The recently published Treasury call for evidence, 'Cash and Digital Payments in the New Economy', admitted that there was a need for cash payments to continue and that steps needed to be taken to ensure this. With this in mind, on a recent visit to a hypermarket I met a very agitated young lady at the self-checkouts. She was carrying a basket full of Easter eggs and was shouting loudly 'all I want to do is pay for them with real money!'.

It appears all the self-service machines had been configured to accept card-only payments. I'll make two observations. I had a trolley full of items and had chosen to pay at a checkout with a cashier. The queue was quite long, and a number of people empathised with the lady. Two of them said that they too wanted to pay using cash but were denied access to the self-service option. Whatever happened to choice and convenience? The other thing that happened was that the lady involved simply dropped the basket and left the store, leaving a member of staff to return the items to the appropriate shelves.

I'd make a couple of points

• This was no 'downmarket' store, but a number of the people I met chose to use cash
• All were disappointed at the incident and commented that they were in some way being discriminated against because of their chosen payment method
• The queue at my checkout was unnecessarily long because some people were denied access to the self-checkout option - before anyone questions my choice I was doing the weekly shop alone and this is one situation where I can't multi-task!
• The store lost the customer

As an onlooker my overall impression of customer service wasn't good. Perhaps the store has an agenda to reduce cash payments but from my own limited experience forcing change in this way only succeeds in antagonising a significant number of customers.

In the UK cash accounted for 40 percent of all payments in 2016 and will still account for 21 percent of payments by 2026. In my above example that's still a lot of potentially dissatisfied customers.

2.7 million people are still totally reliant on cash and a further 45 million use it alongside other payments. Cash remains particularly important to older customers and those on low incomes - only 2 percent of those aged between 55 and 64 rarely use cash and over a half of those with an annual household income below £15,000 prefer to use cash.

The government recognises the continued importance of cash and in its call for evidence the Treasury notes that 'the government needs to ensure that the ability to pay by cash is available for those that need it'.

Cash is going to be around for some time. Limiting people's ability to pay by cash will disaffect certain sectors, impact on how people view your customer service and will eventually impact the bottom line as customers take their business elsewhere. With nearly 50 million individuals in the UK still using cash, the smart response is to manage cash payments in such a way that preserves customer choice, lowers operational costs and enhances profitability. At Glory we are already enabling thousands of customers worldwide to effectively and efficiently manage still large and important volumes of cash payments, even in the changing world in which we all live.

Cash may not always be king but don't assume it is suddenly going to disappear. You ignore it at your peril and those who best manage its use can still gain competitive advantage.