Cashless Society

[Homebird44]

Lots of bus drivers don't seem to want to faff on with change, especially people paying with notes. I can understand them not wanting to carry cash.
But what would they for children getting the bus? Youngsters pay cash.

My children have been using apple pay on their phones for years. Schools don't accept cash for food, parents top up the online payment. Bus drivers have been mugged for their cash so I don't blame them for not using it.

 

[Homebird44]

From my experience (before covid, not sure about now obvi) there‘s more places in „west“ Germany where you can pay with card (small restaurants, kiosks, chippy etc.) then in „east“ Germany. But sadly that can be said for many more modern things ...

I rarely use cash but I also don‘t do stuff I want to hide from my bank/the government or care all that much. It‘s not like they are going to look at all my transfers and go „wow this fatty had McD for the 3rd time this week“

From my experience (before covid, not sure about now obvi) there‘s more places in „west“ Germany where you can pay with card (small restaurants, kiosks, chippy etc.) then in „east“ Germany. But sadly that can be said for many more modern things ...

I rarely use cash but I also don‘t do stuff I want to hide from my bank/the government or care all that much. It‘s not like they are going to look at all my transfers and go „wow this fatty had McD for the 3rd time this week“

Pmsl. 97% of Great Britains have a bank account. We have 1000s of cctv and APNR cameras. Our lives are monitored and thats before you pick up your phone. Some people have over active imaginations.

 

[Homebird44]

This sounds like another excuse that companies and businesses use, to prevent people from paying with cash,

My children left school many years ago, they wouldn't allow cash on site as kids were losing it or having it taken. They use a thumb print which is linked to their online account. Easier for them and I didn't have to go to a cash machine. You keep using cash if you want but I prefer bank transfers and using my card.

 

[Sniffing Eggs]

The clip below seems relevant. At least Mr Corbyn is doing something.

"But you didn't do anything. Did you walk out. Did you write letters of complaint? Did you shop elsewhere? No you huffed and you puffed, but you put up with it. Now all those women are gone"

To those mocking and clearly blind to implications of having a cashless society, what exactly ARE you doing?


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I always have trouble with the Halifax banking app. It's always down because of "technical issues". It means I can't access my accounts, even when I need to pay someone.

What if it was a prolonged? How will YOU pay for food if the computer is down and says no?
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View attachment 2348388

I switched to Starling for this very reason

 

[Rockin' Robin]

Can you imagine if all those power cuts predicted during the winter had actually happened

We've not had one power cut yet. I'd better not speak too soon though!

 

[Kim Mild]

Drugs / gambling? Pay cash and use it. Anything consumable is hidden. The only thing you couldn’t hide is something huge like a sofa

Stuff you can shove in a cupboard and pretend you've had it ages.

Also useful when buying presents for people.

really? How does how you pay hide the item?

Not the item itself but where it was bought and when and the price.

 

[emm]

Seen it happen, Southeast London a couple of years ago, caused chaos, also working at the station seen quite a few people that have lost their cards and can't pay for tickets to get to work. I've always got a hundred quid in a drawer.

yes i remember this! I think this is why being cashless is so risky

 

[Homebird44]

I mostly use cards or my phone, but I always have cash in my wallet in case I need some.

I don't see why some people are pro one and anti the other. They both have their uses.

This!!! I use cards and bank online. If I nedd cash out then I'm happy to go to a cash machine. It's rarely used, only my dog groomer accepts cash only and I'm happy with that.

 

[emm]

We've not had one power cut yet. I'd better not speak too soon though!

I'm in Central London so this is really disruptive!

 

[265]

I have heard about people whose phones run out of battery and then been stuck on transport when they cannot pay/prove that they have paid

Many people underestimate their phones and don't carry a power bank with them.
I personally carry a couple of power banks for my toys because they will not last a
day without them.

 

[Lindylou]

I was refused cashback in a store. They said it's because they have cashpoint outside.

