Airlines being cashless
 

When I travel, I like to keep strong control over costs (too easy to burn through money if on a card), and avoid an audit trail that can be used to monetise any sort of profile. Consequently, I like cash. Some airlines (Easyjet and Ryanair amongst others) make a big thing about being cashless, and consequently make zero inflight sales from me. In any case, most flights over 6 hours (no, not Ryanair) seem to have a free meal anyway. Am I a rarity or do others refuse to hand over credit cards ? Does this materially affect inflight ancillary sales or profitability ?

How would you book a flight? By card?! Your audit trail has started.

Do you have a supermarket 'loyalty' card? You have a trail and your shopping preferences are stored.

If you use FACEBOOK, and do a search on GOOGLE for a certain product your news feed on FACEBOOK will contain adverts from companies selling the product you GOOGLED.

Yes your actions would of course affect in-flight ancillary sales, commission and profits, that's obvious isn't it?!

If anonymity is that important, you can always use one of those cash-to-card machines that have been popping up in the US.

The moment you register/checkin for a flight you're on the record - and that's one that will almost certainly be matched against various data bases.

Unless you're "a person of interest" who is going to bother chasing a card transaction for a G&T on EasyJet ???

There are over 1.86 BILLION card transactions every day world-wide...............................

I haven't been on a carrier which accepts cash in god knows how long. Which carriers do?

The airlines already have a profile of you. They know what you searched, what you booked, what you request or buy as part of those bookings etc. And you've used your card to book the service so they have that. Buying some pringles on board isn't going to make the airline suddenly think they have lots more info on you.

Since Covid I have gone virtually cashless. The only regular recipient of cash is the window cleaner. Other than that any purchases from small market traders and in summer the ice cream van!

When traveling I have used cards wherever possible, but made sure payment is in local currency - never use the 'sterling scam'.

I can't see what additional useful information an airline is going to glean based on my on board purchases, other than I'm a sucker for overpriced grotty sandwiches and snacks!

I get your 'why' David, but from an audit point of view, I think you are overthinking your worries.

From a cost control point of view, that is easy to manage by setting yourself a budget and sticking to it. You can always get a credit card that has no FX transaction fees allowing you to always pay in local currency at better rates with no charges. Failing that, you could always pre-load a travel card with a set budget (like an electronic version of the old travellers cheques) to ensure you stick to plan. Whatever the case, cash is now almost irrelevant.

That said, I always take a small cash amount for tips, emergencies, markets etc when abroad.

Clearly there is only one "international man of mystery" amongst us... :suspect:

To go truly incognito you’ll need a friend with exactly the same name and DOB to book your ticket, you’ll need to arrive and leave the respective destinations by someone else’s private car and you’ll need to only travel domestically to avoid an immigration check. Good luck with that. Even then, you’ll have been picked up on CCTV all over the place.

Our window cleanser and ice cream van prefer card tranfers

;)

people think they're more important than perhaps they are...............

DJ6 has a valid point, but I'm not sure turning his back on in-flight purchases will make a difference.
The rapid advance of cashless transactions, whilst understandable, is a really sinister development. Once Central Banks replace their currencies with digital ones, the damage will be complete. You as an individual will be able to be monitored and controlled through your expenditure. So if Government decides you can only take four flights a year, you will simply be automatically barred from booking a fifth. The same may happen if you try to buy "too much" red meat, or "too many" sugary drinks. If you post something on X criticising the Government, they may prevent you travelling, or buying fuel, or any other punishment they see fit.
If you think I'm scaremongering, take a look at the Chinese Communist Party's social credit scheme, or look at how the East German government monitored its citizens, well before the advent of the internet.
All we can do to combat this trend is to use cash wherever we can, use social media as little as possible, and make sure that, when we vote, we vote for the candidate who really values freedom above all else.

Off topic but this already happens. People are arrested for tweeting something in bad taste or name calling. People can already be banned, have their citizenship removed etc. Too many sugary drinks? We have a gov already trying to tax them more. There are already calls to give people a quota of flights. Not buying food onboard is doing nothing in the grand scheme of things. Corona showed how easy it was for Gov to bring in such things. The UK became one of the only countries in the world to ban it citizens from leaving… right up there with the DPRK and East Germany.

I don’t blame them, after 15 years in retail, (don’t ask) handling many many thousands of notes.
You have to count them off the customer,
count them into the till,
count them into the night bag,
count them into the safe,
count them into the security bag for the bank
and just for good luck the bank charge you for counting them again with no redress if they say it’s wrong! ​​​​​,

I remember walking across a very busy shop floor with two security bag inside my coat, so no one would see the reason was they contained approx £40k, this was the day after Boxing Day! These were not going to my place but to Secure van. And just to complete the picture a main board Director was on the shop floor!

so much easier with the swipe of a card. Much cheaper tooo.

Mike

First world problem, if indeed it's a problem at all.

Love the conspiracy theorists....be careful....they're always watching......

The only time I use cash now is at the Chinese takeaway down the road.

I don’t think they’re into conspiracies like some on this thread, I think it just allows for some creative accounting. They do a banging chow mein though so it’s all good :ok:

Scratch card Woes
 

One (welcome) casualty of cashless sales appears to be Ryanair's Scratch card sales. Talking to one of their crew it appears sales of the dreaded card have plummeted. When
passengers had a few spare foreign coins in their pockets they were more easily tempted to buy. Cashless apparently much less so. As the cabin crew are still "encouraged" to push sales,
I've often wondered how much Ryanair makes from these?

You also have to FIND a bank and pay in the cash - not very easy these days...................