A new report from the Finance Industry Peak Body, UK Finance, which represents more than 300 firms in the UK, reveals that cash remained the second most popular payment method, after debit cards – with an estimated three million people still relying on it. Their research suggests 1.5 million mainly used cash in 2023, up from 900,000 the previous year.
This was it appears an unexpected jump in the number of people who mainly use notes and coins for their daily spending, despite all the propaganda that the UK moving closer to becoming a cashless society. A UK Finance spokesperson said it would monitor the situation regarding people who mainly used cash to see if this was the start of a trend or merely a “statistical blip”. We think it’s more than that.
As I highlighted in a recent post the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society. Even if the data forecasts that cash will represent only 6% of payments in a decade’s time, it’s critical if other systems go down, as we saw with the outage last week” UK Finance said. This is as close to the Swedish message of make sue you keep cash on hand in case of emergencies as it gets, without saying it!
In Australia, as I reported recently there was also a rise in cash usage, despite the banks best worst efforts, and the recommendation from the recent Senate Inquiry into Regional Branch closures also recommend making access to cash an essential service.
Its simple really people, keep using cash, and we retain a backup in case of emergency. We also know people using cash regularly has a better handle on their finances, teaches kids the real value of money, and acts as an antidote to tap tap credit based society, where banks make a dollar from every transaction, which costs us all. While the war on cash is far from over, use it, or lose it. Its that simple!
http://www.martinnorth.com/
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