Following the announcement (Friday 27 July) that there will be a review for cash access after a surge in digital payments, Sam Murrant, Senior Payments Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the future of cash payments:

“Cash in the UK is by no means as dead or dying as the financial services industry would like to think it is. According to GlobalData, 40% of consumer transactions were made in the UK using cash in 2017 – totaling £222bn in spending.

“Cash is still heavily relied on by those on a budget, since it is much easier to track spending and assess how much money is left using cash. The ‘cashless society’ is a very good thing for banks and the government due to the costs of storing, transporting, and securing cash, as well as the impossibility of tracking the movement of cash in the economy – but reducing access to cash will harshly affect consumers who rely on it.”