Contactless payments now more popular than chip and PIN - MSE News

agrinnall

eco_warrior wrote: »

I assume agrinnall is referring to the other costs associated with cash. Mainly paying the wages of the person who handles it, counts and transports it.

Actually it wasn't, it was specifically charges by banks to businesses for processing their cash deposits and withdrawals - although now you mention it, all those other costs are simply not present when payment is made by card.

aj23_2

eskbanker wrote: »

Although I took the comment about cashless businesses at face value from the credible poster who made it in the first place, it doesn't take long to find supporting evidence elsewhere, such as https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/24/cash-is-just-grief-why-shops-and-bars-want-to-make-you-pay-by-card

3% should be beatable, have you evaluated cheaper alternatives, via comparisons at the likes of https://merchantmachine.co.uk/compare/? Is that combining terminal rental and other fixed costs with transaction fees?

Again, it's just people being lazy. If you don't want the custom regardless of method, someone else will. Bars want to serve the next person before they serve you. And I suspect it's also to stop pinching fingers (though most require a fingerprint now to make a till transaction). And pour and pay yourself bars eliminates staff, which creates unemployment.

When I was at Brighton Pride, everyone in the drinks tent I was in, most wanted to pay by card, and they only had 2 terminals despite having 15 people serving. As drinks were expensive, most were 'bulk buying' and going over £30 so required PIN. I knew what I wanted came to £20 and had the note in my hand. Instead, the lines were 45 minutes to get a drink yet they were only 10-15 people deep. It's only quicker if they have the resources in place to handle the demand. I said to people around me to pay cash instead because it's quicker and people started doing it. Guess what, people behind me got served quicker. They shot themselves in the foot because people weren't going back for more drinks because it took so long to get one.

eskbanker

aj23 wrote: »

eskbanker wrote: »

Although I took the comment about cashless businesses at face value from the credible poster who made it in the first place, it doesn't take long to find supporting evidence elsewhere, such as https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/24/cash-is-just-grief-why-shops-and-bars-want-to-make-you-pay-by-card

3% should be beatable, have you evaluated cheaper alternatives, via comparisons at the likes of https://merchantmachine.co.uk/compare/? Is that combining terminal rental and other fixed costs with transaction fees?

Again, it's just people being lazy. If you don't want the custom regardless of method, someone else will. Bars want to serve the next person before they serve you. And I suspect it's also to stop pinching fingers (though most require a fingerprint now to make a till transaction). And pour and pay yourself bars eliminates staff, which creates unemployment.

When I was at Brighton Pride, everyone in the drinks tent I was in, most wanted to pay by card, and they only had 2 terminals despite having 15 people serving. As drinks were expensive, most were 'bulk buying' and going over £30 so required PIN. I knew what I wanted came to £20 and had the note in my hand. Instead, the lines were 45 minutes to get a drink yet they were only 10-15 people deep. It's only quicker if they have the resources in place to handle the demand. I said to people around me to pay cash instead because it's quicker and people started doing it. Guess what, people behind me got served quicker. They shot themselves in the foot because people weren't going back for more drinks because it took so long to get one.

I think you may have quoted the wrong post, as your response is unrelated to the subject of the relative costs of cards versus cash - it was another poster earlier on who wanted to discuss the relative durations....

Ergates

aj23 wrote: »

Again, it's just people being lazy. If you don't want the custom regardless of method, someone else will. Bars want to serve the next person before they serve you. And I suspect it's also to stop pinching fingers (though most require a fingerprint now to make a till transaction). And pour and pay yourself bars eliminates staff, which creates unemployment.

When I was at Brighton Pride, everyone in the drinks tent I was in, most wanted to pay by card, and they only had 2 terminals despite having 15 people serving. As drinks were expensive, most were 'bulk buying' and going over £30 so required PIN. I knew what I wanted came to £20 and had the note in my hand. Instead, the lines were 45 minutes to get a drink yet they were only 10-15 people deep. It's only quicker if they have the resources in place to handle the demand. I said to people around me to pay cash instead because it's quicker and people started doing it. Guess what, people behind me got served quicker. They shot themselves in the foot because people weren't going back for more drinks because it took so long to get one.

