In our most recent trip to the US, I couldn't believe it when people were at the bar buying ONE bottle of beer with a card.
Seems to be par for the course nowadays.
I only ever use cash, and I'm not that old!
I met a few old friends for a beer or two on Friday evening in a pub near Clerkenwell. We had a table close to the bar and I couldn't help but notice that I was pretty well the only person who payed for drinks using cash all night. Virtually everyone else paid using their contactless card as default. The barman was borderline baffled when I handed him a £20 note for the drinks each time my round came up.
There was a time (not that long ago) that paying with a card at a bar was met with 'huffs and puffs' from the barman along with everyone else waiting at the bar, but now it is clearly the fastest way to pay, as the barman doesn't have to go and grab any change.
I love the contactless gates on the underground etc, but there still seems something wrong with paying by card in a bar due to the old fashioned pub traditions.
I clearly need to revise my 'bar etiquette rulebook' to bring myself back up to date.....!
In our most recent trip to the US, I couldn't believe it when people were at the bar buying ONE bottle of beer with a card.
Seems to be par for the course nowadays.
I only ever use cash, and I'm not that old!
I've always resisted using mine, but this weekend was a long way from the nearest cash machine and i must admit it's a lot easier. very easy to lose track of your spend though.
Last edited by ktmog6uk; 17th July 2017 at 14:56.
ktmog6uk
marchingontogether!
I wonder what the plan is if the card reader isnt working,i like to pay with money and am of a certain age where i dont like to leave the house without some.
It's funny, I noticed this for the first time a couple of months ago. I don't normally go to the pub for a few drinks, more like for a meal and a few drinks, so the bill pretty much always gets paid by card. This time though I met up with a couple of mates for drinks, and admit I was slightly behind the curve when I went to the cashpoint beforehand, only to see everyone just tapping their cards.
I think it's great though - contactless saves a lot of messing around.
Contactless. It'll end in tears. Especially if you're pissed.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Yip, I reckon it's just a bit too easy to "accidentally" pay for a round twice when you're a little "tipsy" :-)
Everything is moving towards contactless so better start getting used to it soon! Still needs a few years to be widely utilized but it's taking over and so much easier!
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I know someone who went to pay for something by contactless in a shop the other day and they said 'you've already paid'
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
I usually have a meal with drinks and pay with a card at the end, but people who were buying one or two beers at the bar were paying with a card too, which is the change that I noticed.
I am not 'that' old, but there were people of ALL ages in there, all paying with cards - which seemed like a huge and noticeable change in the past few months.
But the good thing about contactless is the £30 limit so you can't 'accidentally' find yourself paying £300 for a £30 round
And with cash it's very easy when you're pissed to hand over a £20 and accept the change from a £10.
That said, I rarely pay for anything in the pub with contactless. Maybe I should
Saw on the news the other day, Cafe In London (cant remember the name) only contactless no cash is allowed- As other people have said I find it difficult to pay for a couple of drinks with a card, feels wrong buy hey ho that seems to be the world we're living in nowadays....
And now we have VISA trialing a "bribe to refuse cash" scheme for businesses
I thought it had been raised to £50 recently but either way, would multiple transactions within the limit could be performed without the cardholders knowledge. I rad somewhere that the advice is never to let the card out of your sight and place the card on the reader personally. Of course in an ideal world we'd all do that but in a busy pub, will that always be possible?
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Get a monzo card - works like a bank card but pre-paid, super-easy to use - I put my 'petty cash' on it at the start of the month - beside the fact that you get instant notification of any payments, if you use it overseas there are no transaction charges. The other benefit is the level of detail you get in regards to your spending.
The other great benefit is that if you lose on a night out, you can kill it from the app (and then un-kill it if you find it).
That's a 'per transaction limit' not a daily limit.
Don't go to the pub anymore but part of the tradition of the enxt morning was finding £40 of pound coins in your pocket.
I take it you no longer buy the bar tender a drink every now and then either? If your round was £9.40 you pay with a tenner and leave them to keep the change. I used to go out after closing time with the pub staff, those bits add up and you generally got.your drinks bought back with those tips too
I used to grump at exactly this, but I'm a convert.
It's quicker (no change) and the likely hood of cloaning is less than having your wad of cash swiped.
I aint got a contactless card yet thank god, my daughter ( 7 ) already orders stuff off amazon / e bay using our accounts without us knowing and even knows where mums cash stash is ( knicker drawer )
Back in 1997 my mate from Uni got a job in London. He lived in a one room bedsit off Edgware Road. Other than the size of his accommodation, one thing that I recall being a bit odd was the fact you could put your credit/Switch card behind the bar and order drinks all night against it.
Wouldn't bat an eyelid now.
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It's weird that you still have to use a PIN for non-contactless payments under £30, even on a contactless card (ie on a non-contactless machine).
I'm sure there is a reason, but I really don't know why it exists.
I don't find it weird at all. I'm quite happy having a layer of protection between my card and my money. I find it weird that people are so willing to use an unsecure payment method like contactless. My partner has had a nuber of instances of £20 or so dissapearing from her account since she got her contactless card. Barclays couldn't care less and just told her she must have spent it.
