First London cabbie goes cashless this week
Cash is so 2013. Now that buses are cashless and you can pay for your shopping with the tap of a card, even London’s black cabs are shunning hard cash in favour of the plastic stuff. Well one is, at least.
London cab driver Ian Cable is refusing to take cash from today (July 14) until Friday (July 18). Unfortunately this is not because he’s offering us all a free ride around the city, he’s just trialling the new Barclays mobile app Pingit and encouraging customers to pay for their ride by transferring cash. The app is free, passengers just need to scan a code in the cab and it takes 30 seconds to transfer the cash. All sounds pretty straightforward so far and you don’t need to be a Barclays customer.
However, we have thought of a few flaws. Firstly what happens if you’ve no data left on your phone so can’t get online? What if you didn’t realise you have sod all money left in your bank account because you just cleared it out on a giddy sales spree or boozy night out? Also, surely this would limit clientele to English-speaking people – ‘just download Pingit and transfer the cash’ probably isn’t in most phrasebooks.
Not sure how to cope without cold hard cash? Take a look at six ways to pay now buses are cashless.