Slowly, we are seeing a shift. More businesses, mostly smaller ones, are going fully cashless or nudging their customers towards this. You can see the logic. In many countries, the majority of transactions are already completed with card or smartphones, and arguably it just simplifies the operation.

For most businesses, however, this still doesn’t make sense. While card and smartphone payments have become very popular, excluding cash completely still excludes a lot of people who either depend on or just prefer to use cash. However, we are also seeing more of the self-checkout aisles in supermarkets going “card only”, forcing cash payers to use the manned checkouts.

On a day like today, when a global IT outage has brought down banking, travel and retail payment systems across the world, this is all brought into sharp focus. I went to the supermarket this morning, and was told it was cash only. The self-checkout aisle was barriered off because it was card only, which meant the manned checkouts had huge queues, and so did the cash machine outside. Goodness knows how the fully cashless coffee shop up the road is coping.

The fact is, even ignoring disasters like today, the research shows that consumers want choice. Choice in how they checkout and how they pay.

Our own global research project into the retail sector, commissioned through Kantar, discovered that 80% of consumers consider it important for retailers to provide a choice of checkout options, and 90% of consumers agree that self-checkout devices should accept all payment types (cash/card/mobile pay).

It may seem like taking cash is not worth it these days, considering the labour time involved in balancing tills, preparing deposits, refilling change floats, and so on. And it’s true, these tasks can be time-heavy. But with the right automation solutions in place, you can keep cash, but make it much more efficient. And let’s not forget the fees associated with processing card and smartphone payments

Whether you are a retailer or a restauranteur, a coffee shop or a cinema, Glory’s cash automation solutions can streamline your entire cash operation, making all of the tasks above as simple as the push of a button, saving hours of labour time. They eliminate shrinkage and human error in the process, making your cash more secure. For retailers, we can also add cash automation to your existing self-checkouts, or provide you with a fully integrated self-checkout ourselves.

If you are interested in how to hold on to your cash-paying customers, while making your cash processing vastly more efficient, let’s start a conversation sales@uk.glory-global.com to understand how Glory can help.