Discuss all about Going Cashless

The elderly in London travel for free with an Oyster Freedom Pass.

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Unlike something like Tether in the crypto world which is pegged at 1:1 to USD, we do not have any visibility with traditional banks to prove that they actually have that much liquidity. Having £1000 in the bank online account does not mean they always will be able to dish out £1000 cash. I have heard plenty of stories with people being asked all sorts of questions when they wanted to withdraw a large of cash for buying a car etc.

I’d be very cautious with Tether.

They very clearly state you have no right to US$ for your Tether.

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Isn’t Tether really really shady?

Most cryptocurrencies are unstable at the moment because there’s a lot of hype and they’re used more for speculation than anything else, but when the time comes for a currency that can’t be easily controlled by governments (and cash is no longer an option), their value will stabilise.

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I normally keep a tenner on me for emergencies but use my card 99.9% of the time.

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I firmly believe that governments will always control crypto in one way or another. Be it Tether, UDSC, PAX and the likes. They will force exchanges to use KYC for high transactions and find one way or the other to tag transactions. It’s a pipe dream. However blockchain on a whole has useful applications to maintain ledgers for banks in a uniform and systematic fashion, as compared to the different standards of book keeping across the world.

My default is to go out with just my phone now. I will occasionally take my wallet with my cards in but have not carried any cash for about four years.

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They will force exchanges to use KYC for high transactions

Just like they would do with cash. I mean how would you otherwise get a high amount of cash? You’d need a bank account to be able to withdraw some at the very least.

If governments start getting malicious, cash is no safer than crypto. In both cases, exchanges won’t be an option, the only way would be to use crypto directly - get paid in crypto, trade with it, etc.

I feel like the alien in this group :alien:

I tend to carry £50-£100 on me most days ‘just in case’. Same on the continent, I would tend to carry around €100 in cash on the first day, but pay by card where possible.

Until I started using Monzo, I budgeted ‘old school’ by drawing out a wad of cash at the start of the month and divvying up envelopes for month with ‘groceries money’, ‘fuel money’ etc - as I spend close to £600/m on diesel it’s really important for me to have that money ring-fenced. I’m fully embracing pots now though and on my next salary payment plan to divvy it up into pots.

It’s fairly rare that I actually withdraw cash for day-to-day spending though, most is done on card. I’m not brave enough to leave the cards behind and go fully mobile in case my battery dies.

My friends and I enjoy a regular friendly poker game, where the usual tenners end up passed back and forth from week to week - the presence of cold hard cash avoids awkward promises of “I’ll transfer you what I owe at the end” :joy:

For those worried about losing cash, it is a small risk - I have lost my wallet twice in the last 10yrs or so, costing me probably £50-100 plus the usual inconvenience of calling for card replacements. That is in fact a benefit of having cards linked to GooglePay these days, and online banking - make a quick transfer to a legacy instant access savings account and withdraw some cash to tide me over until the card replacements arrive.

Regards fears of being mugged:

  • I rarely have that fear
  • Losing out on a little cash to maintain my well-being is a risk I am more than happy to take

Essay over :see_no_evil:

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I find this very strange (no attack intended) - I can’t remember the last time I had more than £20 (for my haircut) in cash!

I tend to do the same, only through a spreadsheet/ pots style system - I do write down my budget but that usually just gets lost!

I know that Apple Pay is technically unlimited via contactless but I read somewhere that it is supplier dependent so I’m not brave enough to carry just my phone!

My big thing for not carrying around cash is that for whatever reason I don’t see the cash as part of my “overall balance” I’ll spend it very quickly on things that I wouldn’t have if I just had my card (don’t ask why!) - and then I have the issue of having 100s of 1ps, 5p and 20ps everywhere!

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I know that Apple Pay is technically unlimited via contactless but I read somewhere that it is supplier dependent so I’m not brave enough to carry just my phone!

It’s fine. Retailers you actually want to spend more than 30£ at will support CDCVM and won’t have an issue processing even over a thousand pounds transactions (successfully bough a new MacBook with my Apple Watch, no issues).

Your biggest risk with going Apple Pay only is if your battery dies and you don’t have a separate device (second phone, watch, etc) or a charger/battery pack with you, or if you actually need to withdraw cash (contactless ATMs do exist but they’re crippled on purpose to only work with its own bank’s cards, even though technically it should work fine with any card).

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I haven’t carried cash since my first debit card; I believe this was a short time after starting college so around 2013-14?

I’ve only been caught out once recently when I wanted to buy a spare charger for my Mi Band. (I was told they couldn’t take card for transactions under a fiver; I now have a spare silicone wrist band too because of this. :wink:)

I have both Mastercard and a Visa card just in case.

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Cheers for this, personally I carry my wallet everywhere anyway (its fairly unimposing and just fits in my jeans) but good to know that I don’t have to pull it out!

I hate cash and always try and pay by Google pay where possible. I do, however, always have my card with me. I only tend to use cash in my village hairdresser and sandwich shop as they don’t take cards.

I’ve literally just returned from Tesco, which was incredibly frustrating. They won’t accept Google pay over £30, and their fuel dispensers don’t accept Tandem credit cards. Had I not had multiple cards with me I’d have been out of luck.

Phone payments, in addition to being more secure, are easier for me as I have no feeling in one hand. It’s easier to use the phone than mess about extracting a card from my wallet. I don’t carry loose cards as the few times I’ve done that I’ve ended up snapping them in my pocket!

I tweeted them and their reply was that they are trialing high value contactless in a limited number of stores and that the fuel dispenser may be old. I did reply, informing them the fuel station in question was closed for a month in September while it was refurbished.

Your words “Retailers you actually want to spend more than 30£ at will support CDCVM” are remarkably accurate. I’ll now give Sainsbury’s the £2.5k per year I spend on fuel and stick with Sainsbury’s and Lidl for groceries :grinning:

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While I don’t relate to what you describe at all it is very good to have diversity of experience in the thread :slight_smile:

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I normally keep enough cash for a tip at a restaurant or parking. I would never tip at a restaurant not in cash as I was a waitress and it then gets split…

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I try to have around 30-40 quid on me for emergencies , I think that’s a reasonable amount roughly a taxi fare across town.

Always better to be prepared than stuck.

About getting mugged, it’s just something that you have to expect to happen at some point and I keep 2 cards at home.

This is another reason I keep my old NatWest account alive as their app allows you to draw out cash from one of their ATMs without having a card on you.

I make a point of never carrying cash and it is extremely rare for me to be caught out by not having cash. There are the odd occasions when I do need cash and then I have carefully planned which ATM to go to, allowing myself sufficient time - but then on the day that ATM was out of action - which is very frustrating!

I always say I don’t carry cash because invariably if I do, my other half raids my wallet, so it’s just easier not to have any.

The other plus point is that cash disappears and usually you can’t remember what you bough. At least with a debit card you have a record of where you spent your money!

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Very true… being on a night out and remembering you have cash on hand can often end in an impromptu round of drinks!

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