I've never much liked the idea of a cashless society and Friday was an excellent example of why. Theoretically, I don't particularly want to give banks, credit card companies, or whatever applications I use them through so much free information about my spending habits, though in truth I don't think about that as much as I should.
I try to avoid online shopping where possible partly to support local businesses - price matters but so does choice, a decent range of competitively paid jobs, the chance of some on hand expertise, human interaction, not having to negotiate around delivery times or drop boxes, not having packages stolen from your doorstep - and I don't believe Jeff Bezos got where he is by fair pricing and paying staff decently. The other reason is it lays you open to fraud from too many angles.
I'm not a fan of high contactless limits either - lose your card and someone could spend hundreds of pounds on it in minutes, lose your phone and you're high and dry. I couldn't count the number of people using apps to pay via phones or watches who can't quite comprehend when the machines say no, it's time to verify your pin. I assumed Britain's relentless march towards a cashless society was a universal thing until I was in Vienna a few years ago and saw how many cash-only businesses there were there (they weren't big on Sunday opening either which was refreshing, if a little awkward when you arrive on a Sunday with no idea it's going to be an issue).
After spending over a year and making at least 5 attempts with the Bank of Scotland to get a joint account I'm really not a fan of how banks have cut back on services either. You need to have a face-to-face appointment to open a joint account. In some branches, the waiting list was over 6 months, in others there simply wasn't anybody who was authorised to set one up, but this is surely something people still need? The extravagant length of the queues whenever I go near a bank (never more than 2 tellers available on the desk) suggest there's no shortage of demand for them either.
So with all this in mind, Friday was interesting. Our card machines were out for several hours with the Microsoft problems, and most of the day for some people depending on which systems their bank used. We've been seeing a bit more cash generally since the cost of living crisis hit - cash is easier to budget - which is my main reason for liking it. In the end a surprising number of people were ready with cash, they'd listened to the news and come prepared - there were also a fair few who hadn't and weren't. They were uniformly outraged that they couldn't pay as they wished and generally didn't have a bank card as a back up.
Are you, dear reader, cash or contactless people and if contactless have the recent outages made you think again about carrying at least some money around with you?