Things you often Wonder

[blandy]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

I still take more than 50% of my fares in cash, its not because I'm not offering the card alternative (even though it costs me money to do that), its because that is the way people want or have to pay. Not everyone has access to bank accounts, apple pay and android pay etc require a device and not all banks give access to those facilities either. Some people aren't even allowed to have a contactless card, let alone use contactless on a device with a higher spending limit

There are many many people out there in this situation

Yeah, I pay for taxis with cash, too. At least up north I do. Darn sarf seem to pretty much only do cards, mind

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

Also illegal since Jan 2018

People’s Republic of Barry, we’ll charge what we like.

 

[bickster]

Just now, blandy said:

Yeah, I pay for taxis with cash, too. At least up north I do. Darn sarf seem to pretty much only do cards, mind

The real issue with paying by card is the method. If it involves registering your card details with the taxi company, well that goes where the sun don't shine in my book. If its a Customer Present Contactless / Chip and Pin Payment I have no issue with it

[blandy]

6 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

would be interesting to see the response of the average shopper if when they were paying they had a couple of pence extra added to their bill specifically for paypal or whoever or whatever ‘convenience’ device they use.

The flip side is the convenience of the seller. Cashing up, taking the cash down the bank, petty theft, more complex accounting. I know card issuers charge a fee, but they also save a ton of work. When I were a lad and worked in a shop for a bit, I used to get dobbed for taking the, er, takings to the bank. Proper pain it was. 

[blandy]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

The real issue with paying by card is the method. If it involves registering your card details with the taxi company, well that goes where the sun don't shine in my book. If its a Customer Present Contactless / Chip and Pin Payment I have no issue with it

Yeah. Mainly for work down south, but no registering, just the standard card reader chip and pin like in a shop

[chrisp65]

Just now, blandy said:

The flip side is the convenience of the seller. Cashing up, taking the cash down the bank, petty theft, more complex accounting. I know card issuers charge a fee, but they also save a ton of work. When I were a lad and worked in a shop for a bit, I used to get dobbed for taking the, er, takings to the bank. Proper pain it was. 

Yes, I can see how it’s a pain for Lidl. I can also see how £25 a month for a reader is not a major issue for Lidl.

But when you have volunteers that love counting up coins and the bloody madmen ADD 65p to the tally to make it up to a round number and then take it down the bank voluntarily, as opposed to renting two devices and running power of WiFi out to the north and south turnstiles….

I mean that’s just my specific experience, there must be thousands of cottage industry / car boot / market stall type traders where cash is just still better.

Plus, as Bicks says, plenty of people that for whatever reason, financial challenges, addictions, learning difficulties, these people need actual cash. 

 

[bickster]

7 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I can also see how £25 a month for a reader is not a major issue for Lidl.

Sumup AIr - £29 for the unit (outright purchase not rental) - it links by bluetooth to a smart phone. 1.69% per transaction or 9p every £5 taken. Money gets deposited into nominated account in three working days

By far the best / cheapest solution we've found so far. The units themselves are often on offer at £15, sometimes online, sometimes at Ryman where you can buy them off the shelf

[blandy]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I mean that’s just my specific experience, there must be thousands of cottage industry / car boot / market stall type traders where cash is just still better.

I totally accept that. I wonder how long before the banks basically force, or coerce the little people to use cards and card readers. I bet it’s not long

[limpid]

7 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Plus, as Bicks says, plenty of people that for whatever reason, financial challenges, addictions, learning difficulties, these people need actual cash. 

I saw a standard credit card with a built in LCD screen (from Barclaycard) about 6 years ago. There is no reason that contactless PAYG cards with a display showing the balance couldn't be used by all those categories of people as it would be functionally identical to cash. They aren't there yet, but they will be.

And then shops can stop paying the additional insurance premium for handling and storing cash or maintenance contracts for tills/registers.

I don't carry cash or a wallet any more. I also pay for most things with an NFC ring so I don't have to advertise my phone or watch. I actively avoid places which insist on cash (and like a previous poster said, I'm now primed to think they are dodgy).

