Britons opting to use cash to rein in budget, says Post Office
MORE Britons are turning to cash to manage their budgets as prices soar, the Post Office said on Monday (8) after it saw a record level of withdrawals over its counters in July.
Personal cash withdrawals rose almost eight pe cent monthon-month to £801 million, it said, noting it was only the second time they had exceeded £800m after December 2021.
With British inflation hitting a 40-year high of 9.4 per cent in June, the Post Office said more Britons were opting to use cash to manage their budgets “often on a day-by-day basis”.
British supermarkets have also said shoppers are buying less and shopping more often, to better control their budgets.
The Post Office also attributed some of the withdrawals to holiday makers needing cash for “staycations” in Britain this summer, while the figures were also boosted by around £90m worth of payouts to people eligible to receive energy bill support from the government.
The popularity of cash has been falling for years in Britain, with debit card transactions overtaking notes and coins in 2017, helped by contactless payments, according to banking industry body UK Finance.
The trend accelerated sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the number of cash withdrawals from ATMs was around 40 per cent lower than pre-pandemic levels in July, statistics from UK cash machine network operator LINK showed.
The Post Office’s banking director Martin Kearsley said its data clearly showed that Britain was anything but a cashless society. The Post Office said personal cash deposits reached £1.35 billion in July, up two per cent on June, and a record £3.32bn in cash deposits and withdrawals were handled in the month.