Cash and Card Payments: Reduction in Availability
Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Pitt-Watson(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Lord Pitt-Watson (Lab)
On people getting hold of cash, there are initiatives taking place. On future payment systems, the National Payments Vision is trying to put together what an entire system using different payments methodologies would look like. Some of this is work in progress, around where we are and where we are going.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, has my noble friend looked at the experience of Sweden, where, a few years ago, there were a number of crashes and online payments were completely halted? The conclusion in Sweden was that it had to have a continuing element of cash payments. Are we looking at that?
Lord Pitt-Watson (Lab)
On this question of resilience, yes we are. For example, there is a project with Mastercard to support point-of-sale terminals from 2027 if the system failed, so that the system would still work. There is also a multi-year campaign on preparedness more generally—on the notion of what backups there are if, for example, our payment systems and ATMs failed. Again, that is work in progress, as is the Mastercard project, because it is not here yet.