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Cedar Fair going cashless in 2022

There is a danger that they'll have a similar problem that Mobile game developer's have with kids and non-free to play games.
It's far better as an App designer to make a free app than a low value paid one because it doesn't have to be downloaded with a payment card and so kids have full access without needing adult assistance.

As others have said above if a child needs to be with a parent in order to buy stuff that's a lot of lost revenue from School trips and young teens who are going around independently of family groups.

If there's a good cash to card system that everyone can use it's not a problem. The system just needs to take all users into account.

Side note: while nearly everything is now cashless in the UK I'm still surprised every time I visit parts of Europe just how often I need cash. I ran into issues on a business trip in Holland as I could only claim business expenses when using my work card and none of the local shops accepted it.
 
Nearly everything in the uk is now cashless???
News to me, I make 90% of my in person purchases with cash, without any issues whatsoever.
The only time ever cash wasn't acceptable...The Welcome Inn...that wasn't very welcoming!
Everywhere else I have made purchases, cash has been fine.
 
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I am a massive fan of cashless payment and rarely if ever take cash out with me anymore, that’s said i think people need choice and no one should exclude cash as a payment. By all means promote card payments (companies like them as they are cheaper to process since the transaction charges dropped, and cash handling charges in banks increased), but don’t exclude cash.
 
rob666 said:
Nearly everything in the uk is now cashless???
News to me, I make 90% of my in person purchases with cash, without any issues whatsoever.
The only time ever cash wasn't acceptable...The Welcome Inn...that wasn't very welcoming!
Everywhere else I have made purchases, cash has been fine.
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:p
I should have said cashless as an option. Cash is still accepted, its just been a while since I've even needed it.

But then maybe it's a southern thing ;)
 
rob666 said:
Then don't come to my local chippy, it has been cash only since the start of covid.
Can't quite work out why!
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Card transaction fee's for small business is horrendous. Almost all the chippies around me are cashless and always have been. If you want to use card you pay extra.
 
Rick said:
So, everyone pays extra?
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No, larger companies often have deals direct with card transaction companies but smaller companies like chippies often don't and will use standard fees. In one of my local chip shops if I want to pay by card I have to pay 50p extra towards the fees.
 
JAperson said:
No, larger companies often have deals direct with card transaction companies but smaller companies like chippies often don't and will use standard fees. In one of my local chip shops if I want to pay by card I have to pay 50p extra towards the fees.
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I get that, but you said they are all cashless, therefore everyone must pay on card and everyone must pay 50p?

I thought all surcharges will illegal now.
 
JAperson said:
Card transaction fee's for small business is horrendous. Almost all the chippies around me are cashless and always have been. If you want to use card you pay extra.
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That’s not strictly true if you bank your earnings even for small businesses, the cash handling fee is equal if not more than the card fee. Though if you don’t plan on banking (and therefore declaring) all your earnings then cash is much more useful
 
JAperson said:
Card transaction fee's for small business is horrendous. Almost all the chippies around me are cashless and always have been. If you want to use card you pay extra.
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Do you mean they prefer to take cash and charge extra for card (which is illegal).
Or that they are cashless and will not take cash at all.
There seems to be a double negative in your post.
 
jon81uk said:
Do you mean they prefer to take cash and charge extra for card (which is illegal).
Or that they are cashless and will not take cash at all.
There seems to be a double negative in your post.
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Sorry should of made my post clearer. A few of them are cash only and will accept no cards under any circumstances as they don't have a machine. One of them takes card but charged me extra last time however I have just spoken to a friend who went there today and paid by card without a charge so I presume that is no longer the case.

As for the point of my post, what I trying to say is that it costs companies to take card payments and that cash is often better for smaller companies with manageable amounts of staff. This of course makes no odds to Cedar Fair who are massive.
 
JAperson said:
As for the point of my post, what I trying to say is that it costs companies to take card payments and that cash is often better for smaller companies with manageable amounts of staff. This of course makes no odds to Cedar Fair who are massive.
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The cost of insurance for cash can be high which is why some small businesses (especially pubs) have moved away from it. Even with card fees they are probably lower than the increased insurance for holding large quantities of cash on the premises.
But I think many chip shops don’t declare all their tax which is why they like cash (of course that might not be the case, but it really seems possible).
 
jon81uk said:
The cost of insurance for cash can be high which is why some small businesses (especially pubs) have moved away from it. Even with card fees they are probably lower than the increased insurance for holding large quantities of cash on the premises.
But I think many chip shops don’t declare all their tax which is why they like cash (of course that might not be the case, but it really seems possible).
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I was unaware of seperate insurance needed for cash and that my explain why a lot of companies are going cashless but I don't see a fully cashless world for a long time yet.
 
I got caught out in Walibi Holland where my card wouldn't work anywhere on the park, even the vending machines out front. I had to scrimp together my Euro shrapnel for an ice cream and borrow from a buddy for the rest of the day. My card worked everywhere else without issue on the trip and when I called my bank they declared no issues on their side. It was really weird and never got to the bottom of it to be honest.

I don't carry multiple cards on days out but I do have 2 different cards in my phone now just in case this re-occurs.

I get the urge to push cashless but having a vending machine or a small shop that takes cash isn't a terrible idea either. Ah well time to embrace change (not literally)
 
Rojo said:
I got caught out in Walibi Holland where my card wouldn't work anywhere on the park, even the vending machines out front. I had to scrimp together my Euro shrapnel for an ice cream and borrow from a buddy for the rest of the day. My card worked everywhere else without issue on the trip and when I called my bank they declared no issues on their side. It was really weird and never got to the bottom of it to be honest.
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I've always found the Netherlands to be a right pain for using card. Got caught out the first time I went there card only as they don't seem to accept Visa or Mastercard in a lot of places (specifically Walibi Holland), so now make sure I always have enough cash on the hip for however many days I'm over there for.

