Cash is so gross though. All those grubby mitts all over it, plus being stored in super icky places like bras and grunderpants. Big fan of cashless if for no other reason than keeping bits of other people off me.
Actual other reasons:
More secure to use a locked device for payment than carry cash that becomes anonymous once its removed from your person
You cant lose digital money down the back of the couch, or drop it when getting your wallet out or whatever
Easier for businesses to keep a track and balance sales automatically when its all digital
Safer for staff rather than handling wads of cash, especially in places like service stations
From a checkout chump perspective it was probably 40 minutes of my day wasted dealing with the cash. Getting it dispensed, double counting it all, depositing in to the safe when you had too much, watching out for dodgy currency or those dickheads who try the quick “I give you a 5 and you round up the change to 10 and then I’ll swap that for a 20 and then give you 30 so I get a 50” scam, dealing with damaged or defaced currency, recounting at end of day, getting reamed for being too far up or too far down in the count, having to sign forms to swear to god you hadn’t knocked off a pineapple (or put too many pineapples in the drawer)…
Then you need a safe storage space for the cash, security to protect the cash, literally a whole industry built on transporting it around the place, keep enough cash on hand to provide change, keep enough to cover EFT withdrawals.
There’s a lot of cost to handling cash. Also its gross. Did I mention its gross yet? Getting warm notes that were slightly sticky was disgusting.
I don’t disagree with cashless being the preferred method, but cash should always be an option because e.g. in case of disaster, the infrastructure that cashless depends on can be impaired for a while.
As proved by various outages, when electricity (or the internet, or the service provider, etc) is down and prevents digital transfers being made… cash doesnt work either, cause it’s all the same POS / accounting software that handles cash which is also down.
Also if a natural disaster takes out internet access for an extended period, wheres the cash a business needs to keep on hand going to suddenly appear from? I haven’t worked in retail in a decade or more, but we always kept as little cash as possible on hand due to the constant threat of robbery. Even back then cash was way less than 50% of transactions, I’d be surprised if it was even in the double digit percentages anymore.
If you have pen and paper and the key to the drawer you don’t need a working POS on the spot to accept cash while comms are out and record the transactions later.
And exactly: where does the cash appear from? That’s the “should always be an option” part.
Of course there’s drawbacks for everything: less secure for staff if you accept cash vs inability to do anything when comms fail if you don’t.
There might be a further point, although I haven’t looked into the reasons: Sweden started the cashless experiment before and they are backpedaling now.
Cash is so gross though. All those grubby mitts all over it, plus being stored in super icky places like bras and grunderpants. Big fan of cashless if for no other reason than keeping bits of other people off me.
Actual other reasons:
Agree with the bit about it being easier to keep track of payments with electronic payment.
Cash does have a cost, though it’s less visible.
It’s a pain in the butthole tbh.
From a checkout chump perspective it was probably 40 minutes of my day wasted dealing with the cash. Getting it dispensed, double counting it all, depositing in to the safe when you had too much, watching out for dodgy currency or those dickheads who try the quick “I give you a 5 and you round up the change to 10 and then I’ll swap that for a 20 and then give you 30 so I get a 50” scam, dealing with damaged or defaced currency, recounting at end of day, getting reamed for being too far up or too far down in the count, having to sign forms to swear to god you hadn’t knocked off a pineapple (or put too many pineapples in the drawer)…
Then you need a safe storage space for the cash, security to protect the cash, literally a whole industry built on transporting it around the place, keep enough cash on hand to provide change, keep enough to cover EFT withdrawals.
There’s a lot of cost to handling cash. Also its gross. Did I mention its gross yet? Getting warm notes that were slightly sticky was disgusting.
I don’t disagree with cashless being the preferred method, but cash should always be an option because e.g. in case of disaster, the infrastructure that cashless depends on can be impaired for a while.
As proved by various outages, when electricity (or the internet, or the service provider, etc) is down and prevents digital transfers being made… cash doesnt work either, cause it’s all the same POS / accounting software that handles cash which is also down.
Also if a natural disaster takes out internet access for an extended period, wheres the cash a business needs to keep on hand going to suddenly appear from? I haven’t worked in retail in a decade or more, but we always kept as little cash as possible on hand due to the constant threat of robbery. Even back then cash was way less than 50% of transactions, I’d be surprised if it was even in the double digit percentages anymore.
If you have pen and paper and the key to the drawer you don’t need a working POS on the spot to accept cash while comms are out and record the transactions later.
And exactly: where does the cash appear from? That’s the “should always be an option” part.
Of course there’s drawbacks for everything: less secure for staff if you accept cash vs inability to do anything when comms fail if you don’t.
There might be a further point, although I haven’t looked into the reasons: Sweden started the cashless experiment before and they are backpedaling now.
and when the electricity is down you can shop at all