The Lemon Fool

Once a monopoly (no cash alternative) and you'll really start to pay

Your local retailer will likely more than welcome you paying for a £32.26 (whatever) purchase amount via a £20 note, £10 note and £2.26 via a touch/card payment - that avoids you having all that loose change build up, bolsters the retailers profits, reduces the banks profits and helps avoid establishing a banking monopoly situation where in the absence of any alternatives they'll be able charge whatever fees they can collectively get away with.

1nvest wrote:Once a monopoly (no cash alternative) and you'll really start to pay

Your local retailer will likely more than welcome you paying for a £32.26 (whatever) purchase amount via a £20 note, £10 note and £2.26 via a touch/card payment - that avoids you having all that loose change build up, bolsters the retailers profits, reduces the banks profits and helps avoid establishing a banking monopoly situation where in the absence of any alternatives they'll be able charge whatever fees they can collectively get away with.

I bet they wouldn't. What a faff.

Scott.

Retailers: Once a monopoly (no bottling company alternative) and you'll really start to pay

Your customers will likely more than welcome you selling a pint (or whatever) of milk via a 500ml bottle and the remaining 56 ml in a cup for them to drink right away - that avoids you having different size containers to the EU (saving you money), but you can still sell in pints! which customers will love, and having your own milk dispensers and cups helps avoid establishing a bottling monopoly situation where in the absence of any alternatives bottlers will be able charge whatever packaging costs they can collectively get away with.



GS
Now just need to find a 2nd class stamp and a bunch of 1p stamps to make the Viz Top Tips publishing deadline and break the First Class Stamp Monopoly...

I often do something like that but the other way round as I have quite lot of coins floating around. At the Co op self service tills I quite often throw change into the machine; it counts it and tells me how much more I owe which I then pay by card.

That has got nothing to do with affecting anybody else’s profits or not; just my convenience.

Dod

A piece in the Mail Online today https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/car ... index.html

A few excerpts:
The small local businesses we rely on every day are being forced to hand over thousands of pounds a year in expensive transaction fees, as card transactions soar.
Far from hanging up 'no cash' signs and joining larger companies in the drive towards a cashless society, many are starting to plead with customers to revert to cash.

For every card payment, businesses pay four separate fees, which can total up to 2.5 per cent, according to online transaction provider GoCardless.
This includes a merchant service charge, which covers the cost of processing payments, a terminal charge to have a chip and pin machine, authorisation fee, which tests that a payment will go through with the customer's bank, and a gateway fee, which covers the cost of processing transactions online.
This means, for example, every time you buy a pint of milk for 90p from your corner shop and pay by card, the store owner could be paying the equivalent of 8p in fees.
As a result, many small businesses are encouraging customers to pay in cash.

Meanwhile, last week Dan Lione, owner of Project Pies in Nottingham, asked customers to pay in cash to help cut his card payment fees, which are now £300 a month.
Dan says he will give every customer who pays in cash up to £1 off their purchase.

So perhaps not everything is lost yet.

Maroochydore wrote:Dan says he will give every customer who pays in cash up to £1 off their purchase.

So perhaps not everything is lost yet.

An obvious way to change the balance between your customers using cash and using a card, is to give a discount for whichever method you wish to encourage.

That saves having to be cash-only and card-only, both of which I have seen

Dod101 wrote:At the Co op self service tills I quite often throw change into the machine; it counts it and tells me how much more I owe which I then pay by card.

I used to do that at both my local Co-op and Tesco but annoyingly both have made their self-service tills cash card only in the last twelve months.

Hypster wrote:

Dod101 wrote:At the Co op self service tills I quite often throw change into the machine; it counts it and tells me how much more I owe which I then pay by card.

I used to do that at both my local Co-op and Tesco but annoyingly both have made their self-service tills cash only in the last twelve months.

Really? Most supermarkets seem to be gravitating to card only, or at least the majority of self service machines being card only with just a decreasing few accepting both cards and cash.

Oops, I’ve got cash on the brain. I meant to type card only.

mc2fool wrote:

Hypster wrote:I used to do that at both my local Co-op and Tesco but annoyingly both have made their self-service tills cash only in the last twelve months.

Really? Most supermarkets seem to be gravitating to card only, or at least the majority of self service machines being card only with just a decreasing few accepting both cards and cash.

Depends. The ticket machines at railway stations still take cash. (Although not a £50 note). Handy if you do not want to create a paper trail of where you went.

In my experience it is smaller retail shops, businesses and establishments that are more likely to favour cash. And building contractors of course

1nvest wrote:Once a monopoly (no cash alternative) and you'll really start to pay

Your local retailer will likely more than welcome you paying for a £32.26 (whatever) purchase amount via a £20 note, £10 note and £2.26 via a touch/card payment - that avoids you having all that loose change build up, bolsters the retailers profits, reduces the banks profits and helps avoid establishing a banking monopoly situation where in the absence of any alternatives they'll be able charge whatever fees they can collectively get away with.

