Geoff Norcott

The tyranny of card-only payments

Why has it become impossible to pay with cash?

  • From Spectator Life
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Even though being a right-centre comedian accords me default outsider status, I am not in any way an edgy bloke. Consequently, I find myself surprised at just how unnerved I’ve become by the drift towards a cashless society.

I’m not yet at the stage where I’ve started using phrases like ‘the great reset’ or renaming my first son ‘Crypto’, but I have become a bit twitchy about yet another huge change concerning the fundamentals of how we live (and the way we all ignored it when we realised we could go to a restaurant with a built-in reason to not tip).

The perils around the exclusive use of contactless payments are – like most things – something I hadn’t thought about much until it affected me. I was doing a couple of gigs in Dublin. Dublin is a lovely place to do stand-up, particularly if you’re a coward like me and abandon all political material upon arrival.

I travelled there knowing I’d lost my debit card at Heathrow, but fairly confident I’d be able to just sort it out on arrival (or pay with my credit card). But here’s a thing many people don’t realise about the Irish economy: it’s not very fond of American Express cards. There’s something about that hefty surcharge which is a bit rich for their tastes. I guess you’ve got to make the money back somewhere when your corporation tax is lower than David Beckham’s credibility in the gay community.

So I decided I’d go to a NatWest and get a replacement debit card. Except they didn’t have a NatWest either. I started to wonder if Ireland was in fact a completely separate country with its own rules and culture.

Eventually I was able to find a cashpoint which dispensed euros from my credit card at a premium I’m trying to block from memory.

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