Cashless in Brighton

I spent the day visiting the seaside city of Brighton. It has always attracted a young crowd, with a mixture of pubs and bars, plus the quaint area for shopping and antiques around the lanes by the seafront.

I wanted to speak to a mixture of shop owners on the topic of cash acceptance, card fees and banking facilities, and my guide of course would be the typical sign on the door saying proudly “Cashless” or “Card Only”. I wanted to understand their motives for denying customers the right to spend cash.

It did seem to me that it’s the hospitality sector which is driving the change to contactless payments, be it trendy coffee shops to fast food outlets, where the only option is a touch screen to make your order with the attached card device giving you the only electronic payments as the only option.

So, newer businesses tended to be card only, but older established restaurants like Coco’s Bistro actually celebrated cash as a payment method, and as a family business have been trading for over 40 years.

I then spied a vegan fast food outlet called Oowee, and having saw the Card Only sign, decided to speak to the owner, I declared that I am in fact a cash campaigner, but wanted to understand their reasons for being cashless.

She began to say that personally she liked cash, but as a business handling cash has it’s problems, which according to her were as follows –

Theft Risk – The staff you employ could dip into the till and nick cash, then you could get mugged whilst taking the money to the bank, with cash you need a safe, and holding cash on the premises again could give way to being broken into, they would also need CCTV etc.

Paying to deposit money into the bank – this is one where I will return to in a future blog post, because I need to understand why banking cash is expensive and is it more expensive than card fee’s being charged to retailers, and why can’t the banks make it cheaper to bank cash?

On my way back up the hill to the train station, I did pass by a tattoo parlour and I was greeted by this wonderful sign on the door “Cash Preferred Thank You”

I went in, declared that I’m too scared to get a tattoo (I don’t like needles!!) but was drawn to their sign outside. The two women who ran the shop told me that they prefer cash, as they don’t like the card fees, plus from a privacy issue, why should the banks have all our transaction data – a very valid point.

Given that the shop was run by women, I thought the sign inside was very good “Cash is Queen”

I finally went into a pub by the station, ordered a pint, was asked rightly “cash or card” paid with a tenner and sat down to ponder what I had discovered, and given the level of tourism that seaside towns like Brighton attract, I think many of the shops should think again about their card only policy, as tourists carry cash, but then so does everyone else.

Cheers!!!