Is cash back?

Whatever happened to the great surge towards a cashless society which the pandemic was supposed to bring about? As I wrote here in February 2021, the cashless lobby was ruthlessly exploiting the pandemic in order to push for its nirvana in which we would be forced to pay for everything electronically, either via cards or phones. But the campaign doesn’t seem to be going too well. This week the Post Office reported that £801 million worth of personal cash withdrawals were made from its branches in July, an 8 per cent rise on June and a 20 per cent rise on July 2021. 

Of course, we shouldn’t read too much into figures from the Post Office alone, to which some people may have turned as a result of their local bank branch having closed or their nearest cashpoint having been removed. But the Bank of England’s statistics on banknotes in circulation show a similar story.