The Blog of Ross C Brown

For a while now I’ve been subscribing to the online digital editions of The Guardian Newspaper and to be perfectly frank, the user experience was in needs of some extra development. Countless times have there been delays in publishing and my emails to customer services have went unanswered.

While editions were eventually posted, it was common to be still waiting well into the afternoon for the day’s paper. Sadly, if the service was ever going to work for me, the editions would have to be online before 9am otherwise I’d end up buying a physical paper copy for my daily lefty news fix. [...]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; cash is dying.  It has been dying for a long time now and if it wasn’t for the monumental efforts of taxi drivers, newsagents and vending machine operators all across Britain, cash would be remembered now by nothing more than a witty epitaph on a gravestone hidden somewhere within the The Bank of England Museum on Threadneedle Street.  Even cheques, the 350 year old negotiable instrument and cash alternative, are soon to be confined to the history books.

With the prevalence of cash quickly diminishing, just how easy is it to live entirely without cash?  In order to find out, I set myself a challenge: one entire day with out physical cash.  The rules of the game were simple, if it needed cash, it wasn’t happening.

In all honesty, a day without cash was hardly a challenge.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve preferred ‘fantastic plastic’ over dirty paper and heavy coins.  However, today I removed from my wallet the £30 of ‘backup cash’ I carry in contingency and headed out into the world.

Transport
The first expenditure of the day was on public transport.  In Edinburgh, the predominant bus company, Lothain Buses take coins, notes and pre-paid ‘rida’ cards.  Forgiving the nonsensical gangsta-esque name, the ‘ridacard’ is a first-class substitute to cash.   Not dissimilar to London’s Oyster card, the card allows you to pre-pay for a number of weeks of ‘unlimited’ transport on the bus network.  Not only does the card allow you to enjoy preferential rates on the buses versus ‘per journey’ or ‘daily saver’ tickets, it also saves you the trouble of acquiring correct change.

Music on the move
I’m on the bus now and I’m listening to a really funky tune blasting out of the headphones of a fellow passenger a good number of seats in front of me.  Its so good in-fact that I want it on my iPod.  A few clicks later and from my mobile phone (you guessed it, an iPhone), I’ve billed £0.79 to my credit card and I’m now enjoying Hello Goodbye’s ‘Here (In Your Arms)’.  Instant, cash free, digital downloads for the win.

Breakfast
It is still ridiculously early and I’ve found myself in the heart of the City.  Breakfast is the order of the morning.  My first port of call was Greggs for a bacon roll.  Sadly (and despite my numerous letters) Greggs still refuse to accept credit and debit cards.  Not to worry however, in the centre of Edinburgh there are countless other food places crying out for my business.  Mere seconds later I have a bacon roll from McDoands – paid of course by debit card.  Now, I’m not usually fond of digression but I feel it necessary to point out that breakfast at McDoanlds is not something I indulge in terribly regularly – that said, their new Bacon Roll meal is well worth the £2.29 they ask.

Coffee and a paper
What morning would be complete without a hot beverage and a look at the day’s paper? When you are living a cash free life, Starbuck and their pre-paid card is such a life saver. Normally, I’m not a fan of ‘investing’ up my cash in another companies proprietary payment system as the benefit of such a system seems heavily slanted towards the company as opposed to myself but at Starbucks it really pays off.

For reasons unknowing to me, Starbucks seem to take an unacceptably long time to process credit and debit card transactions.  The benefit of the Starbucks card is there twofold.  First, I don’t have to wait minutes and minutes on end for my card to authorised in store and second, I don’t have to deal with cash.  Topping up the card couldn’t be simplier using the Starbucks website.  Each month I log in and top up £60 or so to use for that month.  I’m sure there’s also an ‘auto-recharge’ function that will automatically top-up your card when the balance with a given amount from a nominated debit card or bank account when your Starbucks card balance drops below a predefined limit.

So far so good for non-physical cash alternatives.  The only problem I’ve had has been at Greggs and to be honest that wasn’t much of a problem considering the availability and proximity of substitute vendors.

Telephone payments
Skipping forward to early afternoon, I’m back at the apartment sorting out some things for later this week.  One of the things  used to dread in the past was topping up my Pay-As-You-Go phone.  Back in the dark ages you’ve buy a ‘top-up voucher’ and enter a really long code into the phone.  Now, in the age of truly cashless electronic payments, I can top up knowing the last four numbers of my card number and the CVN number.  What used to take a lifetime is now completed in a few short minutes.

