‘A fundamental right’: UK high street chains and restaurants challenged over refusal to accept cash
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/16/uk-high-street-chains-restaurants-cash-payments?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-5
Posted by BestButtons
‘A fundamental right’: UK high street chains and restaurants challenged over refusal to accept cash
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/16/uk-high-street-chains-restaurants-cash-payments?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-5
Posted by BestButtons
29 Comments
It’s not a fundamental right because you can’t force someone to do business with you.
It’s a free market – if you don’t take cash then I’m not doing business with you. Simple.
Why does everything need more laws?
If businesses don’t want to take cash that’s up to them.
If people don’t want to go to places that don’t take cash that’s up to them.
It will sort itself out.
It’s amazing how many firms are complaining they are struggling… then at the same moment… sorry we are going to make it difficult for some customers to spend money with us…
It’s not a right but that doesn’t mean it should disappear, each business needs to consider it and decide if it’s right for them and their customers to stop using physical money.
The best way to keep cash around is teach our children how to use it properly, then they won’t be so dismissive of it.
If you won’t exchange goods and sevices for cattle or gold I won’t be doing business with you, period!
I must be one of the minority then. I don’t have a physical wallet.
I pay with my phone or watch for everything except buying things in person from Marketplace, as people tend to prefer cash.
If you wish to use physical money you should be able to, in all places, but I prefer not to.
From the point of view of these chains, card only does a few things:
Massively cuts down on the possibility of theft by staff, via skimming tills. This accounts for 4% of annual sales in a chain I worked for, and is hard to detect. Some theft will move to stock, of course, but it’s easier to spot, and you’re likely to drive thieving staff to other jobs where it’s easier to steal.
Reduces risk of robbery of sites, which in turn brings down insurance costs.
The cost to have cash collected, processed, and banked, is in the region of 2.5%, for those businesses turning over multiple millions, whereas card transactions typically cost 0.5% or less at that scale.
There’s additional labour cost to the staff having to count and process the cash too.
Psychologically, customers spend more on card than via cash, driving a higher spend per head.
Using card means individual customer habits can be more accurately tracked and monitored, which I assume is valuable too.
If you can’t pay by card, you weren’t this brand’s customer profile, so they probably don’t care that you didn’t spend anyway, as they are unlikely to turn you into a regular customer.
Overall, there’s probably a 4-5% improvement to the bottom line, going card only, presuming your customer base is likely to be carrying a smartphone.
Just put a sign up – cash not accepted and people can then walk past. Unless you are piers wotsisname brother of the old Labour leader, and you feel the need to make a scene for the sake of it.
I like card, I hate carrying cash it’s annoying. I never understood people complaining about going to a cashless society? Sounds like people are dodging the taxman, who knows.
For some reason the “cash is better for small businesses” brigade only ever seem to account for the card transaction fee (1.75% for me, no monthly fee).
What they don’t account for is
The cost of depositing cash to a business bank account, which can be higher than the cost of the card transaction fee
The fact that many banks don’t offer a change giving service for businesses any more – and if you can’t get change then you can’t offer cash
The security risk from staff with their fingers in the till
The security risk from general theft – I know some businesses around here have gone cashless after being broken into repeatedly by thieves who targeted the empty till. Next thing they know they’ve got to pay for a smashed window and they’ve lost a day’s trade while it’s fixed. Likewise the risk of getting mugged while you’re on your way to the bank to deposit it.
Cost of staff time required to cash up the till, reconcile it and take it to the bank.
In food businesses which aren’t busy enough to dedicate a member of staff to the till – there’s hygiene concerns – coins are truly filthy – if you cash up a till or even spend a while feeding coins into an amusement arcade, your fingers will frequently turn black.
All that so that Ron can exercise his ‘right’ to pay by cash.
Businesses which go cashless know that the vast majority of people carry cards, and they are happy to lose the small minority of customers who don’t. You cannot cater to everyone, and I don’t believe that anyone purchasing a £4 croissant in Gail’s is struggling to access banking.
I’m more annoyed with businesses that do the opposite. I don’t carry cash and avoid places that are cash only because:
1. It’s inconvenient to me
2. I don’t want to fund money laundering or whatever other dodgy tax avoidance scheme they have going on by not accepting card, which seems to be half the high street these days
> Ron Delnevo, chair of the Payment Choice Alliance, which campaigns for the long-term future of cash services
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> Ron Delnevo entered financial services with Euronet, the company which installed the first UK independent ATM in 1998. Ron became MD and led a successful MBO in 2003. He continued as MD until 2012. Ron has also served as a Director of the UK Payments Council and on every committee at the LINK ATM Network.
Not saying there isn’t some good discussion to have here about the use of cash, but clearly the guy behind this has some financial angle to push for this.
I’ve worked in cash processing and it’s typically MORE EXPENSIVE to handle than card by loooong way.
The only people campaigning for this are people in cash management and people who feel they need to fight everything.
Card fees have come down, there’s far less risk of fraud and theft.
With cash;
– Float / provision fees
– Counting and banking fees
– Shop bears the cost of foreign exchange for any FC
– Higher risk of employee theft
– Higher risk of tills not balancing due to mistakes
– Lots of forged notes still about
– Cost of extra CCTV and monitoring over till areas, plus maintenance and monitoring
– Cost of training on how to use a cash till, supervision, time to query dodgy notes with a supervisor, etc etc
For small businesses, they can avoid most of the above, but larger chains don’t want the hassle and cost.
Oh and cash machines often run at a loss, unless they charge a withdrawal fee (even then, it’s hard to make any profit as they’re insanely expensive to run).
