We want the freedom to pay. Our way.

As situations evolve – local shops disappearing as supermarkets emerged, bus services diminishing as we took to private cars – we participate and help drive these changes and need to adapt. The same with the availability of the means to obtain cash. Bank branches have reduced in number as we’ve chosen online options, ATMs have closed because, as commercial devices, there was insufficient usage to sustain them all.

We need a constructive approach, not simply complaining about the loss and only proposing regulators to stop a natural process. Forcing commercial business to retain unprofitable operations implies subsidy, for which we will all pay. Perhaps that is what we are prepared to accept?

LINK have been somewhat successful in addressing the problem by taking action on protected ATMs. From their latest report just 26 qualifying ATMs are closed but areunder investigation to try to restore them; LINK are offering enhanced premium payments to some of these and are looking to try to appoint LINK members to operate the remainder. https://www.link.co.uk/media/1424/atm-footprint-report.pdf

Banks have entered into an agreement with 11500 post offices to provide banking facilities. Including fee cash withdrawals, for the majority of those with bank accounts.

We will not turn the clock back and need to think of imaginative solutions. Previous Convos have commented on this but this Convo seems to have paid no heed.

We talk of protecting existing ATMs (that do not have another within 1km). But a great many people, particularly rural, will never have lived so close to any ATM, let alone a bank or post office. We should, perhaps, be thinking of them, many of whom may be elderly and less mobile than when they settled there. Yet they may be within reach of a cash business – maybe a pub, farm shop, local outlet, restaurant……. We could provide incentives for those to dispense cash. Maybe for a payment similar to the LINK arrangement.

Perhaps Which? could look at alternatives as a part of its campaign and offer a more constructive way forward?

I do use cash, more so since surcharges on cards were banned. Since then, signs have appeared in small shops and some pubs saying ‘cash only’ or that there is a minimum of £10 for card payments.

The banks and larger retailers are doing their best to push us towards a cashless society. The nearest large B&Q no longer accepts cash payment at any of its self-service tills, although the same machines have accepted cash in the past. I am not stuck in the past and was an early adopter of debit and credit cards, including contactless cards. I believe that the banks should have invited us to ask for contactless cards rather than just issuing them by default.

Back in the 1970s when ATMs first appeared, it was necessary to visit a branch of your own bank. It soon became possible to withdraw cash from ATMs operated by other banks, coordinated by Link. It remains one of the best examples of how businesses can cooperate for the benefit of customers and for many living out of cities and towns this convenient service has been withdrawn, often as a result of closure of bank branches and failure to maintain an ATM on the site or nearby.

A major reason for introducing ATMs was to avoid the need for the time taken for manual withdrawal of cash from banks. I well remember waiting in queues to withdraw cash when I was a student. I don’t think it is sensible to go back to queueing at a Post Office counter, wasting our time and staff time, when a better alternative would be to have an ATM outside the Post Office, or inside if this is not practical.

I want to live in a society where provision of important services is coordinated and not just left to the companies involved to provide services where it is most profitable. The banks need to be able to make a profit but that does not imply that operation of every ATM or local bus service must make a profit.

One might split this into two. The need for cash and the supply of this. Previous conversations have shown that cash is essential for some transactions -clubs, charities, market stalls, family gifts, local taxi without card access. It is also useful for small purchases like ice cream in the cinema and bus fares. Tap cards are not universally accepted, rely on a bank account and internet access, can be used fraudulently and don’t provide instant confirmation of what has been paid in the same way as cash does…tap and go. With cash it is useful to know what has been spent as the wallet empties and needs refilling, the tap card sanitises this somewhat.
For me, supply is not a problem. I seldom need more than the fifty pounds provided by the supermarket check out. The ATM outside can supply more if necessary as can the post office. In rural areas, and where there is a need to travel for these facilities, and where this is difficult for some of the population, ATMs or equivalent should be available as a social service. Of course, if they are not, it probably means that there is also no means of spending cash anyway. If ATMs prove to be too expensive to run, then alternatives must be in place and that could mean local traders, mobile deliveries and even the post van being involved via the mobile telephone network. Each community council should have an obligation to consider this problem and provide a suitable local solution. That would have a better chance of success than blaming the banks and expecting them to respond. Banks are not good at responding!

