People are pending to withdraw cash from an ATM. The value of the banknotes in circulation has increased 23%since the Bank of England before pandemic.Photo: everyday pictures/Alamy
When he went to his local cooperative, Ty, a 27-year-old student in Brighton, noticed a strangely long queue for the cashpoint.
In the shop, an employee Ty announced that the payment systems had dropped after a cyber attack. It was only cash. But Ty did not have to join the queue. Instead, he felt confirmed. It was another case that justified his recent change to the use of physical currency instead of digital payments.
“I have started to prefer money in the past few months and to use it almost exclusively to the point where I refuse to shop in places that only take a card,” he says.
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Ty is one of several people in Great Britain who have turned back to banknotes in recent years. Although the cash was used for only 12% of British payments in 2023 and, according to the British financing of 51%, collapsed in 2013, Bank of England’s data suggests that the value of the banknotes in circulation has increased by 23% since the pandemic.
The bank’s chief cashier, Victoria Cleland, said that the British households are building cash-contenency pots such as during pandemic and living costs as a reaction to top-class incidents such as recent energy consumption in Spain and Portugal and the cyber attacks on Marks & Spencer, the co-op and Harrods. Repeated IT failures in the largest banks and construction societies of Britain have not helped consumer confidence in digital negative pressure systems.
Ty says: “In contrast to the card, cash is private and does not leave any data about the purchase, it costs the dealer transaction fees. It is easier to manage physicality – the use of a card makes expenses too easy – and it will not fail in the event of a system failure.”
Ty’s preference for cash started at work in a construction company. He said he had first -handed that it was “extremely difficult to do something” that doubts him about the reliability of modern payment methods when the electronic systems fail.
It was in Granada for David when Spain’s energy consumption meter changed its behavior. He says that there was a feeling of uncertainty about the return of power, and “if they had no money that they would not eat or drink and the ATMs were below”.
The 64-year-old in Bury retired had a little money against him so that he could buy a warm beer from a refrigerator outside of action.
David says he has switched to a cashless budget in recent years, but since he had experienced the power failure, he has taken out physical currency. “We are now accessible in the event of money,” he says.
The preference for cash is so strong for Annie*, in the early 1940s and in East Sussex, that they start from companies that are only tickets. “I love money,” she says. “It is reliable and does not break like electronic payment systems that break off and go down more and more these days.”
Annie says her mother feels the same way and recently, while the couple in Lewes visited and left several cafes before accepting one who accepted cash. She says that the decision has shown her displeasure about what she believes is a slow cash register in the direction of a cashless society, which she rises for “the wrong way” and deletes freedom of choice.
“It’s like a position,” she says. “I know that it is just me, a lonely little person … At the moment I have the feeling that it probably doesn’t make a difference. But they are my own principles and my own morality. I don’t want to see the death of cash.”
Almost 33 million withdrawals were built last year from the nationwide ATMs, an increase of 4.6% compared to 2023 and on the establishment of budgeting trends that were observed during the cost of living such as “cash filling”.
However, not everyone is convinced that a return to cash is required. Dave, a 61-year-old in Preston, hates it with physical money.
“I just found the entire business – to wear money, extract cash from cash points and end with bags full of changes, throw it into glasses when they came home – only nonsense,” he says. “The bags are thin cotton. They push a load of metal in, they weigh and wear the bag.”
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He was happy to jet notes and coins, and the feeling that “people too much in panic” about a potential emergency. “If the infrastructure fails for a week, I could worry about it,” he says, and he holds about £ 100 in the house. “But I didn’t get any money just to hoard money.”
In Essex, Ruth’s aversion to cash and preference for Apple Pay -“It’s so comfortable” -that she had traveled out for the trip for the trip for a family vacation on the Amalfi coast on the Amalfi coast.
She did not use any money in Italy and hardly used her bank card. “The only time I used my card was when I actually paid for the hotel,” she says, and she could hardly remember her PIN number.
Ruth, a 63-year-old social housing worker in Essex, says that dealing with cash is too impractical. “I hate [it] When I get Coppers or 5PS. I think what do you do with them? I want to throw them away, “she says.
Ruth also says that “some, not all” people who are aware of only using cash to use, “dodgy deals, tax avoidance”.
To see that the power failure and the chaos in Spain and Portugal have planned that they were around for their next holiday and she found money useful when she taught her children math, let them go to the shops and let the change be retained if they counted it correctly.
After the Iberian power failure, she also picked up 100 pounds for emergencies. “I put it in the closet,” she says.
*Some names have changed.
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