Treasury Committee report calls for action on cash acceptance

The Treasury Committee has published a report warning of the risk of creating a “two tier” society that harms the vulnerable unless the Government takes action on declining cash acceptance levels. UK law does not mandate that businesses have to accept cash, nor that they have any legal duty to accommodate the varying needs of customers. HM Treasury told the Committee that the Government has no intention of legislating to make businesses of any size accept cash.

Recent studies suggest that increasing numbers of businesses either do not accept cash or discourage its use, but there is a lack of consistent evidence, which makes it hard to assess the scale of the problem. So the Treasury Committee wants the Government to improve its monitoring and reporting of cash acceptance levels. It also notes the national resilience benefits of cash acceptance and says there was a surge in cash withdrawals in the wake of recent bank outages.