“Yesterday, a power fault at a single data centre in London left millions of people unable to pay by card, transfer money or withdraw cash from their app. Drivers could not pay for fuel. Travellers could not pay for a taxi. Their money was safe, their banks told them, but for most of the day they could not use it.
The people who carried on paying were the ones with notes and coins in their pockets. Cash is the ultimate form of trust. It needs no power, no signal and no server, and when you hand it over, the payment is complete. Nobody stands between the buyer and the seller, and no outage can switch it off.
Cash protects people when the systems around them fail. It protects their independence and their privacy every day of the week. That protection only works if cash stays in daily use: if shops keep accepting it and cash machines keep dispensing it, with notes in people’s wallets before the next outage arrives.
We support a payment system where cash and digital work side by side. Digital payments bring speed. Cash brings certainty. Yesterday showed once again that a society needs both, and that the payment people can rely on most is the one they can hold in their hand.”
