The team at Merchant Advice Service have recently surveyed more than 1,200 UK business owners about payment processing, finding that over half of UK businesses (52%) want to entirely scrap cash as a payment option and a further 86% favour cards and contactless over any other option.
With the decline of cash as a go-to payment option in many industries, including transport, retail and food and drink, (with on average 75% – 93% of all transactions made via card or contactless), two thirds of UK business owners are calling for the contactless price cap to be further increased.
What’s more, the survey also showed how UK business owners’ thoughts towards payment processing were supported by consumer attitudes, as they noticed a 95% shift in attitudes towards paying for transactions, with one in three (34%) admitting consumers were apologetic when paying with cash.
Libby James, co-founder of Merchant Advice Service, commented:
Contactless payments have been incredibly popular from the moment they became an option, but with everything that’s happened over the course of the past year, we’ve definitely seen a shift in less and less people carrying cash on them than ever before. Whether that’s because they’re not going to the bank or to their local ATMs to withdraw it, they’re weary of the amount of people who can touch one single note or simply because they’re unsure of whether businesses will or won’t take cash in the current climate.
The results here definitely show the need for a further contactless payment cap increase, even though we’ve just had one, or for it to be removed altogether. That being said, the payment cap does offer some level of safety and security to the bank account owner and processes would need to be in place beforehand to ensure everyone’s money is as safe as possible, especially if their card were to be lost and fall into the wrong hands.
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