Wednesday 12 June 2013

Why cash is making a comeback

Despite increasing reassurances by the banks (!) as to their safety and reliability, the rise of contactless payments and chip-and-pin has gone into reverse. New figures reveal that more of us prefer to use hard currency – whether because our accounts are empty or because we prefer the security of coins and notes.

According to a new report from the Payments Council and Link, which runs the UK's cash machines, the volume of cash payments rose by 200m in 2012, reversing the year-on-year decline over the past decade, with more than half of all our payments in cash, reflecting its easy use and its wide acceptance.

Whilst many prefer the anonymity of cash payment, remembering also to take the batteries out of their phones, or leave them at home, don't drive a car, or avoid walking past their daily allocation of 300 security cameras, and obviously ignoring the potential advantages of a 24/7 alibi, a key advantage of paying in cash means that we are continually confronted with the state of our personal finances. This helps to sharpen our savvy-consumer skills when paying with our ‘real money’…

NAM application
In the same way, NAMs who quantify and convert all concessions into cost and value, capturing the resulting impact on their company P&L, can  more easily demonstrate the value to the retailer in terms of both bottom-line result and incremental sales. This has to represent a major advantage over those who continually add cash & ‘non-cash’ concessions to their offering with little attempt to match and trade their way to a fair-share result.

Like the cash-paying savvy consumer, negotiating with real money automatically builds in the need for KPI achievement and compliance in order to provide all stakeholders with demonstrable value-for-money, besides being a constant reminder of our ability to make a profit or loss, via the use or abuse of 'our money'…  

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