Attire Accessories - Jul/Aug 2019 (Issue 77)

FSB BUSINESS FEATURE 119 Cash facts Dave Stallon, commercial director at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), looks at the changing payment landscape It’s undeniable that the payment landscape has changed. We now live in a world full of banking apps and contactless payments but the fact remains that cash is still an important part of the payments mix, particularly for small businesses. Take the self-employed book seller who visits a number of rural summer shows to sell her wares. Card machines are notorious for failing in the middle of a field, so if her potential customers can’t access cash machines, she loses important sales. With her local bank branch recently closed, she now has to make a 50-mile round trip to deposit cheques. Then there’s the village shop at the centre of a community. Incorporating a post office, the shop is the only place to withdraw money in the village. Around one in four of their sales are made are in cash, some of their staff get paid in cash and a few of their suppliers only take cash. Notes and coins are vital to their survival. With about £70 billion worth of cash currently in circulation in the UK, these stories are not unique. If shoppers can’t access notes and coins, it’s the small firms that make up 99 per cent of all businesses across the UK that are at a disadvantage. And it’s often society’s most vulnerable that bear the brunt of lost bank branches and cashpoints: the elderly, those who are less able to travel and those trying to keep to tight budgets. OUR CASH INFRASTRUCTURE IS UNDER ATTACK According to consumer group Which? the UK’s cash point network was slashed by almost five per cent in the second half of 2018 – with nearly 3,000 closing in six months, half of which were free-to-use. Paired with a huge decline in bank branch closures across the country, this spells a nightmare for those who rely on it. Our #SaveOurCashpoints campaign launched last year aimed at persuading The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR)