Country Living with Francis Farragher

Okay so I am turning into an old curmudgeon, but one of the bees that keeps buzzing in my bonnet, is the issue of businesses, shops and organisations, who just won’t accept cash anymore.

Whether it be the GAA, car-parks, restaurants or major high-street stores, it still strikes me as odd at best and unpatriotic at worst, if the legal tender of the country is not accepted to conduct a transaction.

In cases, it’s even gone a stage further, where even cards aren’t accepted to conduct a transaction – instead an app must be downloaded, as in the case of a woman I spoke to last week, who had travelled from the east of the country with her husband and child for a short holiday break in Galway.

They wanted to take in the Macnas parade in Galway City and decided to park properly and legally in one of the official local authority car-parks, expecting that their bank or credit card could be used on the machines.

Instead they found the machines covered with a notice to download an app which they duly did only to find that some scammer had piggybacked onto their transaction and promptly removed them of a quick €50, which thankfully they were refunded in the end.

The lesson to be learned from that little incident is that technology, instead of making things simpler and easier, for commuters and motorists, had made a simple parking exercise a complex issue, and had opened up another little door for the online scammers.

Admittedly, there are advisories out there left, right and centre, with all the guidelines for adopting safe procedures with apps and payments, but for a quick small-money transaction, it’s ‘heavy going’ to have to go downloading an app, to park your car legally.

I cannot for one minute declare that even a quarter of my financial transactions involve cash – my ‘bad boast’ is that I possess at least four different credit and bank cards – but there is a sizeable and older cohort of our population who prefer to their business with cash, and should they be disenfranchised. I think not.

Pictured: Bye-bye cash!