When the pandemic first hit, a lot of supermarkets encouraged no cash spending and stopped offering cashback.
Its never been reintroduced in @sda and I don’t think there are plans to. We stopped automatically asking people if they want cshback well before the pandemic, it slows the checkout process down.

 

[Captainmouse]

Well nationwide texted me to tell me I was overdrawn, but I don’t have an account with them. Computer problems, guess all of their members should check their accounts and have cash to hand

 

[kittenattack]

I don't use cash and don't even carry a card, I just use Googlepay on my phone. Don't even carry a handbag these days unless we're going on a trip out and I need to carry hankies, water or whatever.

 

[coconochanel]

When the pandemic first hit, a lot of supermarkets encouraged no cash spending and stopped offering cashback.
Its never been reintroduced in @sda and I don’t think there are plans to. We stopped automatically asking people if they want cshback well before the pandemic, it slows the checkout process down.

Yep even though you can now pay with cash they dont offer cashback.

 

[kev1974]

What a wonderful story Cash remains king.

Yeah I was there, paying for stuff was a real shambles. In days gone by Glasto would have had loads of cash machines scattered about the festival site but I saw very few of those this year, presumably because they expected nobody to need cash.

Wasn't just bars, food stalls as well were constantly changing their minds on whether they could take card payments or not.

I am not sure it was wifi problems like that story claims, all the payment terminals I saw were 4G ones i.e. mobile data not wifi. And anybody who is a Glasto regular knows that the phone signal dies with that many people on site. To be fair it was very good this year if you were on EE (who are the festival mobile provider and put a load of temporary masts and capacity in) but I also had O2 and Three sims with me and they were absolutely useless.

The trouble with cashless is it all requires live connections as it's all real time transactions now. They need to roll things back to how it was a few years ago and you could take credit card payments offline and reconcile them later on when a connection is available. Yes there will be the odd person then able to get away with using a stolen or blocked card but it's a few beers FFS, not truck loads of gold bullion that they are getting away with.

 

[rainbowlemon]

 

[AllSeeingEye123]

https://archive.is/aomXf

It's great the idea of keeping cash available has support across all political parties. Card technology goes down far too often and whilst I am happy paying card for high priced items like holidays, I don't want a society where you can only buy a 40 pence newspaper or can of pop on card.

 

[Eltonjohnsflorist]

A cashless society to me means the government keeping tabs on absolutely EVERYTHING about you.

Lending ppl money, doing small jobs for cash, babysitting, giving to charity, paying someone to walk your dog whilst on holiday, helping the homeless. Every single thing you buy. Every single transaction traceable.

It’s too intrusive for me

Well, not really. Your bank can keep tabs on you. The government can keep tabs MORE maybe because taxable earnings will be reported from multiple sources making tax easier to trace. But the government can’t access bank data

I agree, one of my good friends is german (grew up in east germany) and apparently in germany generally becuase of this they really dislike card payments and prefer cash

Out of Interest what has being German got to do with it?

 

[StephenTJackson]

I used to be a catering hostess on trains and part of my duties were checking tickets. In urban areas, such as West Midlands, Greater Manchester, London, Brighton and West Yorkshire, there are ticket barriers as you board and alight. But in other parts of the country, such as York, Durham, Burton On Trent and many more, there are no fixed gates and it is easy to hop on to a train with no ticket and only buy if challenged, thanks to "advances" in technology.

I've done train journeys without paying because it's two barrierless stations and it was before ticket machines were available at the starting platform so you had to buy on board, but nobody came to check, so saved money.

 

[Ensay]

I'm the same, I'm more than happy to pay by card or on my phone, especially in the supermarket - just got my phone out to scam my loyalty card app, so I might as well just pay with my phone, it's already in my hand. But I do always still have some cash in my wallet just in case.

Yeah good point, I was glad I was able to add all my loyalty cards to my phone because it saves lugging them around everywhere in my wallet.

I'd say phones are usually the quickest way to pay because they don't require PIN entry and you obviously don't need change.