By Terry Hughes, CEO, Pivotal Sec Plus

We hear it all the time, cash is dead, the world is going digital and the future is cashless. The way we pay has undoubtedly changed. Contactless cards, mobile wallets and online banking have transformed everyday transactions. I welcome that innovation. This is not an argument against digital payments. It is an argument against allowing digital convenience to become digital compulsion.

 

At Pivotal Sec Plus, we collect cash, move it, secure it, count it and process it. Every day, we see what headline statistics can miss, cash remains a working part of the real economy. The latest UK Finance figures show that cash represented 8% of 49.7 billion UK payments in 2025, equivalent to roughly 4.0 billion payments. That is around 10.9 million cash transactions on an average day. The share has fallen, but the decline is slowing because many people still value cash for particular transactions.[1]

 

Cash is an instrument of inclusion 

For many people, ‘cashless’ does not mean progress. It means exclusion. Older people are more likely than younger people to rely on cash. People on low incomes, people with certain physical or cognitive impairments, those without reliable broadband or mobile coverage, people without smartphones and those who struggle to open or operate bank accounts can all be disadvantaged when a retailer, car park, transport provider or public service refuses notes and coins. Age UK has argued that cash use is strongly linked to financial and digital exclusion and that essential goods and services may require particular protection.[2]

 

The issue becomes even more significant for someone experiencing coercive control or economic abuse. Economic abuse can involve control over income, spending, bank accounts, bills, borrowing, transport and technology. Digital accounts and transaction records can be monitored by an abusive partner. Cash is not a complete safety solution, but access to a small amount of money that can be held and spent without an automatic notification or shared-account trail may provide practical autonomy at a critical moment. The Treasury Committee heard directly from victim-survivors of economic abuse when examining cash acceptance.[3][4]

 

Cash also matters for people in temporary crisis. A frozen account, lost phone, forgotten password, failed identity check or lack of data should not prevent someone buying food, travelling home or paying for urgent essentials. Inclusion should not be measured only by how many people prefer digital payments on a normal day. It should be measured by whether everyone can still transact on a difficult day.

 

Cash is a national resilience infrastructure 

The UK economy increasingly depends on interconnected systems. Electricity, telecoms, cloud services, banking platforms, card schemes, acquirers, payment gateways, fraud controls and merchant terminals. Digital payments are highly effective, but they are not failure-proof. The Bank of England treats disruption to payment operations as a financial-stability issue and points to cyber incidents, third-party dependencies and power-grid outages as sources of high-impact disruption.[5][6]

 

Cash is a physical contingency rail. A note can settle a face-to-face transaction immediately without Wi-Fi, mobile data, a charged device, a card authorisation, a working app or access to an account.

 

Cash also requires the right infrastructure to support it. Shops need access to floats, secure storage, reliable collection and processing services and the ability to deposit their takings. Maintaining this infrastructure is essential to ensuring cash remains a practical and accessible payment option.

 

Resilience does not come from keeping notes in circulation alone. It requires ATMs and branches or hubs, deposit facilities, cash centres, secure transport, trained people, contingency stock and commercially sustainable wholesale distribution.

 

For UK plc, payment resilience should follow the same logic as energy resilience, do not rely on a single route. A mixed payments ecosystem is stronger than a monoculture. If every transaction depends on the same power, telecoms and digital dependencies, a local technical fault can become a social and economic problem. Cash provides diversity and a practical fall-back at the point of sale.

 

Cash protects privacy, but the claim must be precise 

Cash is the most private mainstream payment method for ordinary face-to-face purchases because it does not automatically create a transaction-level data record linking the payer, merchant, item, time and location. That matters in a society where payment data can be combined with loyalty, location and behavioural data.

 

It would, however, be inaccurate to say cash is ‘truly and only anonymous’ in every circumstance. CCTV, receipts, witness evidence, forensic techniques and controls around cash deposits can identify or constrain activity. Large or suspicious transactions are subject to anti-money-laundering obligations. Cash permits ordinary lawful transactions without automatically requiring identity disclosure or creating a permanent digital trail. Privacy is not secrecy and it should not be treated as suspicious by default.

 

Cash can make money tangible 

Cash is an immediate budgeting tool. A person can divide notes into envelopes, see what remains and stop when a weekly allowance is gone. There is no pending transaction, delayed balance update, overdraft pathway or one-click credit prompt. Digital budgeting tools can be excellent, but they depend on access, confidence and design. For some households, physical money reduces complexity and makes trade-offs visible.

 

That tangibility is also valuable when teaching children. Counting coins, paying at a till, checking change and saving towards a goal connect numbers to real choices. The lesson should not be cash instead of digital. Children need both, the physical understanding of value and the digital skills to navigate modern finance. The Government’s Financial Inclusion Strategy recognises financial education as part of building healthy attitudes to money from an early age.[7]

 

 

Cash supports competition and disciplines payment costs 

Every payment method comes with associated costs. For cash, these include secure storage, transportation, counting, insurance, reconciliation and banking. Digital payments also carry costs, from payment terminals and connectivity to acquiring, scheme and processing fees, as well as fraud and chargebacks.