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, limpid said:

I saw a standard credit card with a built in LCD screen (from Barclaycard) about 6 years ago. There is no reason that contactless PAYG cards with a display showing the balance couldn't be used by all those categories of people as it would be functionally identical to cash. They aren't there yet, but they will be.

There’s also the various “load up” cards from loads of places, using current tech. The future is already here.

[Ingram85]

3 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

I carried round a fire wallet for a few months which used to make me feel like a very powerful magician.

 

Must have burned a hole in your pocket eh? EH?! 

[chrisp65]

37 minutes ago, limpid said:

I don't carry cash or a wallet any more.  I actively avoid places which insist on cash (and like a previous poster said, I'm now primed to think they are dodgy).

I have a container full of coins in the car, for places such as Bolton, and plenty of others, which still have pay by coin parking, and then an hourly rate that isn’t in round pounds.

£1.80 in coins for 3 hours. Meaning I either need a minimum of 4 different coins, or I can use two coins if I’m prepared to give the town of Bolton a 20p tip.

Worst one was somewhere over towards Ipswich, let’s say Ipswich for the hell of it. Parking: 20p

It must cost them more than that to collect it.

A fair few second hand record shops are still cash only, I should imagine that’s very much so they put just enough through the books.

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Sumup AIr - £29 for the unit (outright purchase not rental) - it links by bluetooth to a smart phone. 1.69% per transaction or 9p every £5 taken. Money gets deposited into nominated account in three working days

By far the best / cheapest solution we've found so far. The units themselves are often on offer at £15, sometimes online, sometimes at Ryman where you can buy them off the shelf

Sumup was the one we were looking at, it was £50 for two units last summer. But, people balked at the cut of our takings they were then getting.

It was very much a case of we have a guy that writes the programme for free. A couple of guys that work the turnstiles for free, a guy that bags and banks the money for free, ball boys that work for free and a kit man that’s a volunteer. Then we give some billionaire arsehole from California a cut of the takings.

Very often, volunteers are of an age where they see a goalden goal scratch card as a technological leap too far.

 

[limpid]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

It was very much a case of we have a guy that writes the programme for free. A couple of guys that work the turnstiles for free, a guy that bags and banks the money for free, ball boys that work for free and a kit man that’s a volunteer. Then we give some billionaire arsehole from California a cut of the takings.

Have you asked your insurers whether they would reduce your premiums if you aren't handling any cash? I'm curious, because the risks from theft and robbery for a cash business must be measurable actuarially and therefore able to be deducted.

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, limpid said:

Have you asked your insurers whether they would reduce your premiums if you aren't handling any cash? I'm curious, because the risks from theft and robbery for a cash business must be measurable actuarially and therefore able to be deducted.

It’s definitely a question I’ll pass on to the guys (I’m on a bit of a break from it all this season coming other than heckling from the sidelines). It’ll come eventually, it’s inevitable. I thought I’d pretty much won them over last year as the mood music was that we could pitch a case for how and why fans could be allowed in and it looked like a great angle for those that wouldn’t / couldn’t pre pay. But then we never ever got the pilot off the ground, they just found it easier to close down sport.

I’m stuck between two sides here. There’s a logic to the expanded use of ‘cash free’, we have had a problem previously with people finding it difficult to resist dipping in to the bag of takings. But I resent the vast wealth it generates for parasite software companies.

Race Night is a massive money earner, but I can’t see dabbing £2 and winning £10 back via an app having the same appeal as winning actual cash. 

I also know a lot of people exist in a cash economy for a whole host of reasons around debt and poverty. So I’m trying to quietly edge my way in to helping in a very tiny way with setting up a new community bank based around domestic scale cash transactions, a glorified credit union.

