Cash and or Card

[DeanoL]

Bring both. Can almost guarantee there will be places that won't take card but also places that won't take cash.

Last year we ended up not using much cash but didn't use the bars much.

[Andeeroo]

Only had to use cash once last year when the card reader went down on one of the market stalls not far from west holts.

Otherwise I used Apple Pay on my phone but with a stash of cash in the lockups just in case.

[Skip997]

Everyone needs some cash, just in case you need to top on those things traders don't sell

[DareToDibble]

4 minutes ago, gooner1990 said:

This as well.

I was at football two weeks ago and totally forgot about a round of drinks I had put on my card after the game....nearly £40! Ouch!  Wasn't until I looked at my banking app with a big hangover that I realised.

At least with cash you can see how much is going down, and of course if you are worried about having £100s on you at the festival put some in the lockups.

 

I really am an idiot for not using these. I've never lost anything/had anything stolen at the festival but considering there is a lockup in the field I camp it is pretty stupid not to. Will definitely be using them this year.

[stuie]

6 minutes ago, DareToDibble said:

I do find it a lot easier to budget with cash so there is that benefit. Far too easy to go on a tapping spree on card 😄 

Transfer your relevant budget on to a Revolut card, or Monzo etc. 

Going on a session with contactless access to your main bank account/savings accounts is a very very very bad idea!

 

Glasto last year, I kept £100 cash as a backup - think I used it for food a couple of times and for some very nice weed in the Glade! 

 

[FakeEmpire]

Lots of bars were only accepting cash on the Weds & Thurs last year. Some of them, like the Mandela Bar, continued to have card machine problems beyond that. So I'd take some cash as a back up.

 

[Harry3]

12 hours ago, airwaves said:

Glastonbury - 200000 people on site

200000 phones (?) plus thousands and thousands of vendors and transactions happening every minute at peak. 

A recipe for overload if ever i saw one

I'm taking enough cash to see me through, and hope card is accepted so I return with cash

This is exactly what 5G is great at

Although I dont have 5G 😞

[Alvoram]

3 minutes ago, stuie said:

Transfer your relevant budget on to a Revolut card, or Monzo etc. 

Going on a session with contactless access to your main bank account/savings accounts is a very very very bad idea!

 

Glasto last year, I kept £100 cash as a backup - think I used it for food a couple of times and for some very nice weed in the Glade! 

 

I use Monzo for this... Bank with a high street bank, but have a Monzo for travelling etc. 

[incident]

2 hours ago, Crazyfool01 said:

They pay a transaction fee to the card companies don’t they ? 

If they're using SumUp which most will be, then the fee they pay is a flat 1.69% with no minimum - which is likely to be less than the costs incurred dealing with cash.

Don't have much sympathy with traders pleading "no signal" in previous years at Glastonbury. They had the option to (and many/most did) get an EE sim card for £10 which would have worked perfectly.

[DeanoL]

8 minutes ago, incident said:

If they're using SumUp which most will be, then the fee they pay is a flat 1.69% with no minimum - which is likely to be less than the costs incurred dealing with cash.

Don't have much sympathy with traders pleading "no signal" in previous years at Glastonbury. They had the option to (and many/most did) get an EE sim card for £10 which would have worked perfectly.

For food traders, cashless is a massive benefit as it means you're not handling anything other than food. So it lets people work on both food prep and on taking orders without having to take gloves on and off all the time. Not an issue for the bigger stalls where it's "order one end, collect the other" but for the smaller ones it massively speeds things up.