Taxi Cabs
Having spend far too long working on other things, I now find myself in the back of a cab speeding back into the heart of the city – late -  for my afternoon appointments.  The first cab I flagged down I had to let go as the driver didn’t accept card payments.  This delayed my journey but eventually flagged down a credit card accepting driver.  I really wish cab drivers would display the payment methods they accept on the window.  I guess I could mitigate this problem by opening a taxi account and pay monthly by credit card but I don’t use taxi’s often enough to justify the hassle.

Lunch and transport
Back at Waverly station, I quickly buy my £1.40 train ticket using one of the ticket vending machines on the platform.  However I end up missing the first train waiting an unbearable four minutes for my debit card to authorise.

I was also shocked to discover that card reader with mostly kept out of sight and what only briefly presented to me to enter my PIN number.  In today’s word when everyone is worried about credit card fraud and skimming I find it totally unacceptable for a retailer not to have the Chip and PIN clearly visible at all times when processing customer transactions.

Pulling rank at work
I made it through work by having a member of my team buy me a hot drink and chocolate bar from the vending machines.  I know that’s technically cheating but at work there’s little alternative other than 15 minute walk to a local food store.

Tesco
After work, I finished off my cash-free day with a trip to retailing giant Tesco.  Nothing out of the ordinary at Tesco other than having to sign for my purchases – something I’ve noticed more often now I’m a HSBC banking customer.  Often, particularly later at nigh, I find my self signing more than using Chip and PIN.  While this is not the end of the world, it really does slow down the transaction – especially at the understaffed ‘self-checkout’ lanes at Tesco.

Review
Looking back over my cashless day there is little to remark on.  Today was a fairly standard day.  Overall, I spent £76.53 without going near physical currency.  Thinking of a typical, I’d spend under £5 using physical cash – mostly on breakfast and at the vending machines at work.

Issues
Keeping a note of my spending habits has made me consider a number of issues around life without cash.  Before today I hadn’t realised just how many companies are storing my credit card details – Lothian Buses, Starbucks, Costa, o2, Apple iTunes and so many more.  While I enjoy the convenience of having my card linked to various other accounts I can’t help worry about the possibility of my details being inappropriately accessed or lost.

The time spend waiting for my debit and credit cards to authorise also caused me some problems today.  This is something that all the various parties involved in card processing need to spend more resources working on – especially if you are to all embrace electronic payments.

The processing of small or ‘micro’ payments is another area that is in need of work – specifically making it affordable for merchants to take card payments for small value purchases.  I’m really over having to pay card surcharges or meeting a ‘minimum spend’ limit.

In finally, the biggest issue I have with electronic payments: the time delay between making  a transaction and it being presented for payment by the merchant.  While I understand the need for merchants to present transactions in batches to lower their costs, transactions not showing up for days or weeks is a major pain when trying to manage my cash flow.

Conclusions
Today has been interesting in as much has highlighted my dependence on electronic payments and overall how they improve my retail experience.  One thing I’d take away from this post however is the need for the card processing industry to get together and solve some of the minor problems I’ve highlighted above.  There is too a need for vendors and merchants to also embrace the changing nature of the payment industry and get with the program if you will and make it easier for their customers to pay how they want.

Your thoughts
What do you think is in the future for real world payments?  Are you ready to give up cash for fantastic plastic and new and emerging payment systems? Or are you still counting your cash and practising you signature for cheque writing?

…since I last apologised for not posting more frequently.  But let’s face it, who reads blogs?  Blogs are boring, populated almost exclusively by posts apologising for…  well, the lack of posts.  And it’s not just me apologising, look at these people, all paid and professional writers (they’ve been to writers school and everything) having trouble here, here and here!

I was going to write about writing a blog post and in doing so I would have been very modern and meta but to be perfectly frank, that wasn’t working out.  You, my loyal readership,  don’t need to know the lengths I go to bring you such fine words as these.  So here I am again, before a blank page and no ideas for writing.  Anyone, anything? No?

Fuck it, I’m going to Starbucks!

(And yes, I have just screwed you over with a non-apology apology!  Have a great day!)

The last year has again been fairly busy for me.  Let’s look back over the five most visited posts (by page views) from the last 12 months.  The year in brackets is the year in which the post was published. [...]

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