Last night I caught up with an old friend from school, Sam, who spent the weekend at Hay on Wye in Wales. For those of you who don't know it, this small town has around thirty second hand bookshops and hosts an annual literature festival that has welcomed speakers like Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Desmond Tutu and Boris Johnson as well as authors like Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie and Hilary Mantel. Indeed the festival has been referred to as the 'Woodstock of the Mind'.
He had a great time and came back loaded down with several hefty tomes. So why is this relevant? Whilst wandering around the town his attention was drawn to a poster in one of the shop windows. It pointed out that since the closure of all three bank branches in the town a number of customers had complained about a lack of access to cash. It told people where they could find a free to use cash machine and listed the shops that offered cashback facilities.
Sam’s experience was that most of the shops he visited accepted cards but over the weekend he also witnessed a significant number of cash purchases. I don't know whether book readers are a particular subset of the population, or indeed whether they have a specific age profile, but his reflections are mirrored in an article I discovered in the Hereford Times, a local publication. The article, entitled "Hay on Wye 'running out of money' as festival approaches" was written in April this year and highlighted the problem of accessing cash in Hay on Wye. It talked of frustrations for tourists and businesses alike.
Now it may seem as if I'm getting on my soapbox, but this is the real world. People still want to use cash and they can get upset when they are not able to do so. There has been talk of problems for social groups like the unbanked (1.2 million people while 2.2 million are almost totally reliant on cash) and these are undoubtedly true but Sam's perception was that the bibliophiles he came across were primarily middle aged and mid to higher income individuals, many of whom just happened to prefer using cash. While I have never asked, given Sam is a surgeon I imagine he is towards the upper-end of this scale!
At the end of the day it's about choice and it's about human nature. In considering barriers to a cashless society we should not neglect the fact that many people react adversely to being told what they can and cannot do and that includes how they can or cannot pay. It's not just about ability to use a particular payment mechanism, it's also about willingness to do so.
