turkish barbers on Sidmouth High Street that only takes cash. It's such an obvious signal I am surprised the police have not investigated.
Do they do the singeing of your ears. Pretty weird. But nice.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
I made 3 cash transactions yesterday (cleaner who is old fashioned and 2 small bits of shopping).
Today I'll make 1 cash transactions because there is little point using a card for a £1.25 bottle of pop.
Why not? To do otherwise will generate (probably) 75p of change which will just lie around.
My local shop has a 1 pound minimum, which used to be annoying, but then the mail went up to a pound!!!
So the question is what is the lowest amount someone has used a card to pay.
I think I paid 45p for something not so long ago. It seemed ridiculous but not really, on reflection.
Haven't used cash for months to buy anything, barber now gone cashless, no cash in my pockets whatsoever. Have a £20 note in my wallet that I keep there for any particular reason.
Last used it a few weeks ago to tip a bloke from AutoTyres when he went above and beyond helping me one evening after I'd crashed over a pothole.
2p.
I had like £150 worth of nectar points to use and my bill came to £150.02.
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Yes. I let people pay my bills by cheque.
I despise cheques.
Simply because of the sheer number of not to mandate letters you get weeks after the cheque has cleared so it unclears.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
You wouldn't ban it yet, but you might ban it in the future perhaps.
If its usage becomes so low that to retain it would be nonsensical then it wouldn't be me banning it, it would be governments around the world as almost nobody would want it.
Well, we already know that governments around the world want to phase out cash because they can't control its use.
Do we know that?
My impression is that businesses want to phase out cash because it's a faff for them to process.
Businesses that won't handle card payments are very clearly dodgy. There's a Turkish barbers on Sidmouth High Street that only takes cash. It's such an obvious signal I am surprised the police have not investigated.
Do they do the singeing of your ears. Pretty weird. But nice.
They did when I went and then found out I could not pay by card!
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism? I have said that I don't advocate banning it, simply that it is largely pointless, and actively counterproductive in many cases (see @Leon's points above). You insist on cash if you wish, but you'd struggle around here where many businesses are cashless, and it is rational for them to be so.
Perhaps is is you who is the loony evangelist – for cash. Have you ever considered that?
I have rarely encountered a cashless business.
I use cash for small purchases, tips, whip rounds, businesses that won’t take cards (lots of those in Luton) and paying contractors who prefer cash.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
I've gone months in London without using cash. I always do have some, but it can stay unspent in my pocket for entire seasons
It just seems mad to believe that in twenty years we will still be reaching in purses and counting out bits of paper and circles of metal. I do sympathise with sad stories like that of @ManchesterKurt below - that's awful - but I don't see that stopping inevitable progress
In *London* - possibly the most metropolitan, digital and cosmopolitan city in the world.
We will always need cash, just like the soldier with the bayonet, because that's what it all boils down to when the chips are down.
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
I've gone months in London without using cash. I always do have some, but it can stay unspent in my pocket for entire seasons
It just seems mad to believe that in twenty years we will still be reaching in purses and counting out bits of paper and circles of metal. I do sympathise with sad stories like that of @ManchesterKurt below - that's awful - but I don't see that stopping inevitable progress
Agree entirely. In fact @ManchesterKurt has given an excellent if saddening counterexample – others just seem to be based on: "I like cash, dunno why".
I use cash, because as has been patiently explained to you before, outside Extortion City there are still lots of places that don't take cards because it's much more expensive particularly for small transactions. I know that a study put forward by the main card clearing house said otherwise but it was patently not telling the truth (as in, had forged its figures).
What might kill cash off eventually is the number of bank branches that are being closed, which will make it much more difficult to obtain and secure it. That's what's happening in say, North Wales. And that is not because of the merits or demerits of physical cash but because (1) branches being shut down, however well-used, reduces overheads dramatically and (b) banks can charge more in card transaction fees than in cash deposit fees.
London is not a typical example and should also never be used as such. It's much more crowded, much more expensive and much younger than the average town in the UK, including for things like food and transport (coins are still needed for many bus journeys round here). It's therefore less practical to use cash and the population tends to be more addicted to their phones in any case. That doesn't mean just because London is moving towards cashlessness everywhere else will as well.
Everywhere is MOVING TOWARDS cashlessness and to claim otherwise is to deny the clear evidence in front of you. As much as it might not appeal to your prejudices, I leave London regularly – particularly for hiking and biking tours in high-country remote places.
