More and more businesses are opting not to take cash – it’s expensive, slow and makes them vulnerable to robbery. But millions of people don’t have bank accounts. Will they be cut out of this new economy?
A strange thing happened to me recently. I was in a bar, but I couldn’t buy a beer. Or, to be exact, I refused to. I was in Öl at Hatch, a shipping container complex of food and drink purveyors on Oxford Road in Manchester, where the bar – to my surprise – was card-only. No cash. They had no way of taking my £10 note. It was stalemate. I had cards on me. But, in instinctive solidarity with the unbanked, those paid in cash or those who, like me (for years, a permanently skint freelancer), still budget in cash, I stood firm (and thirsty), irritated that any business would dictate how its customers pay.
I sat down to eat a curry I had bought (with old-fashioned cash) from another Hatch unit. Then, an Öl barman brought over a conciliatory glass of beer, on the house. I told him the bar’s cash-free policy is elitist; who wants to be forced to put a pint on a credit card? He talked about time saved and how not having cash on the premises was safer for the staff. We politely agreed to disagree.
Flat-broke people are not eating in restaurants and everyone in London has a bank card: 12-year-olds, 90-year-olds
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