When I worked for a certain cash machine manufacturer in their R&D there was always the need to convince people that cash will always be useful, and so to therefore would cash machines.
I don't know what the people that went to the trade shows actually told customers what future cash might have, but the behind the scenes comments about what might still need to be paid for in cash in future isn't in that list...
It was their major fear, if cash is no longer required, what purpose the ATM?
So all the work relating to contactless I did was "defensive" i.e. how does our machine still have a purpose in a cash free world.
Never really envisaged the rise in honesty box shops tbh.
I guess the behind the scenes comments refer to:
I give Clif bars to beggars, the way I'm not feeding anybody's drug/alcohol habit.
And I guess even there, it only applies at street level, with the mister bigs channelling the money through front business and so on.
Nah that's quite tame.
You need to get closer to the gutter.
I imagine the behind the scenes comments were referring to a baser, and much older trade.
That was one of them, my slip ups of referring to Coca-Cola as Coke in France is the subject of another other.
Joint bank accounts were also seen as a reason people might not want to spend by card in certain places.
Fish & Chips. Most of the chippys I've been in relieve you of cash only.
My local one has finally started taking card payments, they started around I think February.
One of the pubs in the village is only accepting cash for its take away meals. They've closed down all their electronics.
Ironically, this is the only pub where I routinely use a card for drinks purchases as it's rather expensive.
It is the only cash I've used since the lockdown started.
That's a bit odd, cash is a vector being passed between people, a card machine can be wiped down between usages.
I've not jumped on the phone tap pay thing yet as I tend to work in places I can't have my phone, but contactless bank cards are a win for me, I went from a hulking great wallet to a tiny thing with 3 cards in it.
It's likely that physical cards will end up being phased out in favour of virtual things in phones.
One less thing for the banks to have to pay for and manage.
As for the phone pay thing, I heard a while back a French manufacturer of bank and sim cards claim they are not worried about the growth in phone and online payments. Which can be interpreted in many ways...
Sounds like Gemalto.
There's plenty of things they can put their RFID chips into, including the active ones in phones...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GemaltoThink it was their predecessor Gemplus we kind of worked with a bit, I can't remember if they were pushing the transition from sticking RFID chips in the back of Nokia 3330 cases to the active chips going in the phones electronics though. It was nearly around 18 years ago after all...
I don't think there is a car minimum any more (I could be completely wrong...) but the local Gifte Shoppe for trinkets, geegaws and cards prefers contactless. And the local farm shop too has removed it's £5 minimum for cards.
The idea was that the banks would charge less for card payments than the costs of banking money both in terms of cost at the bank and in personnel time to cash up and take it to the bank.
Having walked through the city centre with 3 grand of notes I'd cashed in order to buy change and walk back to the shop with considerably less than 3 grand in coins, I understand their aim.
