Cash machine usage declines as digital payments boom
Many people will recognise the mantra of a successful business always used to be – Cash is King. And in terms of having the reserves to keep a business going through hard times, such as the cashflow problems caused by a global pandemic, the saying still has a lot of merit.
But in society in general, use of cash in its physical form is declining rapidly. The BBC did report this month that the average amount being withdrawn from a cash machine per visit had climbed to £80. However, closer reading of the article also showed that the number of visits per month had declined by 40 per cent and the total being withdrawn had fallen by a staggering £100m per day compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
Nick Quin, of cash machine network Link, told the BBC that there was no doubt Covid had
“turbo-charged the switch to digital”
and it seems clear that the climb in the average amount withdrawn is a factor of inflation and that cash usage itself is on rapid retreat.
Of course, raising the level of acceptable contactless payments up to as much as £100 – from initially £30 and then £45 – has been a factor. That and the number of even small independent traders now able to accept cashless payments via mobile devices. But security of a transactions remains a concern for many.
That’s why many users of contactless, tap and go, payments prefer the embedded systems on Apple and Android phones. Transactions on those systems usually require some form of authentication - often a biometric such as a fingerprint or facial recognition – to authorise the spend.
Of course, our Onescan payment system, as well as being truly contactless, is also unlimited in terms of the transaction amount. Onescan works by scanning our specially created and encrypted QR codes, before initiating an authentication sequence to authorise the payments.
Importantly, Onescan doesn’t hold or maintain a central record of its users or their transactions, so there is no central database for hackers to attack. Each user has control of their records on their individual device with password or biometric protection.
As more people become accustomed to making payments via their smartphone, Onescan’s ability to make fast, simple and secure payments of any size be it from a printed page, a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, or any screen in store or at home – as well as act as a form of ‘strong customer authentication (SCA) as required by the European bank’s PSD2 legislation - is gaining more market traction. Even more so as it doesn’t require any app download for the users and is easy for retailers to set up.
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