I haven't used cash for anything, anywhere in the UK, and haven't needed to. The idea that rural areas are still cash-only holdouts is an utter fantasy.
I've just spent about two weeks going around Cornwall - from little villages to bigger towns. I needed cash just once - in a cafe in a remote cove - but that was only because their wifi was down so the machine would not work
It was noticeable and I remember it precisely because it seemed so odd - to everyone. Actual Cash!
Re: cash, someone said to me the other day, have you seen the 'new' 50pm coin?
I replied that I hadn't seen it, nor a 50p coin of any kind, old, middle-aged or new, for about a decade.
Really?
Up until 2020, I had a coin jar, which accumulated change through the year and was periodically taken to the bank - it used to get about £400 a year in change. Since the pandemic, it no longer builds up ,and I have to go out of my way from time to time to get change to keep it stocked. But I do still need coins, for reasons including, er: - transactions with children (the tooth fairy doesn't bring plastic) - tips in restaurants (I want my money to go to the specific waiter/waitress who provided the service) - buskers - parking (most car parks accept payment by app but that is a massive pain in the arse, particularly if I don't have my glasses with me) - filling a pint glass with, then pissing in it and throwing it from on high at 15 year old girls who have a different favourite football team to me (joking - I'm not a Liverpool fan).
It's not a massive list. But cash isn't dead yet.
EDIT: All that said, upon meeting a colleague for the first time in 2 years recently, I was shocked to find he no longer even carries a wallet - just does everything on his phone. Does he not worry about running out of battery? Does he not worry about losing his phone? Does he not worry about having his phone but not his glasses? Apparently not. Not for me, Clive.
I haven't carried a wallet for nearly two years. Both my watch and phone make payments so what exactly is the point of carting around a load of pointless plastic and paper?
In Thailand it is still 80% cash at least. It is really quite annoying have to go back to paper wads (let alone meaningless coins). It made me realise that cash is definitely doomed. Cash is a total pain
It really is. A total timer waster –– "oh I have to go to the bank machine, where is the bank machine? Dunno, oh it's x miles away"
Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays.
Plus you can lose cash, it's a hassle to change it, you put it in the washing machine by mistake, and so on and so forth
Cash is doomed, the same way real gold and silver coins were doomed back in the day, and the value of notes and coins became notional
Indeed. And it's risky, carrying it around. I imagine 'petty' robberies (in the absence of a more appropriate term) are much more prevalent in those countries where cash is the norm.
It's rare among my friends that anyone carries cash – as it's pointless in London.
That's simply not true: the homeless need cash to buy their Tennant's lager.
I don't get his loony evangelism approach.....no one is telling him he has to use cash ever if he doesn't want to. Why does it bother him so much that some of us are going cashless....nah pass on that thanks for the offer
What loony evangelism?
"Absolutely ridiculous persisting with it nowadays"?
He's actually very reasonable on most subjects. But he gets very agitated about cash for some reason. A burning and irrational hatred of it extrapolated from its lower than average use in London to the rest of the country by using forged surveys and waving away all actual evidence that contradicts his views.
Seems a weird thing to get so worked up about, but there we are, everyone's different. After all, Vetinari got worked up about mime artists and there are even those who don't understand the full horror of pineapple pizzas.
I have produced the evidence – that 23 million people use it rarely or never.
Fewer than one cash transaction a month for around half of all adults. Twelve – 12! – cash transactions A YEAR!
I haven't used cash for any transaction for as long as I remember and even when I have it's been very grudgingly to tradesmen who demand it –– I wonder why? This is not just in London but, as I have already said, in many remote areas where I holiday. Others have said similarly.
I think persisting with it is ridiculous for most people and businesses. I wouldn't ban it yet, but if it ends up constituting fewer than 5% of all transactions – which is likely, quite soon – we will need to have a national policy debate about its abolition.
These are rational points.
Much of the pro-cash stuff on here is emotional guff.
The article you cited is wrong. Cash use has actually been going up in the last two years, admittedly from historic lows
And you have been told this repeatedly, but refuse to accept it.
Your other comments show you simply haven't read mine properly. Remoter areas use cards where they have no access to banking services. In areas where you do have them that are not London it actually remains important and in many places the only method of payment.
As for emotional guff, well...
I can't understand why you get so wound up about this when you're reasonable on most other subjects (not education of course, but you're hardly alone on that and there are far worse offenders than you). But there we are, as I said, it would be a dull world if we were all alike.