[sharkyvilla]

4 hours ago, blandy said:

The flip side is the convenience of the seller. Cashing up, taking the cash down the bank, petty theft, more complex accounting. I know card issuers charge a fee, but they also save a ton of work. When I were a lad and worked in a shop for a bit, I used to get dobbed for taking the, er, takings to the bank. Proper pain it was. 

Yeah my local team opened their new ground a couple of seasons ago and they wanted to go cashless as much as possible for those reasons.  I think you have to pay a fee if you want to pay in above a certain amount of cash to the bank anyway.  The idea was if you got a membership card you could load up money on it and get about 50p off a pint or something like that, obviously to encourage fans to buy beer at the club rather than a local pub and reduce handling cash.  They didn't quite get the technology up in time before covid hit unfortunately.

[chrisp65]

20 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

Yeah my local team opened their new ground a couple of seasons ago and they wanted to go cashless as much as possible for those reasons.  I think you have to pay a fee if you want to pay in above a certain amount of cash to the bank anyway.  The idea was if you got a membership card you could load up money on it and get about 50p off a pint or something like that, obviously to encourage fans to buy beer at the club rather than a local pub and reduce handling cash.  They didn't quite get the technology up in time before covid hit unfortunately.

I really shouldn’t confuse matters by mentioning our bar does have a card machine.

[Rugeley Villa]

Talking of card machines, certain ones that charge you for using them send me angry to the point that it effects my mood for a good half hour at least .

[bickster]

1 hour ago, Rugeley Villa said:

Talking of card machines, certain ones that charge you for using them send me angry to the point that it effects my mood for a good half hour at least .

I'm kind of like that myself but you have to remember that these machines are not owned by the banks but by third parties. The third party invests in the machine, the insurance, the banks etc  That can't be free, somewhere down the line, they have to make money or what is the point? They are providing a service that is there for your convenience, they can't really be expected to do that for free

I avoid them like the plague and tbh, I don't use cashpoints much (if at all) any more anyway but I also suspect two things will be happening in the near future. The price for using them will go up and the machines will start to disappear because they won't be profitable for anyone to run otherwise

[chrisp65]

The independent machines broke the market.

The High Street banks would counter charge each other and as long as they all had a number of machines proportionate to the number of their customers and bank branches, then the counter charges of 50p a pop sort of worked out.

Then, the number of cash machine thefts and frauds started to escalate. There are far more cash machine robberies than you would think just by watching the news. You never hear of machines being targeted whilst being filled do you? Never ever makes the news that one.

Couple that, with people’s propensity to grumble about paying £1.99 to withdraw £20… but still doing it, and it becomes a bit of a death spiral for the big players. Their machines are ‘outside’ and a relatively soft target. The new boys aren’t banks and don’t issue cards, so they are charging every bank 50p for every use, but not being counter charged. Then they are charging the punter £1.99 so they quite rapidly get their installation costs returned. Plus, very often their machines are inside premises, so less vulnerable to attack so less losses.

They have become an expensive inconvenience for the High Street banks. By ‘they’ I mean domestic customers wanting traditional banking services. Buy some mortgage and insurance products and **** off, this popping in to the bank to talk to a human or draw out a tenner or pay in the coins from your shop is an expensive ballache. Nothing about High Street banking is sexy enough these days for the High Street banks to be interested in it.

 

[Rugeley Villa]

10 minutes ago, bickster said:

I'm kind of like that myself but you have to remember that these machines are not owned by the banks but by third parties. The third party invests in the machine, the insurance, the banks etc  That can't be free, somewhere down the line, they have to make money or what is the point? They are providing a service that is there for your convenience, they can't really be expected to do that for free

I avoid them like the plague and tbh, I don't use cashpoints much (if at all) any more anyway but I also suspect two things will be happening in the near future. The price for using them will go up and the machines will start to disappear because they won't be profitable for anyone to run otherwise

Didn’t look at it that way . I just thought they were being money grabbing clearings in the woods. What cracked me more than anything was the missus used it 3 times in the space of an hour . Instead of drawing enough out, she forgot she needed more for whatever reason. I felt like putting her head through the cash machine .