Cash - “So Last Century”?
With the proliferation of non-cash payment services, should we be surprised if we start hearing that cash is “so last century”?
Before COVID, we were accustomed to using credit cards for in-store shopping and to pay for goods and services purchased online. COVID accelerated significantly the speed of non-cash service development as people did their best to avoid contact with any surface that might carry germs. I remember vividly the first time I travelled back to the UK as the COVID crisis drew to a close and, on landing, when I offered cash in payment for something, was asked if I had a debit card. Of course, I did and was able to use this, but the surprise was still there.
Not only can we make payments by simply swiping a card close to a card reader, but we can also make them direct from our smart phone or even our watch!
The humble cheque, so beloved of our parents and the “check guarantee card” that went with it (at least in the UK) has completely disappeared with the advent of direct online transfers. It won’t be long before cash becomes a thing of the past in some markets.
For cash to disappear entirely, every store and online merchant will need appropriate systems in place. Inevitably, these cost money. For the small corner store in a remote village in the Himalayas, cash will remain king. If non-cash payments are to truly become the norm, then the cost of processing them for merchants must decline to almost zer0 or at least to the level where it becomes more profitable for them to use cashless payments than cash.
The flipside of this is that, in the same remote village, people paying for goods and services will also need the tools to do so, that is, a debit card (or smartwatch!)
Interestingly, one bank in the UK at least has stopped issuing debit cards on its customers’ accounts. Why they’ve done this, I can only guess, but it appears to be because they don’t wish their accounts to be used for “small” purchases (and, perhaps, because the cost of producing the cards for their target customers compared with the number of times they’re used simply isn’t justified). Their risk is that customers will simply transfer balances kept with that bank to one that still does offer a card.
Added to this, the likes of Apple Pay require users to have at least one credit (if not debit) card to use their service. Whilst cash may disappear or become a rare commodity (no doubt to the delight of central banks and governments worldwide!), cards will now be the rule.
Cards themselves bring other risks. We hear countless anecdotes of cards being “scammed” or “cloned”. There are now scanners that can read the information on one’s credit card from distances under one metre. Cash at least provided some security against this, although not against muggings.
Our payments horizon is changing. Cheques have disappeared, cards are the norm, cash is common still. Frankly, I didn’t see it becoming “last century” any time soon, at least not until the global payments system becomes sufficiently cost effective for even small kiosk-type traders to use.
Our business still doesn’t take payments by debit or credit card - yet, but I suspect it’ll be only a matter of time before we bow to the inevitable.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Customer Care, Financial, Strategy
“5-Minute Read”
Has anyone noticed that, nowadays, newsletters to which we subscribe or news articles contain at the top or as part of their heading “three minute read” or “five minute read“?
I’m not sure where this came from, but I would guess that it may be designed to assist recipients of such emails and articles to prioritise their reading by showing them how long it will take them to read that message. The only question I have is, “How did they calculate the time required to read?”
Common sense suggests that this would have been done by somebody reading the article and timing themselves doing so. That’s a perfectly acceptable way of doing things but the problem I have is that one can’t take into account the reading speeds and abilities of every potential reader.
So the question becomes, “Is this an average figure for a representative group of readers or simply for the person who wrote the article?”
In our globalised world, different people read articles at different speeds for any number of reasons:
- The article is not in their first language.
- They may be dyslexic.
- They may naturally be “slow readers”
Although it seems a minor issue, one should take this into account. There are certain newsletters to which I subscribe which I know are written by journalists whose first language is English and who have an extremely extensive vocabulary. The consequence of this is that they use words with which not everyone will be as familiar as they. When I see that an article written by a journalist for this particular newsletter will take “10 minutes”, I know that it’s likely to take longer simply for the “average” reader to absorb the contents, the nuances, and the information contained therein.
I do feel that stating that something is a “three-minute read” helps many. Let’s go back to my example of the newsletter. If I see articles that are “three minutes reads” and “eight minute reads”, I’ll probably prioritise the three minute articles over the eight minute ones as I know that, in a given amount of time, I can read more of the shorter than the longer articles.
The point as ever is metrics. We tend to use metrics that we ourselves understand but risk not making allowances for others. This problem will never go away, but it is perhaps as well to understand, that different things mean different things to different people. And that we need to incorporate this in our dealings with others.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Strategy
The Recruitment Nightmare (For All)
I provide training to students in CV writing and interviewing. Of the common complaints they have is that they don't hear from recruiters after sending in their application. To be fair, recruiters have also complained that candidates “ghost” them at interviews (don’t show up and don’t provide a reason)…
My answer to candidates is twofold:
- Were you making a “speculative” application or
- Were you responding to a job advert?
In the case of speculative applications, my feeling is that, depending on its size, it’s a 50-50 chance as to whether the organisation replies quickly or not at all. After all, this is an unsolicited application. However, when someone is responding to a specific advertisement for a specific job, it should be common courtesy to reply one way or the other. Here’s where the problem starts. Recruiters are becoming overwhelmed with the number of applications received, even for a specific job after posting a specific job advertisement. We may see phrases such as “only successful applicants will be informed”. My suggestion to anyone who does this is to specify a time by which applicants can expect to be informed (and therefore, by extension, the date after which unsuccessful applicants can consider their application “unsuccessful ”).
Even where one is making a speculative application, the recipient should treat it with a degree of professionalism. After all they’re being complimented by someone thinking that they are worth applying to! You also never know, if you “ghost” that applicant today, tomorrow they may be in a position where they can refer business to you and will remember how unprofessionally they were treated when they applied. Fate can be a fickle mistress!
How does your organisation respond to job applications? If, when posting a job advertisement, it states that “only successful applicants will be notified”, does it say by when this will happen?
The third situation I’ve encountered with my trainees is that they make an application and then some three months later are called for interview! It’s at this point that they should seriously be considering whether they shouldn’t have chased their application any earlier. In some markets recruiters may not react, favourably to this kind of “pushing”. Unfortunately each market has its own peculiar culture and each organisation is different.
My conclusions:
Recruiters: if you aren’t going to respond to every applicant, at least give a date by which everyone can expect to have heard one way or the other.
Jobhunters: if no date is given for when you should have received a response, diarise to chase (say) a week after the deadline and, if you hear nothing, a week after that and a week after that. After three chasers, consider your application “unsuccessful” and move on.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Career, Selling