Council round here has moved to phone apps entirely for parking, even though they had machines available which could take contactless payments. Bonkers.
Contactless is great. Phone apps for carparking just shouldn't be allowed. For one thing your debit card won't go out of battery for that 1% of time your phone is out of juice and you can't phone tap the contactless.
If there's contactless (hell, even chip and pin) then I'm not too bothered about what else is available. Cash for those who prefer/need that should also be provided, I think.
The frustrating thing is that any halfway decent parking app standard would be more convenient for most. Car reg(s) stored in app. Location services pinpoint the car park (or some NFC thing to swipe at worst). Choose your time and go, automatic payment. Extendable without returning to the car park. No queues. Many benefits. The current shit-show is not necessary.
Why? Would you allow people to pay in postal orders or cheques or similarly obsolete payments?
Because there will always be a proportion of the population that require cash as they are unable to deal with more modern ways of budgeting.
My wife had a very severe stroke 5 years ago and has left her with tremendous mental issues, she cannot understand the difference between up or down, left or right, forwards or backwards. She cannot unlock doors, she cannot leave the house alone.
But she does have a level of financial independence as each month we take some money out of her bank and over the month she manages her spend as she can touch, feel and see her money.
My wife could not deal with a card (if nothing else her eye sight is so poor she cannot see the numbers on the keypads), take away cash and you take away about the only thing in her life that she has any level of independence over.
My wife may be a very extreme case, but there are probably far more people at that end of the spectrum than you would imagine.
Absolutely - I know a few people who like to use cash for budgeting because paying by card doesn't feel like spending money.
Obviously, people who don't need to worry about having month left at the end of the money can merrily tap away.
I struggle with the veracity of such anecdotes. Do they pay their monthly bills by cash, at a post office? Their TV licence? Their mortgage? Their rent? How many people as a proportion of the UK population operate only in cash – and how exactly do they string a life together?
Bills go out the day after payday, then they withdraw whatever's left in cash and budget accordingly.
You can call me a liar if you want.
I'm not calling you a liar, simply challenging the idea that they wouldn't learn to budget were cash unavailable. People adapt. Seatbelt paradox.
I am curious why you are strident on this issue, most of those saying they should be able to continue to pay cash aren't telling you that you must use cash. They are just saying they want to retain the right to use cash instead of card/phone whatever.
So if no one is saying you have to be made to use cash...why are you so fervent on stopping those that want the option to continue having the option to use cash?
It's going to become a big policy question, probably fairly soon. Cash is dying. A large and growing proportion of the population never or rarely use it. It's like analogue telly – getting the holdouts to switch to digital was vexatious for a while, but it happened. Retaining cash when a tiny proportion of the population use it will be akin to retaining analogue telly.
The number who never use cash isn't even 50% of people. The cashless are still the minority cash users are not a tiny proportion.
The "never or rarely" number was 23 million people last year, with only 15% of all transactions in cash. That's expected to fall to 6% by 2032. At what stage do we have a national debate about abolishing it?
I would be "rarely". That doesn't mean I think abolishing cash is acceptable.
It wasnt rarely that is Anabob misrepresenting "During 2021 there were 23.1 million consumers who used cash only once a month or not at all" is the quote... once or not at all. Rarely is not once
I'm not misrepresenting. If you only use cash once a month then it's perfectly fair to describe that as "rarely".
(And why do you always sound so angry in your posts?)
I sound angry because there are fuckwits like you always on every subject going yes I don't need that and all those poor people they don't need it either they can learn to cope. Sometimes from the left sometimes from the right. I particularly loved the way you batted aside the reference to those that have dyscalculia....presumably not so right on as dyslexia where you would be shrieking like a banshee if someone tried to hold them to account for their spelling and saying they they should just use a spellchecker and learn to cope
So now you resort to personal insults.
A classic sign that you have lost the argument.
Because when its pointed out to you a leftie who is meant to care about the poor and disadvantaged and disabled your cashless utopia will cause them issues your response is....they will have to learn to deal....wow just wow. I as a fairly hard right person have more compassion for them than you so yes you are a fuckwit. You are virtue signalling idiot who cares more about seeming like they are hip and the future than the effect on the people you claim to care for, you remember them the down trodden, the dispossessed, the disabled, the poor, the neurodivergent.....your opinion is fuck them they will learn to deal. I can't lose an argument with you because you have no valid point to even argue about you are just a "Aren't I cool I embraced the future" idiot.
