The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
The big cash ban: how shops have used coronavirus to kill off real money
Shoppers face coins and notes being offlimits under the guise of public health fears, reports Harry Brennan
His blood sugar levels were dangerously low. James Boswell, 39, had been sitting in a traffic jam on the M25 for three hours. A long-term diabetic, he knew he had to eat something soon. He pulled into a service station, but there was one problem – no one would serve him. Why? He was trying to pay in cash.
Mr Boswell is one of millions of people who have been turned away from shops and restaurants for trying to pay with physical money. One in three people has been blocked from spending cash because of overzealous “Covidsecure” protections implemented by business across the country, according to research from consumer group Which?. This is despite an in- depth report from the Bank of England that found the risk of banknotes and coins transmitting coronavirus was virtually non-existent.
Mr Boswell, who works in IT, said he was refused service at two separate restaurants after he tried to pay in cash – a Nando’s and an El Mexicana – despite explaining his health condition.
“At this point I started to really worry as quite a few places were closed because of the pandemic,” he said. “I always pay in cash and do not carry bank cards with me as using physical currency helps me to budget and avoid overspending.”
He finally managed to get something to eat at a branch of KFC.
Nando’s apologised and said a concession should have been made given the circumstances. Both Nando’s and El Mexicana claimed that temporary bans on cash were helping to keep customers safe.
Ikea and holiday village firm Center Parcs are among other brands to have implemented a full ban on cash.
Others including bookshop chain Waterstones have said they are still accepting cash payments, but encourage customers to use contactless payments where they can – a policy that in some cases has led to confusion and cash users being unfairly left out.
Linda Blacker, 62, from Southampton, was refused passage on a local Bluestar bus service to go and see
‘There are so many people out there who depend on cash’
her GP when she tried to pay in cash, despite her leg being in a cast due to a broken ankle.
Bluestar apologised for the incident and confirmed that it did in fact accept cash, but admitted that drivers would not always be able to provide change to cash users straight away.
Stagecoach, another bus company, has raked in £160,000 by refusing to hand out change to cash users since the pandemic began.
The firm said its temporary “exact change only” policy had helped keep levels of cash handling down, which it claimed helped to reduce the spread of the virus. The money collected from overpayments is passed on to NHS and other charities, it added.
Joanne Heuston, 51, from West Sussex, was forced to get off a Stagecoach service from Hove to Brighton to get the right change for her fare so she did not overpay.
She said she feared firms were using coronavirus as an excuse to move away from cash.
“I have been on furlough and my husband is self-employed and has been struggling. We have been using cash more so we can count the pennies. There are so many people out there that depend on real money, people like my mother who wouldn’t know how to use a card machine,” she said.
Less than a quarter of all payments in 2019 were made using cash, down from close to 60pc a decade earlier, according to the Bank of England.
The pandemic has sped up the decline, with cash machine use 60pc lower in April 2020 than compared
with the same period in the prior year.
HSBC was the latest bank to reveal a string of branch closures this week, announcing plans to shut down 82 high-street sites.
Yet more than two million people still depend on cash every day.
Campaigners are now piling further pressure on the Government to introduce legislation that will protect access to cash, safeguards that were promised almost a year ago.
A Government spokesman said new rules were coming in due course.