TLDR; just the cash processing cost can be 2x-3x the cost of handling card, with extra risk of theft, fraud, etc.
For all those harping on about ‘legal tender’ pretending they know what it means. Spoiler alert: They don’t. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-legal-tender
Be careful what you wish for.
A cashless society like China can seem attractive, convenient and get rid of money laundering and tax evasion, but do you really want banks to know every single transaction you do and sell your data to advertising?
When I was in China, beggars had a QR code and you could donate any amount with your phone.
This also means that everyone must have a smartphone and therefore the government and corporations will know your very move.
I don’t use cash much, but I get the chills thinking about such a life.
If the government want to do something about this they should put their focus on the card fees the banks charge. If a shop and a person are doing business why is the bank getting a cut of the profit from that?
I think some of essentials need to be protected for some consumers.
Tesco already actively discriminates against anyone who doesn’t use their clubcard which gives them access to all your buying info and the right to sell it to everyone else. If you don’t agree you pay significantly higher prices.
By not accepting cash for essentials you could make it impossible for a local resident to buy food. Think of an old lady who still collects her pension in cash from the local post office and buys most of her food from the local supermarket that she can walk to. Imagine if that shop no longer takes cash and she cannot afford to travel further.
There needs to be a balance, should I be able to buy anything I want with cash ? No, it would be nightmare for car dealers if everyone paid and got paid out in cash. Should shops providing essential service only allow people with their club card and specific bank cards being able to shop there ? No. This feels like something that could be sorted out by applying simple common sense but that seems in short supply these days. Damn I sound old.
On the other hand – They should take a look at some of the vape stores, American Candy Shops, tat shops, chicken and kebab houses, Barbers and mobile phone repair places (that also sell vapes) that refuse to take card and have “cash only” signs attached to the windows – usually made out of a paper bag with the words written on in marker pen.
And then ask “why?”.
Then ask “why are these stores always empty but have lots of cash coming into the accounts?”.
And ask “How does someone afford that new Audi RS6 outside when there evidently isn’t enough customers to pay for it?”.
The lengths people will go to so they don’t have to accept a Scottish £20
Not everyone can have a bank account.
I work with people who are deemed to lack financial capacity so are given money in cash. It is unfair to say that they don’t have the right to spend money in certain environments because the retailer doesn’t deem the person worthy of service. The movement of things such as parking payments towards apps really irritates me as well. Aside from the privacy issue, not everyone has a smartphone. I have colleagues who don’t because they don’t want to be online all the time. Again, other people are not permitted to from own a smartphone due to capacity or legal restrictions. People should have choice over their actions and their ability to use car parks and other resources shouldn’t be determined by their access to cash or technology.
Not everybody fits into a neat little box.
Big brother: Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Pay by card!
Ban cash.
Then the banks can increase the charges on card transactions with no one able to do anything because suddenly there isn’t an alternative.
Banks then lobby to have rules about repaying card skimming/theft/identity fraud stripped away. Much like how water companies get away with releasing shit into the water.
Bit more different at the moment because there is the alternative of cash, but do away with that and suddenly it’s a cartel.
There are many cyberpunk stories about how cash being electronic only is a tool for control and exploitation at the hands of the powerful, but we just can’t seem to stop inventing the torment nexus.
Not everyone has access to a bank account – fleeing abuse, homeless, bank mistakes, bank overzealous in detecting fraud (which is why my bank card stopped working on holiday despite telling my bank in advance where I was going) and the good old fashioned ‘human error’, probably soon to be AI error (which we’ll accept as truth as computers ‘can’t lie’).
The main reason for using a card for everything, is very simple. The banks make more money this way, and there is a complete track and control of each individual.
It’s absolutely no use forcing businesses to take cash unless you’re also going to force banks to re-open their hundreds of closed branches so that cash can be deposited every night, and taken out in small enough denominations to have plenty of change.
A lot of decent sized towns don’t have a single bank branch now. So you either keep a pile of cash on the premises overnight, and get robbed regularly, or every night after closing some poor sap has to drive miles to find somewhere to deposit the cash.
I used to have a small business, out in the countryside in west yorkshire. Nearest town (5 mins drive) had a NatWest, so I opened a NatWest business account. Few years later they closed it, and the nearest branch was then in the centre of Huddersfield. There’s nowhere to park, it takes half an hour to drive there and the business counter where I have to go to pay/withdraw cash in shuts at 5. My other two options were Barnsley or Wakefield, both further. Getting a decent cash float is a pain in the arse for the same reason – if you get cleared out of fivers or pound coins (because cash machines only give £10 notes or bigger, so that’s what everyone carries) where do you go to get a bunch of change? I used to be able to go five minutes down the road, cash a cheque and get it in coins and small notes. Not any more.
Forcing a cash economy on businesses only works if the banking infrastructure is there to support it.
Discriminatory against people with disabilities & in particular people with dementia
I no longer accept cash because I have no means of paying it in. It’s an hours round trip to pay money into the nearest branch. Parking in any town is no longer cheap or convenient, banks are only open when I’m open myself. Only I can pay money into my bank account due to laundering laws. Handling cash without even considering bank charges makes my business unviable
What I never understand in these arguments is why those that have found they can forgo cash are so determined to convince those that still use it that they don’t need to.
Do you really need me to validate your decision by also going cashless? Does requiring businesses to accept cash have any real negative effect on your life?
It’s the same cult like, “I prefer it and if you don’t there must be something wrong with you” mentality that airfryer owners seem to have.
Fuck em, if they don’t want to take my money I’ll go somewhere else.