Having only recently somehow managed to breach basic GDPR legislation in the Nigel Farage unbanking fiasco the morons at NatWest have now written to their customers and told them they are limiting them to £24K a year annual cash deposits, with further limits on withdrawals, effective from 12th September 2023.
Must be a CRIMINAL!
The stated goal of these new limitations is to prevent money laundering - to prevent criminals from depositing large sums of cash.
The problem with this is that many small businesses take cash payments, which make up around 15-20% of all transactions still in the UK (survey results vary from 15-20%) and some of these are easily going to exceed that £24K a year limit - we are thinking in terms of revenue here, not profit, after all.
I mean even the HMRC doesn't require you to register a business for VAT until you hit £85K worth of sales, so any face to face business with revenue over that amount is likely to suffer because of this restriction.
Natwest have also introduced restrictions on withdrawals - the terms are flexible so it can just impose any restriction on any account for any reason.
I honestly don't know what they are playing at... obviously this is a matter of convenience and control for them - the less cash they have to deal with the fewer cashiers they have to pay, and easier it is for them to track money if more transactions are digital.
But this is a serious inconvenience for any medium sized business which takes cash payments and a potential nightmare for any consumer who uses cash primarily.
For me it's sheer idiocy given that individuals and customers can just switch banks, which I certainly would be doing if I were a NatWest customer - the idiot decisions coming out of central office are worrying!
I was at a restaurant this week and they only take cash.. getting rid of cash won't be so easy..
Wow that's cool!
Here in Germany there are plenty of cash-only businesses. Everyone tries to blame it on the German backwardness regarding technology, but I can feel a bit of defiance and resistance as well. Cash only (and somewhat proud of it).
Yes, especially in the Biergarten! No cash = No beer!
A pub I frequently visted years ago (Munich) had a sign "In God we trust - all others pay cash".
hehe I always have some Bargeld with me.
Biergarten, sauna, lots of pubs, eateries, the list goes on.
I can imagine in Berlin especially probably!
We have quite a lot of small businesses like that.
I'm guessing that NatWest has made a business decision about profitability and that there's a niche of customers who are not profitable enough for them. I was really surprised when I had a small retail business that I was one of the bank's largest customers in that category with quite a modest turnover: most of their small business customers were under £30k a year and the vast majority of them around £5-£7k a year. So lots of them, but comparatively expensive to service.
I'm wondering how this will affect credit unions - some of them are very much cash only but can be still be the largest customer for a local branch of a bank.
I imagine it will make credit unions more popular!
There is so much idiocy in this world; people trying to "control" one stream at the expense of messing up everything else.
Here in the US, they don't have anything quite like that (yet!) but if you try to deposit more than $5,000 in one transaction the bank will refuse it UNLESS you fill out a lengthy government form, one copy of which ends up with the IRS revenue overseers. One bank where we used to have an account actually instituted a fee of $1.50 per $1,000 for tellers "counting cash" in a single deposit over $2,500! Needless to say, we closed that account!
Bright Blessings!
$4999 deposits it is then - bonkers!
Hahaha, that's a good one: "tellers counting cash". The machine takes maybe 1.5 seconds to whirl through a thousand bucks. That adds up to a very handsome hourly wage, which is certainly in the "banking league". Too bad no teller will ever see that type of remuneration.
Who is driving this change? Are other banks affected? Of course lots of businesses deal with large amounts of cash, but I expect the banks would expect that. If you turn up with a suitcase of money they may be suspicious.
As far as I know it's just NatWest, leading the field with going backward. It's just convenience on their part, they could make exceptions for the suitcase scenario!
Australia is pretty keen on cashless. We'd taken this rolling over.
Not that I think it's a good idea, just this country loves being cashless.
Interesting, it obviously varies country to country!
Maybe they knew that it was just a matter of time before all the banks adopted a similar policy, maybe even mandated by law. Wouldn't surprise me.
We're not quite at mandatory yet, maybe that's coming this decade here? I know the government is keen on digital currency!
The Bank of England has said it will maintain cash because there is a large group of people that are still cash-only.
Around 15% prefer cash! Lots of people!