 

Neither payment method is without cost and those costs will continue to evolve. While regulation, competition and technology may reduce some of the costs associated with digital payments, businesses cannot assume that the cost of accepting them will continue to fall.

 

In March 2025, the Payment Systems Regulator found that Mastercard and Visa had increased core scheme and processing fees to acquirers by at least 25% since 2017, costing UK businesses at least £170 million more each year. In July 2026, the regulator said the schemes did not face effective competition over those fees and confirmed remedies focused on greater transparency and pricing governance.[8][9]

 

Maintaining a viable cash option also helps preserve choice and reduces the risk of businesses and consumers becoming entirely dependent on a small number of digital payment networks. Once the infrastructure supporting cash falls below a sustainable level, rebuilding it would be exceptionally difficult.

 

Access without acceptance is an unfinished policy 

The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 created a framework to protect access to cash withdrawals and deposits. That was important but access and acceptance are two halves of the same promise. A person can withdraw a £20 note, yet they can still be excluded if essential providers refuse to take it. The Treasury Committee confirmed in April 2025 that UK law does not require businesses to accept cash and warned of the risk of a two-tier society. The Government response recognised cash as integral to the payments ecosystem but did not introduce a general acceptance duty.[3][10]

 

‘Legal tender’ does not solve the issue. That concept concerns the settlement of certain debts, it does not create a general obligation for a shop to accept cash at the point of sale. If Parliament wants to protect practical payment choice, it must address acceptance directly rather than rely on a commonly misunderstood phrase.

 

What legislation should do 

I believe Parliament should create a proportionate statutory right to pay with cash, beginning with essential goods and services and public-facing services. The objective should not be to force every online business, unattended machine or genuinely impractical setting to handle notes and coins. It should be to ensure that people are not denied food, medicine, transport, fuel, utilities, public services or other everyday essentials merely because they cannot or do not wish to use a digital payment.

 

A workable framework should, require reasonable cash acceptance for in-person purchases of essential goods and services, cover central and local government services where payment is taken, permit tightly defined exemptions for remote-only transactions, genuine safety risks, temporary outages in cash-handling capability or disproportionate operational impracticality, prohibit blanket ‘card only’ policies where a reasonable cash option could be offered, require clear advance notice of any lawful restriction, ensure retailers have affordable access to deposits, change and secure collection and give accountable regulator powers to monitor acceptance, investigate systemic exclusion and enforce the rules proportionately.

 

Legislation should be phased and evidence-led. Small businesses need practical support, not unfunded mandates. Deposit access, banking hubs, shared cash services, modern cash centres and efficient cash-in-transit operations must be developed alongside the duty to accept. Government should publish acceptance data by sector and geography, test national and regional payment contingencies and keep both consumer needs and business costs under review.

 

The answer is choice, not nostalgia 

This is not nostalgia for a pre-digital world. It is a serious argument about freedom, inclusion, competition and resilience. Digital payments should continue to innovate. Cash should continue to modernise and I believe the two can and should coexist.

 

Cash is not dead but it will not survive on sentiment alone. If the UK wants a payments system that works for everyone, in normal conditions and in a crisis, cash acceptance should be protected in law as part of the nation’s essential economic infrastructure.

 

What are your thoughts? Is cash dead, or does it still have an important role to play in the way we pay? Email us at pivotal.communications@pivotalsecplus.com and let us know.

 

Sources 

1. UK Finance, “Digital payments continue to grow as mobile wallets become more popular across the UK”, 19 August 2026. https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/news-and-insight/press-release/digital-payments-continue-grow-mobile-wallets-become-more-popular
2. Age UK, submission to the Treasury Select Committee inquiry on acceptance of cash, December 2024. https://www.ageuk.org.uk/siteassets/documents/reports-and-publications/reports-and-briefings/money-matters/cash-acceptance-dec-2024.pdf
3. House of Commons Treasury Committee, “Acceptance of cash”, Sixth Report of Session 2024-25, 30 April 2025. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmtreasy/324/report.html
4. Surviving Economic Abuse, “What is economic abuse?” https://survivingeconomicabuse.org/what-is-economic-abuse/
5. Bank of England, “Operational resilience: recognised payment system operators and specified service providers”, 12 June 2026. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/paper/2026/ss/operational-resilience-rpsos-ssps-ss
6. Bank of England, Liz Oakes speech on systemic operational resilience, 18 September 2025. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2025/september/liz-oakes-keynote-speech-at-the-cross-market-operational-resilience-group-2025-conference
7. HM Treasury, Financial Inclusion Strategy, 5 November 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-inclusion-strategy/financial-inclusion-strategy
8. Payment Systems Regulator, market review of card scheme and processing fees, final report, 6 March 2025. https://www.psr.org.uk/publications/market-reviews/mr22110-market-review-of-card-scheme-and-processing-fees-final-report/
9. Payment Systems Regulator, market review into card scheme and processing fees, updated July 2026. https://www.psr.org.uk/our-work/market-reviews/market-review-into-card-scheme-and-processing-fees/
10. House of Commons Treasury Committee, Government response on acceptance of cash, 12 July 2025. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmtreasy/1128/report.html