Our View: Is cash king?

THERE is no doubt that more and more people find it convenient to pay with debit cards for small transactions and generally speaking most businesses seem to be comfortable with this even though they do have to pay an element of commission and wait for the payment to be received.

In many ways, this suits large organisations better as their risk of theft either by staff or robbery as cash is transported to banks is greatly reduced.

For smaller businesses, however, there seems to be a groundswell of preference for payment by cash as it is immediate and saves bank charges as well as making ‘cash flow’ more immediate.

In Spain, the government has upset the European Union by passing a law that means that it is illegal to make a cash payment of more than €1,000 for any service provided by or involving a professional company.

Clearly, this is to cut down on the so-called black economy where work is undertaken without charging VAT or declaring the income for general tax purposes, in addition, it makes it just a little more difficult for money launderers to dispose of cash.

On the other hand, there is another law that means that all businesses are required to accept payment in cash up to the allowed level.

Some want to see a cashless society but no matter how honest you are, not everyone wants to have ‘big brother’ recording every transaction they may make as they see this as yet another example of government snooping.

Hopefully, the day will never come when cash disappears completely.

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