Littleover Community School

BBC Young Reporter @ LCS

Cashless UK

By: Zaynab


			Cashless UK
Mr Woodhouse, a language teacher at LCS

With lots of things being paid digitally and banks and ATMs closing, UK is slowly losing cash. More than 8 million UK adults would struggle to cope without cash as they don’t have access to online banking and related services.

In the last year, debit cards became very popular and were used a lot more than notes and coins. With debit cards getting more and more popular, Access to Cash Review predicted that cash could fall to just 10% of all payments within the next 15 years. The government, regulators and banks said, “Act now or risk leaving millions behind.”

The problem is that ATMs won’t get filled and cash deposits won’t get counted, if companies feel that it’s not worth the expense or hassle. We won’t trust the value of money. Reporters say that the UK is not ready to go cashless and despite the increasing use of contactless and debit cards, lots of people -about 2.2 million- still use cash in their day to day life. ‘Which?’ has estimated that cash machines around the UK are closing at a rate of 300 a month.

The consumer group this week, also pointed out that digital banking had its issues as well with both occasionally preventing customers from making payments at an average rate of more than once a day.

Mr Woodhouse said: “I use cash only 3/10 times I make a transaction in a day, but I still wouldn’t like UK to be cashless as cash is very useful for when you’re buying a small amount of things from a local store.”

Therefore it seems like a happy medium needs to be reached, so everyone is able to freely access their money.