Cashless society

EssexExile

Flobberchops wrote: »

With contactless payment it's becoming increasingly redundant to carry loose change.

Once you get out of the big city you still need cash. Clintons cards on Saturday - no contactless, the local coffee shop - no contactless, the barber this morning - no cards, and so it goes on. There's a long way to go before we get cashless out here.

Ballard

On a related matter, does anyone use PAYM a great deal? I like the idea of it and have registered so can receive payments but no one that I know has bothered.

Nick_C

zagfles wrote: »

We effectively have negative interest rates now - as inflation is higher than the BoE base rate. So yes people find other ways of investing so their savings (hopefully) don't lose money.

CPI inflation = 0.3% (up from zero over the last three months)
BoE BR = 0.5%

Anthorn wrote: »

... we are in negative interest rates but people have not in fact sought alernative means of investing. They still stick with what they're offered which is a still measley 3% or 4% or 5% in a current account but which is seen to be safe.

With inflation between zero and 0.5% and 5% interest on savings readily available, savers have never had it so good. Real growth of 4.5% on savings is probably unprecedented.

zagfles

Nick_C wrote: »

CPI inflation = 0.3% (up from zero over the last three months)
BoE BR = 0.5%

CPI doesn't include housing costs. CPIH is 0.6% and RPI is 1.1%

njm123

Of course if you go cashless you miss all the fun of handing the (young) sales assistant the exact amount needed for a purchase and watching them count the small change,.



I don't advocate this if you're in a hurry

eDicky

I was reminded of this thread today when I visited an old friend who runs a farm shop, selling all kinds of produce from the family farm and other local producers and wholesalers. It's a busy area of rural Essex, not far from a town with a large Tesco and other supermarkets etc, but he gets plenty of customers who like to pick up their fresh fruit and veg with friendly personal service free from sales hype, chickens and ducks wandering around the yard. Purchases are added up by pencil on a note pad, all payments in cash. There is no card terminal or even electronic till, and there is obviously no intention to ever start accepting card payment, nor expectations of such a thing from customers, who drive up in anything from old vans to Range Rovers.

Gizmo247

Ballard wrote: »

On a related matter, does anyone use PAYM a great deal? I like the idea of it and have registered so can receive payments but no one that I know has bothered.

I use Paym when I can, particularly between family members, mostly to get the kids to pay me back for stuff. When I owe people money where I would normally handover cash, I see if they have Paym first. More often that not, they have never heard of it, so I take the opportunity to educate them; usually they are still not interested. :-)

My daughter is a university student and her household use it all the time to shuffle money around between themselves.

In spirit of Kipling:

"I KEEP five honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are PayPal and Pingit and Paym
And Zapp and Apple Pay too."

GetRealBabe

Hi

I don't think there will ever be a cashless society especially as over million people in this country don't have bank account and some people don't want one. (I wonder how they manage as they must be losing out on a lot of online card only offers)

I have a debit card that is contactless but I've never bothered to activate it. I'm happy paying cash day-to-day.

Gizmo247

A single chip and pin transaction on a card is all that is required to activate the contactless feature.

This demonstrates, as technology in our possession gradually becomes upgraded, we will find that the revolution has already taken place; we just need to embrace it.

Gizmo247

I believe the introduction of Zapp (sometime this year! fingers-out) will be the turning point for the UK. That, in consort with Apple Pay and Android Pay, will finally remove the requirement for cards and the revocation of the reprieve for cheques. We will start to see small traders become cashless, now that cash is no-longer king and actually rather inconvenient. What starts as a trickle, will rapidly become a flood.