I'm struggling to believe you wrote that, and that @Andy_JS 'liked' it.
What vitriolic nonsense.
Again, I haven't said that we should ban cash, simply that if it gets to a position where very few transactions are made in cash we will have to have a national policy debate about it.
That is the reality.
In 20 years, do you still expect people to be counting out cash and coins at Tescos? Rich, or poor? If so, how prevalent do you think that behaviour is likely to be?
Given how people still seem to freak out about even getting rid of pennies, which have no meaningful value, I wouldn't bet on it even being phased out in 20 years.
I agree there. Copper pennies and tuppences should be just phased out.
Don't tell your wife you are phasing out tuppences
Comments
Today I'll make 1 cash transactions because there is little point using a card for a £1.25 bottle of pop.
(The only way to derail it is to drop so much in that the machine overflows, which gets embarrassing as the 55 year old clerk tries to repair the machine you just broke.)
Card is absolutely expected and they flourish the machine immediately without even asking “cash or card”. And these are not super posh Gastro oyster pubs
Cash will linger for years but people will become increasingly irritated by those that use it
Interesting (to me at least) in the last couple of weeks some hold outs with Perspex screens have finally removed them. Much nicer. And they were almost certainly at best pointless and at worst may have increased the risks by reducing air flow.
We really failed to follow the science.
FFS.
Too much Matt Goodwin in your diet old bean.
My impression is that businesses want to phase out cash because it's a faff for them to process.
That sort of thing is a very good reason to keep on using cash as much as possible. I don't want someone scoring me on the basis of the minutiae of my spending habits.
But if you're comfortable with that sort of surveillance then good luck to you.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/314251197375?chn=ps&_trkparms=ispr=1&amdata=enc:1KKIgTwQdT265xSK_Dyk5MQ12&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-134428-41853-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=314251197375&targetid=1403035015187&device=m&mktype=pla&googleloc=1007109&poi=&campaignid=17218284410&mkgroupid=142217514411&rlsatarget=pla-1403035015187&abcId=9300867&merchantid=6995734&gbraid=0AAAAAD_Lr1dysv65JElWhTtA05gKZJVqd&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgY_9yK6n_gIVSu3tCh0NbAQbEAQYCCABEgLzQfD_BwE#SellerPresenceViewModel
The transaction on delivery needs to be visible to both parties.
So a stack of cash it is. Nothing else works. Most customers don't have some kind of banking app that can zap him money immediately.
He's not going to go through the palaver of getting a remote card terminal for his van, nor would he allowed to I suspect.
I don't see the government shutting down whatever % of the economy is cash based any time soon - particularly as we argue over 0.1% of GDP every month.
File phasing it out under "not happening", even if cash does disappear in a lot of places.
I was referring more to the exploitative capitalism perfected in California in the 1860s and 70s and then seeded out into the British Empire
The one I will not ever borrow money from.
As a secondary aside when you're transferring money into your other half's account do not put down in the reference section things like 'sexual favours' or 'drug money'.
It might seem funny at the time.....
I think I paid 45p for something not so long ago. It seemed ridiculous but not really, on reflection.
Haven't used cash for months to buy anything, barber now gone cashless, no cash in my pockets whatsoever. Have a £20 note in my wallet that I keep there for any particular reason.
Last used it a few weeks ago to tip a bloke from AutoTyres when he went above and beyond helping me one evening after I'd crashed over a pothole.
I had like £150 worth of nectar points to use and my bill came to £150.02.
Was a card only till.
Simply because of the sheer number of not to mandate letters you get weeks after the cheque has cleared so it unclears.
I use cash for small purchases, tips, whip rounds, businesses that won’t take cards (lots of those in Luton) and paying contractors who prefer cash.
We will always need cash, just like the soldier with the bayonet, because that's what it all boils down to when the chips are down.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2022/2022-q3/knocked-down-during-lockdown-the-return-of-cash
And you have been told this repeatedly, but refuse to accept it.
Your other comments show you simply haven't read mine properly. Remoter areas use cards where they have no access to banking services. In areas where you do have them that are not London it actually remains important and in many places the only method of payment.
As for emotional guff, well...
I can't understand why you get so wound up about this when you're reasonable on most other subjects (not education of course, but you're hardly alone on that and there are far worse offenders than you). But there we are, as I said, it would be a dull world if we were all alike.