Anyway, this is slightly off-topic! :)
 
This isn't new for the states. A number of food retailers over there have embraced cashless stores faster than we have over here. It's a similar picture with self service stores also. The most common Self Service tills in the UK are American designed NCR units and the concept is inspired by Wal Mart who pioneered their use. Wal Mart have also announced the role out of completely Self Service stores (with no manned tills at all) with an aim to role that out nationwide along with cashless in the near future. Amazon also have completely checkout free stores where cameras detect what you're buying and charges you via your mobile phone as you leave with no cash being handled in store or the need to for any kind of till. Notice those QR codes that have been appearing on things you buy over the last few years?

There's also trials going on with CT style scanner units like you get in hospitals that can scan all of your purchases and charge you wirelessly through your phone or smart watch. The prediction is that in the UK there will be very few high volume retailers that have manned tills by 2030 and very few that will accept cash beyond 2035.

The United States EFT systems are notoriously rubbish and insecure. They have huge amounts of fraud out there and many vendors can easily keep your card details. Their systems are antiquated and old fashioned compared to the more secure chip and pin systems in Europe. It's highly recommended that foreign travellers avoid using debit cards when visiting the states for this reason but at the same time it's also not wise to carry tonnes of cash around for obvious reasons. So small amounts of cash accompanied by a credit card are recommended as credit card transactions are fully insured. I took a credit card out for this sole purpose for my US wedding trip back last year before it got cancelled.

That said, although generally EFT systems over here are relatively secure, the back ups for when they fail are not! When the payment systems go down (it happens surprisingly often actually), we basically go back to the 1980's and take your card details via an old school style "click clack" machine on carbon paper (hence why most cards still have raised numbers on them). These pieces of paper are then taken in a pile to an office and tapped on to a PDQ machine manually to charge you when the systems are back up and running.
 
I think it’s somewhat inevitable we will see this happening in more parks now, especially those who already have an established pre-pay system in place (E.G. gift cards).

Provided that these alternative methods are made as easily accessible as possible and are well promoted it will hopefully avoid a lot of the issues (though there will always be those who ignore it or are reluctant). I couldn’t say for absolute certain as I have no data, but I would assume cardholdership rates in the UK are higher than the states, given the fact the UK has easy access to free banking, whereas I believe in America a lot of services are charged?..

The card market is becoming increasingly competitive these days it seems, with more and more new processors popping up marketed towards the small business. The likes of iZettle, SumUp and Square offer a much simpler, plug-and-play type means of taking payment and allow the vendor to use their own phone or tablet as the POS device and just run the app with their Bluetooth card reader, negating the need to buy expensive hardware or bring in specialists to set things up.

The concept of international card fees, certainly within the UK also feels like something that is beginning to shift. There are lots of banks/services now which aren’t charging these. Many of the challenger banks (the Monzos and Starlings) do not charge you to use your card abroad with some of the high street banks also now being forced to follow suit to maintain a competitive offering. There are also services like Curve who offer an intermediary card which takes the payment from the country you’re in, then routes it through the UK and passes it onto your bank in Sterling, avoiding charges. In the 15 years or so I’ve regularly been traveling in Europe I’ve certainly seen the shift to card, to the point I seldom carry Euros unless going to to somewhere completely unknown where ATM access may be ropey. Gone are the days of me queuing at the Travelex booth in Tesco to exchange a wad of notes!

The Netherlands is an interesting one with very patchy coverage. Although many places seem to take card, you’ll often see your card declined. As I understand it the Maestro card is one of the most commonly issued in the Netherlands, with MasterCard Debit being a relatively unheard of concept (Despite Maestro being a MasterCard brand…). This is why you’ll often have problems paying over there, as in the UK we predominantly used Visa Debit or MasterCard Debit. Just because a company takes card does not mean they can accept payment through any card brand.

Generally though the market has become much more competitive and a lot of the old attitudes to card payment seem to be shifting (heck, we were even in rural Yorkshire a few weeks ago and the greasy spoon trailer at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere was taking card payments!). The pandemic has simply accelerated this shift (at least in the UK anyway). Provided a well-managed and promoted alternative is made available I’m generally onboard with going cashless at parks.
 
Matt.GC said:
Amazon also have completely checkout free stores where cameras detect what you're buying and charges you via your mobile phone as you leave with no cash being handled in store or the need to for any kind of till. Notice those QR codes that have been appearing on things you buy over the last few years?
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I don't think the QR codes are to do with Amazons new stores, but I could be wrong, its said its a mix of cameras and RFID but the cameras could be watching the QR codes. There are several Amazon Fresh stores in London now and if I still lived there I would be using them!
https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets...is-amazon-go-where-is-it-and-how-does-it-work

Matt.GC said:
So small amounts of cash accompanied by a credit card are recommended as credit card transactions are fully insured. I took a credit card out for this sole purpose for my US wedding trip back last year before it got cancelled.
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I have a credit card with no international fee and used it a lot last time I was in the US, although I use Apple Pay wherever possible as contactless is just easier and that also provides an extra layer of secuirity.

Ian said:
I think it’s somewhat inevitable we will see this happening in more parks now, especially those who already have an established pre-pay system in place (E.G. gift cards).
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Disney of course have a very establised gift card system in the US and at Disneyworld you can charge to your room account pretty much everywhere. They have heavily promoted that they accept mobile order for fast food and contactless payment so I think they could easily go cashless (and offer a cash to gift card service), but would risk alienating many customers of course.
 
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