ATMs are not the only source of money. Wherever it is collected and used it is available to be distributed. It needs a creative mindset to extrapolate that into an alternative to the traditional hole in the wall. In rural communities, it is the community that could do this for its cash users. There may be some costs but these would not be substantial and could be shared if the community accepted that this was part of the cost of living in that society. In urban areas, the traders would have to have some incentive to provide cash, and, of course some card facility to do so. It would only need a few shops in each district to do this when a supermarket was a distance from the housing and away from a bus route. This might be an over simplistic model from a bystander, and, maybe, since the banks have been responsible for so much social misery, they should be held accountable and required to see that adequate cash provision is available where it is needed. Just because they wish to automate and digitise everything, this doesn’t necessarily represent progress as we have seen from the vulnerabilities within the internet recently.

Prior to the 2012 Olympics, I did some work with the RNIB and many visually impaired people were quite upset about the Olympic Committee’s decision to go cashless. At that time, many visually impaired people preferred cash because they could “feel” how much money they were paying and how much change they were getting back. They were concerned about being overcharged on credit cards and not realising it until they received their credit card bills, or not realising it at all. I suppose that with Apply Pay and similar apps, screen readers can announce how much they have been billed, but I would imagine that they would also want to have that information at the point of service, not after they’ve paid. Also, the banks have issued all those beautiful, new £5 and £10 notes. It’s so much more satisfying to use those notes than it is to wave a credit card over a reader!

I haven’t paid with GBP cash for over 4 years. I use cash only in other countries that are less of a cashless society than the UK. Even in Brazil, where I have just spent three weeks, I didn’t use cash once.

In the UK, everyone accepts cards. As for payment systems going down, American Express has never gone down in my experience, and on the rare occasion that a merchant doesn’t accept Amex, I can use a Visa or MasterCard credit card instead.

I see no reason why there should not be a reasonable charge for withdrawal of cash at a remote ATM. Perhaps £1 per transaction would be appropriate with a £100 limit. If the ATM were not there people would either experience inconvenience or have to travel some distance in their own time and at their own expense. There will be a tipping point between the willingness to pay the charge for convenience and people reorganising their movements to incorporate cash collection within their other activities, so it is not a guaranteed lifeline for an under-used ATM.

Given that it is possible to order foreign currency on-line for home delivery I think there is an opportunity to provide UK banknotes in the same way but I have not seen such a service [possibly because I have not looked for one].

While there is no doubt that the number of ATM’s is contracting there have been very few – if any – reports here of actual hardship.

The days when there were queues at the cash machines on a Friday and Saturday night seem to have gone since people now pay for their refreshments with cards, increasingly by making contactless payments for rounds of drinks. The price of meals and drinks now makes carrying wads of notes around a nuisance.

Faced with this situation the banks are probably responding in the only way open to them. The banks and traders have facilitated this transition but it has probably reduced crime as well [or relocated it].

I’ll only support this campaign if ALL UK banknotes are made vegan-friendly. The polymer banknotes contain tallow – a product obtained from dead cows. Until an alternative product is used, I’m boycotting cash and making all payments by card.

The title of this Conversation is: “We want the freedom to pay. Our way.”

I would like to be able to make online payments without the risk that a small mistake in the account number or sort code could result in my money going astray without the hassle of making a test payment – something I have had to do all the time I have been using online banking.

After years of failure of the banks to address this problem we were informed that the banks would be introducing ‘confirmation of payee’, which would hopefully put an end to people losing money and not being able to recover it. According to a recent Which? press release the introduction of this protection has been delayed: https://press.which.co.uk/whichstatements/which-statement-on-delays-to-the-implementation-of-confirmation-of-payee/

I would be interested in seeing an analysis of those occasions when cash is essential. I have just returned from Singapore, New Zealand and Australia and in all those places I could use credit cards for every thing I wanted, this included all taxis and even the smallest food stall in Chinatown. My impression is they are ahead of the UK (certainly NZ has been using swipe payments for years) and show where we may be heading. Knowing where cash is needed to day one could then see what digital solutions might replace it and the impact this would have. The interesting challenge is the back up system, is cash essential for this? Might prepaid cash cards (or smartphone equivalents) be (part of) the answer?