Is Cash Still King?

I was listening to an interesting news podcast the other morning about the levels of tourism in Scandinavia since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In some areas, tourism has dropped by almost 15%. Research found that the reasons behind this were mainly due to the majority of shops, bars, and restaurants only accepting payment by card.

It seems generational. Tourists who are sixty and above still like to carry physical cash as they don’t believe in paying an extra fee from their bank back home. The younger generation is more tech-savvy, using payment methods such as Revolut or Wish that charge lower transaction fees than traditional banks.

A few weeks ago, I was in Stockholm during Taylor Swift’s tour and I witnessed a lot of tourists, mainly from the UK and USA, trying to pay for meals or drinks with cash. Oddly, on the flip side, I was in a restaurant a few weeks earlier when their POS system went down and the young staff had no idea what to do. It took almost several hours for people to go to the nearest cash machine to withdraw money.

Also, I read that in my city of Bath, the world-famous Roman Baths lost €90,000 when they changed their wishing well from accepting coins to contactless payments.

I personally use card. I don’t have any cards stored in Google Pay and yes, I am a frequent user of Revolut. Some people say “Cash is King,” yet in a contactless society, many places are reliant on a decent POS system.

Just pray there is no power outage!