How Long It Will Be Before Our Society Becomes A Cashless One?

[hackey lad]

2 hours ago, cressida said:

I like a wad of notes,  and better still I like a man to have a wad also😊🥰

You would be oreight with Padders , They dont call him " Long John" for nothing  

[melthebell]

5 hours ago, Anna B said:

Beware the cashless society.

That gives banks total control over your money.

What happens when computer says no....

where do you think your cash comes from? what happens if all the Atms start to malfunction or get hacked? and you cant get cash out?

[Thirsty Relic]

2 hours ago, hackey lad said:

You would be oreight with Padders , They dont call him " Long John" for nothing  

Rumour has it that he has deep pockets, but short arms......   See previous posts!

[Tipstaff]

Some small businesses would have to start paying tax without cash. 🙄

[Anna B]

7 hours ago, Tipstaff said:

Some small businesses would have to start paying tax without cash. 🙄

When all the big businesses start paying all the tax they should, maybe the small businesses will think differently.

[Dromedary]

One positive I have noticed in all the cashless trend is that there are now very few street beggars around. One guy sat outside Sainsbury on the moor asked me and I said I didn't have any cash on me. After walking away a few steps I then realised I had a £1 coin I keep for the shopping trolly in ASDA and gave him that.

 

Only time I use cash now is to top up the electric as I'm on PAYG and you can only top it up with cash as cards for some reason are not accepted.

[Chekhov]

4 hours ago, Dromedary said:

One positive I have noticed in all the cashless trend is that there are now very few street beggars around. One guy sat outside Sainsbury on the moor asked me and I said I didn't have any cash on me. After walking away a few steps I then realised I had a £1 coin I keep for the shopping trolly in ASDA and gave him that.

 

Only time I use cash now is to top up the electric as I'm on PAYG and you can only top it up with cash as cards for some reason are not accepted.

Are you saying you'd pay for something which costs 50p with a card ?

BTW, do you ever check your bank statement, or had cause to go back and try and find a transaction ? 

[ECCOnoob]

52 minutes ago, Chekhov said:

Are you saying you'd pay for something which costs 50p with a card ?

BTW, do you ever check your bank statement, or had cause to go back and try and find a transaction ? 

Why not? Personally, I have done card transactions for 10p when I forgot about a carrier bag charge. Car parking pay machines are often contactless and process small transactions and millions of online retailers do transactions by card against goods which cost pennies.

 

Really is not such a novelty these days.

 

I found it interesting that people are going on about the cost of card processing and the doom that we all face when the system goes down, seemingly forgetting that cash equally has a cost to process and lots of risks to.

 

As others have said, yes card machines can break, computers can go down but it's all connected. If a banks computer system falls off, ATMs will also fall off, tellers will not be able to hand out cash over the counter and most modern day shop tills will suddenly become useless. People talk about hackers and the dangers in using cards but what about cash robberies, muggings, notes being dropped in the street....that's just as much of a risk. I'd also like to bet the tracing an electronic transaction made fraudulently is far easier in trying to identify and trace compared to cash money that has been nicked.

 

Then we have to think about the businesses. Yes there are card transaction fees which is why some of them do traditionally have a minimum spend, however as more and more of us embrace cashless and there are alternatives to the big boys in terms of processing these days-  Society has had a distinct change of attitude. For those with small businesses cash is a personal hassle that they have to deal with.   It has to be collated and counted, sorted and separated and then taken physically to a bank to be paid in.  For the larger businesses, they require entire departments to look after such things and spend a fortune on paying some private security transporter company to distribute or deposit their cash at the end of a day. Obviously that all comes with an overheads and risks.

 

Now we have a situation where a small business can set up quite easily, buy a cheap card reader machine from any electronics store and boom away they go. All their transactions logged,  accounting automatically, reduced security risk and a much more attractive proposition for the customers.

 

People talk about 'power to the banks' but unless they are are some freak who still thinks it's acceptable to keep their money under their mattress, their bank already knows more than enough about how they spend. Shops already collate and share data about where we go. We are filmed every time we enter a store or a town centre. We have enough loyalty cards to require a separate wallet and for several years the shop tills have tracked every purchase on what we buy and tailor offers on the things we want.   In my opinion some of these more wild objections against embracing the obvious convenience and betterment that comes with cashless are nothing more than just conspiracy theories and paranoia about "The Man". 

 

If some Russian hacker wants to look through my boring bank statements and become enlightened on how many times I go to Sainsbury's a week good luck to them.  I suspect like most sensible people with the well-established concept of online banking, I check my statement once or twice a week and will be able to spot any criminal fraud quite easily. That's just a sensible precaution -about the same level and effort as one previously who would keep money safely in a wallet and not walking down the street waving it around in their hand.  Of course we all get drawn in by the scary headlines about the rapid rise of cybercrime but given the equally rapid rise in online transactions and card payments is it really such a surprise. Our own precautions and security just need to evolve with it.

 

[Dromedary]

1 hour ago, Chekhov said:

Are you saying you'd pay for something which costs 50p with a card ?

I think the lowest I have transacted recently on a cashless card was for .75p so yes as that's what a cashless card is for.

 

1 hour ago, Chekhov said:

BTW, do you ever check your bank statement, or had cause to go back and try and find a transaction ? 

Yes I check every few weeks and also check my receipts given, and as I do it all online it easy to double check as well. 

[Anna B]

20 hours ago, melthebell said:

where do you think your cash comes from? what happens if all the Atms start to malfunction or get hacked? and you cant get cash out?

The point is you have the choice to draw actual cash out of a machine, and use that if you want.

A Cashless society removes this choice and all transactions become electronic. And that gives banks total control over your transactions / life.

 

For example PAYE is deducted from your pay at source, you have no choice. What if banks used the same criteria? What if it insists you pay off your overdraft before you pay your rent, or withholds payments it doesn't approve of? 

What if you're overcharged on a regular basis or decide you don't want to pay something on principal. They have the ultimate power to override you.

 

Without a cash alternative, you are giving the banks control and power. They have enough power over our lives already...