A fashionable shopping street in an English suburb became a plastic-only zone on Saturday, in an experiment run by Handepay and a local traders’ association.
By becoming the first street in the UK to trade without cash (albeit just for the day), businesses on Beech Road in Chorlton, Manchester gave their customers a snapshot of a future cashless society, according to Handepay, the card payment provider who came up with the idea. Handepay supplies card payment terminals to more than 22,000 businesses across the UK.
Earlier this month, the British Retail Consortium revealed that, over the past five years, use of cash has dropped by 14%. Experts are now suggesting that it may disappear altogether within the next two decades. Chorlton’s “cash-free” experiment was designed to test how shoppers would react to this fast-forward into the future, where cash is no longer an option.
Mark Latham, Product and Innovation Director at Handepay, said: “We’re carrying less cash in our pockets than ever before and Britain is at the forefront of countries heading towards being cashless because the public are always eager to embrace new technology.”
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