According to a survey, 14% of shops have turned cashless over the last year, with more than half of businesses that no longer accept cash making that decision within the last year. The cost of handling cash is a factor for businesses going cashless, with about half of retailers paying more than £50 per month to handle cash deposits, and 15% paying over £200 per month. About 20% of businesses that went cashless did so due to perceived threat of fraud, while about 20% did so due to security concerns like theft or violence.
Nearly as many businesses highlighted lack of customer demand for cash as a reason for going cashless. Despite this trend, 77% of High Street businesses still accept cash. There is conflicting data on cash usage: around half of in-store purchases are still made in cash, while cash makes up fewer than 10% of payments made in shops.
When I started I wanted it just to be a cash store, because that's the way I've been brought up. I didn't really want to go into using a credit card machine which is an extra cost. But then over time I realised that a lot of people just use their cards and don't use cash.
Shop owner Alex White of Arkwhites said, 'When I started I wanted it just to be a cash store, because that's the way I've been brought up. I didn't really want to go into using a credit card machine which is an extra cost. ' Nearly half of businesses on the high street want to protect the choice to accept cash in the future, and more than half of businesses believe the decline in cash use is harmful to the high street.
More than half of businesses would support mandating cash acceptance. MPs on the Treasury Committee warned of a lack of data on cash acceptance and said the government should be ready to force shops to accept cash, though what specific government actions are being considered remains unclear. Chris Owen, payments policy adviser at the British Retail Consortium, stated, 'Cash is an important form of payment for a sizeable minority of the population, representing almost 20 per cent of all transactions.
This shows that we must continue to give businesses the option to bank their cash locally, and keep a close eye on acceptance. But is also shows that businesses are committed to allowing people the choice of how to pay.