Are We Forgetting Why EFTPOS Was Invented?
By Sarah Ripley, Wizard of Ads Partner
I am not a cash carrier.
I am gen Y, and we are notoriously NOT cash carriers. Why?
For me personally, I feel I learnt the habit from my father who never did himself, (probably because Mum always did), but outside the habits of the Ripley family, gen y-ers don’t carry cash because we have grown up in a society where almost every retail or service industry offers EFTPOS as a means of payment. Any business that doesn’t is seen to be either behind the times or doing the dodgy with the tax department…
The revolution of other means of payment burst onto the scene in the early 90’s, with the introduction of ATM’s, and EFTPOS machines, (which stands for Electronic Funds Transfer and Point Of Sale by the way). It was technology’s answer to making paying for something quicker and easier. Cheque books were thrown out the window, with some people still keeping them for the odd tradie. Enter the 00’s and we started EFT-ing our funds to even tradies – wow things had moved along!
A few years ago, banks decided to capitalise on the convenience a customer gets when he/she pays with EFTPOS, (and the popularity!) Thus they started charging vendors who provided these services a fee. What flowed on from there was vendors either passing this charge onto customers, OR charging a minimum fee to use EFTPOS.
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