Daily Scribble #1
The quest to find cash-only and cashless businesses in Europe
Taking inspiration from Royal Jordanian’s Daily Observation I too have been stumbling to name a small daily scribble.
Well here it is.
Not quite a blog post, but then not big small enough to fit inside a tweet.
So here is my daily scribble # 1
Just wrapped up attending the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal and was paying cash to the hotel at checkout, seems they would not accept the €500 note. This happened at the 1-Michelin star Restaurant Eleven as well. Seems they just don’t want to take the €500 note. Turns out as per the gentlemen on checkout that 50%-to-60% of the people in Lisbon who work, earn between €500-€700 per month. So that note is a big deal. He even admitted that it was the first time he was seeing it.
Hopping over to Copenhagen, the situation is much different. The €500 note was gladly accepted in some shops and hotels.
Headed over to Sweden (Malmo) today for a day trip. Cash was accepted everywhere and was much much faster than the touted card payment. I paid for in cash almost everywhere, refusing to use my card and no one said I could not use it. Granted, the bulk of the transactions are using the card, but there was plenty of evidence that cash is still strong.
In Munich however, there were many shops in and around the Sofitel/Le Meridian Hotel that are 100% cash-only, i.e. they did not accept cards.
Germany loves its cash.
About the Author: Faisal Khan is a banking / payments consultant specializing in cross-border payment system and a digital money evangelist. He is the co-host of Around the Coin, a weekly podcast on banking, money and payments. Mr. Khan is an advisor to Hippocorn (a VC company out of Denmark) as well as a talent scout for Series A & B financing for various fintech VCs/funds. He is also a frequent contributor to popular Q&A site Quora. His official website is at www.faisalkhan.com.
