CP19/6: Responses to our Call for Views on our research into cash access, use and acceptance, and summary of our roundtable discussion

We are publishing a summary of the roundtable discussion we held on 9 October 2019 on our research into cash access, use and acceptance.

Why we are publishing this document 

It’s important that we all have a good choice of how to make payments, in ways that work for everyone. While there has been a significant ongoing shift in the UK towards digital payments, being able to pay in cash remains important.

In the first quarter of 2019 we commissioned BritainThinks to undertake research on our behalf looking at how people and small businesses access, use and process cash.

We published the findings of our research and a Call for Views seeking feedback on the insights and aspects that arose, or might not have been captured, in our research.

On 9 October 2019, we invited stakeholders to attend a roundtable discussion on our further thinking about understanding people’s cash needs, how those needs are being met now and how they should be met in the future. 

Who should read this document

This document will be of particular interest to ATM operators, consumer groups and merchants as well as anyone with an interest in the provision of access to cash.

What this document contains

The summary is set out in three sections based on the topics covered at the event:

•    a summary of the feedback on insights from our BritainThinks research and in responses to our Call for Views

•    a discussion of ways to measure and track consumer outcomes in relation to access to cash

•    a discussion on effective local community engagement

Next steps

In addition to our BritainThinks research and Call for Views to understand people’s cash use and access, we held a roundtable discussion with stakeholders on 26 July 2019 on the structure of the LINK interchange fees, which followed our Call for Views on the same topic that we published 6 June 2019.

We have been carefully considering the information we received from both these Call for Views – and the feedback provided has been taken into consideration when we have been looking at what our key priorities on this important subject will be.