More likely not. We will be going cash free pretty soon in my business. Reduces costs, we get the money* quicker, assists our accounting and reduces what is often politely referred to as "shrinkage".

* our ability to spend it.

dealtn wrote: We will be going cash free pretty soon in my business. Reduces costs, we get the money* quicker, assists our accounting and reduces what is often politely referred to as "shrinkage".

* our ability to spend it.

Your ability to get away with that depends on how competitive the market is where you operate. If you have a monopoly or strong pricing power, then you may not lose so much business as a result. Or you could lose a lot. The market ultimately decides that, and not your business.

The problem is not so much paying by either method. It is the taking away of choice. My local cafe has gone cash only. My barber is cash only. But a couple of other local places are card only. I will do either if I really like the business, but not otherwise.

Staff who typically get tips usually prefer cash, so that is another factor.

The selling point of electronic payments is that they are cheaper than handling cash.

However if as is likely they become the ONLY way to pay, we will see the charges creeping ever upwards as we have seen with Ebay fees.

Lootman wrote:

dealtn wrote: We will be going cash free pretty soon in my business. Reduces costs, we get the money* quicker, assists our accounting and reduces what is often politely referred to as "shrinkage".

* our ability to spend it.

Your ability to get away with that depends on how competitive the market is where you operate. If you have a monopoly or strong pricing power, then you may not lose so much business as a result. Or you could lose a lot. The market ultimately decides that, and not your business.

There is no "getting away with it", not sure why your language is so provocative. In our industry it has become normalised, and once the initial few grumbles have happened the vast majority not just accept it but understand the reasons behind it. They benefit from lower prices. Of the 92 (ish) national competitors the clear minority now aren't cashless.

It isn't (yet?) possible for us to introduce alternative pricings for different payment methods - it might be easier for people to notice some of the hidden costs of service provision if we did, but I can't see it happening any time soon. I remember the days when it was possible for retailers to charge higher prices for credit card transactions, and some didn't pay that way as a result. Charging more "for cash" might exist at some point but in the same way that "free" banking will continue to exist for years to come, I think a cash surcharge is a long way off.

What a lot of people don't realise is that when a business takes cash to a bank they are charged (yes really) up to 2% to deposit their own money. So there's not a lot of difference.

dealtn wrote:It isn't (yet?) possible for us to introduce alternative pricings for different payment methods - it might be easier for people to notice some of the hidden costs of service provision if we did, but I can't see it happening any time soon. I remember the days when it was possible for retailers to charge higher prices for credit card transactions, and some didn't pay that way as a result. Charging more "for cash" might exist at some point but in the same way that "free" banking will continue to exist for years to come, I think a cash surcharge is a long way off.

It may not be possible or easy to implement differential pricing based on payment type. But I have certainly seen discounts offered for paying by cash. And minimum amount for using a card. So you could in theory offer a discount for using a card, although that seems less likely to me.

That said I will often use a card to get cashback, points or miles, and that is a form of discount.

pompeygazza wrote:What a lot of people don't realise is that when a business takes cash to a bank they are charged (yes really) up to 2% to deposit their own money. So there's not a lot of difference.

So in that case, there shouldn't be a problem to accept either cash or card, surely?

Steve

PS I know I've said it before, but (hand on heart) I have NEVER seen a pub, restaurant or shop that says 'card only'.

PPS Though that's in Cambridgeshire. I guess for Londoners, that's 'somewhere foreign'.

stevensfo wrote:PS I know I've said it before, but (hand on heart) I have NEVER seen a pub, restaurant or shop that says 'card only'.

Me neither, but most pubs I go to these days hold up the card reader machine without being asked, and have to do a bit of a double take if someone wants to pay cash.

Scott.

swill453 wrote:

stevensfo wrote:PS I know I've said it before, but (hand on heart) I have NEVER seen a pub, restaurant or shop that says 'card only'.

Me neither, but most pubs I go to these days hold up the card reader machine without being asked, and have to do a bit of a double take if someone wants to pay cash.

Scott.

I've had the opposite experience when paying at a table. The bill comes in a nice leather-bound wallet, and we slip the notes inside.

If we ask to pay by card, the poor waiter/waitress sighs and has to go back to bring the machine.

Besides which, I'm hearing of cards being cloned more and more, so it's becoming a serious matter of security.

Cash reigns supreme!

Steve

swill453 wrote:

stevensfo wrote:PS I know I've said it before, but (hand on heart) I have NEVER seen a pub, restaurant or shop that says 'card only'.

Me neither, but most pubs I go to these days hold up the card reader machine without being asked, and have to do a bit of a double take if someone wants to pay cash.

I recently had that experience. I still declined the card reader and patiently counted out the exact change consisting of 20s, 10s, 5s and a variety of coins.

They had a sign up saying "no cash unless you have exact change". So I obliged. If their cunning plan was to deter me from using cash. then it failed.