That's an indication of poor organisation, not that contactless/card payments are slower than cash. If they'd only had 2 cash tills and everyone was trying to pay by cash it would have been exactly the same situation.

Ergates

aj23 wrote: »

I'm not aware of any retailer who won't accept cash? So many places still say cash only precisely for the reason that accepting many low value card transactions ends up costing the retailer a lot of money.

If you wanted to be cynical, you might think that some places were cash only because it makes it a lot easier to "forget" to declare all your income to HMRC.

eddddy

aj23 wrote: »

I'm not aware of any retailer who won't accept cash?

Here's a few - some started in 2016...

And see the comment from the bar owner about how much more expensive cash handling is.

31 MAR 2016 NEWS
Waitrose follows cashless store trend

Waitrose is set to become the UK's first major supermarket brand to operate a cashless store, where only card and mobile payments are accepted.

Link: https://www.essentialretail.com/news/56fd24c3e9a46-waitrose-follows-cashless-store-trend/

14 MARCH 2016
Tossed opens the UK's first entirely cashless restaurant

Link:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/tossed-opens-the-uks-first-entirely-cashless-restaurant/

The Manchester Bar That’s Only Accepting Cashless Payments

“The cost involved in servicing cash was completely unbalanced in comparison to card payments,” he says.

“It was costing us 40 hours of management time a week! This was spent auditing it, counting it, taking it to the bank and filling in all the cash and till sheets

Link: http://www.restauranttechlive.co.uk/news/blog.asp?blog_id=11189

Tesco goes 'cashless' to cut queueing times to just 45 seconds as it trials scheme in first store

Link: https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/tesco-goes-cashless-supermarket-12817285

The Cash-Free Coffee Shop in the Heart of Belfast

Link: http://coffeeshopexpo.co.uk/news/blog.asp?blog_id=5271

Urban coffee shop in Birmingham city centre is first in city to go completely cashless

Customers will only be able to pay by card, watch or smartphone from November 1

Link: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/urban-cafe-coffee-shop-birmingham-15286068

Going cashless: Over Under Coffee

Link: https://blog.izettle.com/gb/going-cashless-coffee

mrpastry

Ergates wrote: »

Why would any bank commit instant comercial suicide by starting to charge customers for individual card payments?

Banks make their money from transactions from the retailers, not the customers.

Once the banks see that more people are card dependant for most purchases then they will hit the user as well as the retailer allbeit a small amount (1p a transaction ?) therefore taking in more.....
Just my thoughts on the matter

Ergates

mrpastry wrote: »

Once the banks see that more people are card dependant for most purchases then they will hit the user as well as the retailer allbeit a small amount (1p a transaction ?) therefore taking in more.....
Just my thoughts on the matter

Why? Based on what?

takman

mrpastry wrote: »

Once the banks see that more people are card dependant for most purchases then they will hit the user as well as the retailer allbeit a small amount (1p a transaction ?) therefore taking in more.....
Just my thoughts on the matter

I really can't see this happening at all. The banks have been heavily promoting contactless payments because the more it's used the more revenue they generate.
If they suddenly decided to start charging for card payments (even a small amount) then people would avoid those banks or go back to cash which would then set back all their progress so far. It would be massive negative marketing for them and no bank would dare do it.

Just look at the 5p carrier bag charge and the fuss people made over such a small amount of 5p. So even the smallest of charges are enough to be big news and cause people to change the way they do things.

Ergates

takman wrote: »

I really can't see this happening at all. The banks have been heavily promoting contactless payments because the more it's used the more revenue they generate.
If they suddenly decided to start charging for card payments (even a small amount) then people would avoid those banks or go back to cash which would then set back all their progress so far. It would be massive negative marketing for them and no bank would dare do it.

Just look at the 5p carrier bag charge and the fuss people made over such a small amount of 5p. So even the smallest of charges are enough to be big news and cause people to change the way they do things.

Don't let logic, evidence or reasoning get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.