Card Only / Cash Only

[nailit]

Had breakfast in a cafe in Stoke earlier this week and they were taking cash only.
Had a drink in Cafe Nero in Chester yesterday and they were taking card only.
Whats that all about, I dont get it?

[brainiac]

^^ card machine

[andres]

My husband had a Post Office account and card for his pension until a few months ago. As gness has pointed out ,all retirement pensions will soon have to be paid into a bank account. However you will still be able to draw your pension from the P.O. by using your bank card instead of the P.O. card.

[Buenchico]

ALL post offices take cards for Post Office business (e.g. for paying for postage). Most local post offices also operate their own businesses though (independent of their contract with Post Office Counters), either as general convenience stores or as, say, suppliers of stationery, giftware, etc. It's almost certainly that side of the business that Jourdain2 is referring to.

Even so, I'm amazed that they don't accept cards. Almost every trader around here does (and did so well before Covid-19 arrived). That includes businesses like burger vans, market traders, car boot sellers and even some Big Issue vendors.

If it hadn't been for the present crisis, I was considering trying to make a few quid at Christmas Fairs and indoor boot sales this year. If I'd been able to go ahead, I'd have forked out £14.50 for one of these
https://www.ryman.co.uk/sumup-air-card-payment-reader
and been happy to pay 17p on every tenner I took in bank charges, as I feel sure that the ability to take cards would have helped my sales along considerably.

[Mamyalynne]

Thanks for those replies, I am enlightened.

[MynameisLuca]

"pensions will soon have to be paid into a bank account."
If that happens, won't there bank charges?

[tonyav]

No.

[Jackdaw33]

There shouldn't be any charges. My pensions are paid into my current account and I pay no charges on deposits or withdrawals.

[Mamyalynne]

You don't get charged for direct payments into your account.

[Jackdaw33]

The way it works is that pensions, salaries etc. are deposited with your bank the day before they are due but not credited to your account until the due date. The bank has therefore 24 hours to play with your money via investments before handing it over to you. That's how they make their money.

[10ClarionSt]

Thanks Chris but that doesn't clear anything up does it? The only reference to my point that I can find in that link is this:
//So viruses are unlike any living creature in how they reproduce. Even single cell organisms like bacteria can reproduce independently on surfaces outside the body, but viruses can only survive for a while outside host cells. A person infected with a cold virus might sneeze, transferring virus onto surfaces around them, like a doorknob. The longer the virus is on the doorknob the less able it will be to cause a new infection//

//Viruses can only survive for a while outside host cells// What are we calling "a while"?

[satprof]

10C: As you might imagine, the issue of the Covid-19 virus remaining infectious outside living tissue has been studied by plenty of scientists. There is a highly scientific paper published last April at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2004973 but it's almost incomprehensible to most people.

In essence it says that the potency of a virus in the open air or on surfaces diminishes exponentially and more so on some surfaces than others. This table shows roughly how long it takes for the virus to more-or-less disappear from the different surfaces:

Copper 4 hours (very few of us have real copper surfaces)
Cardboard 24 hours
Stainless steel 48 hours
Plastic 60 hours

In practice, the amount of virus left after 2/3rds of these times probably wouldn't be enough to infect someone, but people differ in their vulnerability, so it pays to be cautious.

[10ClarionSt]

Thanks satprof. In that study, I noticed this paragraph:

//The findings and conclusions in this letter are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)//