[andymk]

The card reader problems last year where due to the SIMs in the readers not being on EE. I know of at least one stall that swapped them over on the Thursday after loads of issues and didn't have a problem for the rest of the weekend

[ChimpyJ]

From a traders point of view. My view. 
Cash is a a bit of a pita. Have to think about a float all the time. Which we have to pay for. We don’t always have our menu items rounded to a pound or 50p, so that makes it worse for a change situation. 
We then have to bank it at some point, either during the festival, we really don’t want cash sitting about, or after, which means time trying to find somewhere to bank it. 
Then we have to think about forged notes. Meaning we scan every single note we get through our note checking machine. 
Card is very much my preference, it’s quick and the money is in the bank the next day available for me to use. 
We use a 4G router with an EE sim and not once lost connection, that’s with all my team connected to it also. 
Changed to VF for this year. 
Last year SumUp went down on the Saturday afternoon for about 3 hours, we just switched to Zettle and carried on. 
Obviously we are very happy to take cash, we’d never go card only.

And as an aside, percentage wise , we took more cash in 22 than in 19. 

 

[gooner1990]

5 minutes ago, andymk said:

The card reader problems last year where due to the SIMs in the readers not being on EE. I know of at least one stall that swapped them over on the Thursday after loads of issues and didn't have a problem for the rest of the weekend

That including the 'official' beer tents?

[cb4747]

May be an unpopular opinion but I do like cashless at a festival. Less chance of losing money. I'm quite an idiot with things like that. 

[clarkete]

15 minutes ago, cb4747 said:

May be an unpopular opinion but I do like cashless at a festival. Less chance of losing money. I'm quite an idiot with things like that. 

Aye, it's not what we prefer, simply that last year there was less choice of vendors if you were cashless and in some cases that deprived you of the opportunity of lovely drinks, tasty food or shorter queues. 

[Breeze]

3 hours ago, incident said:

If they're using SumUp which most will be, then the fee they pay is a flat 1.69% with no minimum - which is likely to be less than the costs incurred dealing with cash.

Don't have much sympathy with traders pleading "no signal" in previous years at Glastonbury. They had the option to (and many/most did) get an EE sim card for £10 which would have worked perfectly.

Cash = Creative Accounting, so why would they buy a SIM?

 

[cb4747]

5 minutes ago, clarkete said:

Aye, it's not what we prefer, simply that last year there was less choice of vendors if you were cashless and in some cases that deprived you of the opportunity of lovely drinks, tasty food or shorter queues. 

I see! Interesting

[gooner1990]

25 minutes ago, cb4747 said:

May be an unpopular opinion but I do like cashless at a festival. Less chance of losing money. I'm quite an idiot with things like that. 

Don't forget that businesses 'trading' up in the Stone Circle (or other late night areas) don't like to keep an official track of money coming in and out. 😉 

[cb4747]

2 minutes ago, gooner1990 said:

Don't forget that businesses 'trading' up in the Stone Circle (or other late night areas) don't like to keep an official track of money coming in and out. 😉 

I hadn't considered those businesses 😇

[clarkete]

1 hour ago, gooner1990 said:

Don't forget that businesses 'trading' up in the Stone Circle (or other late night areas) don't like to keep an official track of money coming in and out. 😉 

*takes notes*

[gfa]

I had no issues with card only last year.

[gfa]

2 hours ago, gooner1990 said:

Don't forget that businesses 'trading' up in the Stone Circle (or other late night areas) don't like to keep an official track of money coming in and out. 😉 

they all use these nowadays

[Barneym]

So many of the bars I went to (and we buy nearly all our alcohol from bars) were not taking card at various points last year, including some of the main ones by the pyramid. I’d much rather go cash free with £50 as a back up but I hate paying to get cash out and can not be bothered to walk and queue for the free cash points so I’m going fully loaded with cash this year and card as a back up

I actually thought it was better in 19 when I didn’t have issues with cards 

[celticvillan]

Are there cash points on site? Do they charge a stupid amount to withdraw?

[Barneym]

3 minutes ago, celticvillan said:

Are there cash points on site? Do they charge a stupid amount to withdraw?

There is, one set are free (someone else will tell you where as I never remember) the rest are just like normal pay for cash points, just checked my statement and it was £2.75 last year, I just hate the principle of paying to take out my own cash, although probably less so at a festival. There is a set by the bottom the Silver Hayes