By Julian Goldsmith, 29 October 2007 14:15
NEWS
London commuters are wasting precious time by using cash when faster alternatives are available, it has been claimed.
A survey of 100 London workers by Visa Europe found workers waste one hour per week - totalling nearly three days per year - paying cash for everyday purchases such as coffees, newspapers and snacks. This includes time queuing at cash points for the cash in the first place.
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The Visa Europe Time and Motion study found 63 per cent of London commuters make up to three cash withdrawals per week, each one taking around 146 seconds - this makes for seven minutes and 18 seconds wasted per week. Unsurprisingly, Visa Europe is advocating a contactless payment system for purchases of £10 or less as a more convenient option.
Visa Europe is one of a number of credit card companies that have rolled out a contactless payment credit card in partnership this autumn.
Visa is working with member banks including Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and RBS to offer a product called payWave. Barclaycard combined this with the Oyster public transport swipe card in a product called OnePulse in September.
Head of innovation and acceptance for Visa Europe, Sandra Alzetta, said with more than 70 per cent of commuters admitting to spending up to £50 in cash each week on sundry expenses, it is "easy to see the opportunity" for contactless payments as a cash replacement.
Comments
There are 13 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
This is rubbish!
Anybody else find it not-strange-at-all that this study was by none other than VISA!?
I've stood far longer in Starbucks waiting to pay when everyone in front of me pays with a card...
the only delay with cash is that shop keepers are either shocked to see cash, or they haven't seen the stuff for so long they've forgotten what to do with it!
2. Guy Reynolds
I wonder did they also analyse the time you stand in a queue, waiting for someone phaffing trying to find a card, then to use it, only finding it didn't work and have to have the cashier void everything, when you only wanted one item and you had the exact change in your hand.
I know they want to push contactless cards, but there is far less to go wrong with cash, and when you loose it that is the limit of your loss and you don't have to spend hours trying to convince companies of what was actual use and what was fraudulent use.
3. Karen Challinor
sounds like another attempt to justify contactless payment cards to me
now a pickpocket doesn't even have to pick a pocket to get your money, just walk past you with a scanner in their pocket and you are £10 down
ok it's not a lot, but imagine walking through waterloo station at rush hour with one
each individual only loses £10 but there's a couple of thousand individuals to make it worthwhile
4. Richard Davies
My God...three days a year! I feel for them.
If you are the kind of person that worries about 3 days a year because of queues then my guess is you will die earlier than the rest of us anyway. With this in mind, maybe you need those precious days!
My tip though is to lead a less stressfull life; don't worry about stupid / inconsequential things and you might get a few more years instead of dying from a stress related illness!!!
How anal are you if you calculate your waiting for a newspaper etc. in your daily efficieny reports!!!! Maybe if you sleep differently, getting out of bed in a morning could save you some more seconds too!
5. Ollie Clark
I had a Visa Cash card when they were trialling it in Leeds and it took longer to pay with that than with cash. Completely pointless.
6. anonymous
What self-interested tosh! Silicon.com should spend more effort mocking and de-bunking rubbish like this.
As others have commented, there are lots of other delays as great or greater than dealing with cash - so the "case" falls flat immediately.
And cash has one great advantage - it is anonymous. I don't care to have Visa et all know any more about what I do than they do already - and that is probably too much.
7. GALLEY SLAVE#41
So what pray are we supposed to do with all this time we are going to save?
Spend more time under the slave drivers whip!!
STANDS TO REASON WE WON'T BE ALLOWED TO USE IT FOR OURSELVES,
WILL WE?
8. John H Woods
An hour per week? Do Londoners pay for everything with exact change in pennies? I have just been to the coffee shop downstairs: it is quite clear that the half dozen people in front of me would have saved no more than about ten seconds each if the goods they had purchased had been given free of charge. Do they each make 60 such transactions per day?
9. Roger Huffadine
Complete Crap - Tell me what are people going to do with all this extra time that they save?
Think how much time one could save by driving at 2 mph over any speed limit.
10. MusicFan
Its far easier to spend more money and get in more debt with your credit/debit cards when the money your spending isnt visibly passing out of your hand.
I would far rather cash cost me 3 days per year than cards cost me £1000 per year.
What about overdraft fees unauthorized fees etc when you use money which you think you had on your card, only to find the mars bar you just bought cost you £30!
Cash is the only thing that protects me from my own needless spending!
Please dont take away my hole in the wall!
11. Mike Poole
While they are at it VISA should add the 4.353 minutes per decade that each of us has to work on average to pay for the early demise of our trousers caused by all that cash slopping around. If they factor in the damage caused by keys they can persuade us all of the benefits of contactless keys as well.
12. anonymous
Isn't it strange that the ones pushing contactless cards are the banks and finance houses, the very instiutions who are likely to make even more money with the transaction charges that will inevitably be made on both the buyer and seller
13. Lionel A Smith
Another way of tracking people's movements and habits dreamed up by the Bilderbergers.
How about all the hours many spend on the expensive telephone trying to sort out card account irregularities from the use of such security flawed methods? Keeping tabs on credit card accounts can be bad enough particularly with the poor security implementation of UK cards.