I hardly use cash these days. In work, I buy lunch and coffees through Apple Pay, even if just one coffee. Too easy, and no need to have coins jangling around.
Contactless all day long for, faster and painless without having to handle grubby cash.
Though care now required!
Dunno how true, but stories of scammers out and about (think crowded London Underground) with hand held devices picking up £30 a time from unsuspected punters.
I use the Secrid flip wallet, whose alloy casing insulates from any unsuspected scams.
I always have some cash on me for emergencies, but I very rarely pay for anything in cash, always card and mostly contactless. I think the contactless system has changed the balance towards people not using cash in a very short time - only a few years ago I saw a lot more cash used. Now one a couple of my regular lunch places no longer accepts cash and I don't see that hurting their business in any way.
Never, ever carry cash, and find it a right pain when I need to pay someone in cash... I don't necessarily always use contactless, but I do use my card for everything, even a 50p stamp, assuming the shop doesn't levy a surcharge or a minimum spend (none of the places I regularly shop at do).
It takes me a while to adjust to paying for rounds as you go when visiting the UK. Most of the bars I go to will run a tab and happily split the bill several ways. A Bosnian bar tender once told me that it is only ever the Brits who will try to leave without settling up which might explain it somewhat.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
+1....what if the card gets refused for some reason, what if the machine breaks and it's 'cash only'? Walking around with athout cash is mindless IMO but young people seem to do it thesedays.
I rarely go anywhere with les than £50 on mw. After having an episode with credit card fraud last year I very rarely pay for anything on cards, it's usually cash.
Paul
I was asking what happens if it's the servant night off, obviously.
Thanks. Also, that's weird.
They have these things called account passwords and 2-factor authentication, you should use them before she graduates to booking her own round the world trips. Don't aks me how I know this.
Software, kind of. The protocol for Chip+PIN is different from the one for contactless. It's not they couldn't do it the same way, it's that the service agreement specifies how it has to be done.
I used to always use cash when at the bar but in the end got fed up going home at the end of the night with a pocket full of change. 95% of the time now I just set up a tab and pay by card at the end of the night, if I am only going in for a couple of pints then it would be cash.
I use contactless at the supermarket, petrol station etc but not often for small amounts like one drink.
Same here - the only time I have cash is when someone does a whipround in the office and I have to find a cash-machine.
Most retailers prefer card payments these days due to the following;
- Less opportunity for short / over changing
- Less opportunity for cash to go "missing"
- Less need for cash floats
- Less need to move cash between safes and till(s) prior to opening
- Less hassle at the end of the shift removing till drawers
- Card payments are easier to audit by card e.g. visa, amex, MasterCard
- Contacless has less room for error (assuming the correct item has been entered into the POS)
- Contacless is quicker than faffing around checking for fraudulent notes and then giving change
I did some work recently with a major retailer who carried a float of £300 in each of there tills, they reduced this to £75 and pulled a substantial amount of money back into the bank.
I always carry £80 cash on me but typically pay with my AmEx due to the desire to earn points. Contactless preferred for me but I can't get on with ApplePay at all.
I use a money-clip so hate having loads of change in my pockets, although it all gets dumped in a bucket each day so collects quite quickly.
Last edited by gavsw20; 17th July 2017 at 16:15.
Yeah i don't mind notes as much as I hate having loads of coins and stuff. My wallet has no separate case for coins and it's just a massive hassle let alone heavy as well and a trouser pocket destroyer. Contactless all the way!!
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Apple pay is amazing for online transactions - I think it's fantastically easy, but I have never managed to get it to work in a shop, despite (as far as I am aware) fully setting it up and getting the cards verified with the bank for ApplePay etc. Assume there's something i'm missing, but fear to ever use it as it's caused too much embarrassment at the tills as it seems to freeze them when I try!
I use both. Always take cash out so I can set a budget. But when the budget is blown the card comes out!
In Shanghai recently I tried to pay for a business lunch with an Amex card. After I endured a series of baffled looks, my Chinese colleague paid with the WeChatPay app on her phone - even quicker than ApplePay as it uses a slightly different technology. Contactless and not really limited in transaction size.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/17/me...iant-in-china/
Hate having to go to the ATM for cash. Love contactless, but it does concern me how everything can be hacked, and people like me will have no access to cash when that happens. I really should keep £100 in the house.
Often find myself without cash these days due to the ease of using card everywhere. Do normally try to top up the wallet if I'm ever in need but it's becoming less and less frequent now.
Was in Stockholm recently and some bars there didn't take cash at all, wasn't ideal for a group of 8 lads with a cash kitty!
Do like that now I can leave work, get the bus, grab some food, few pints at a bar and a cab home all without having to touch any cash at all.
There's also the issue of getting the cash to the bank each day. If you're a small business, you need someone to take time (that you're paying for) to make the deposit, if you're a large business you're paying for a security firm to do it for you.
The cost of cash is normally estimated at around 4%, plus or minus a couple percent. Which is why so many retailers are happy to pay Visa and Mastercard charges of up to 5%.