“Salaire du salaire I par la carte?” …eh?!

I’m in Cannes, South France. I’d love to say I was invited out here by the festival jury for an award nominated screenplay but that wouldn’t be true in the slightest.

No, whilst I won’t go into manic detail as to how I have found myself writing this in the backroom of a nightclub waiting for shenanigans to begin later tonight, I will tell you that the highlight of the evening will be a great view at a small, intimate gig by none-other than Debbie Harry!

That I cannot wait for!

Anyway, this has been my first expedition into Europe since I began my cashless endeavour. I’ve been to the US a number of times but simply hopping on the EuroStar at St. Panc’ simply hasn’t happened.

Whilst my original year was based on a bet that prevented me from using anything with the Queen’s profile on to buy or sell anything; this year seems to have evolved and now it looks like I just live without cash – period.

If I was here a year ago I wouldn’t have had any problem at all, I could have used Euros to buy whatever I needed and, in fact, my daily existence might have actually proved easier than being in London. This year, however, I’ve found myself hidden in my hotel room for the best part of today, afraid to really venture out.

It isn’t so much that I don’t want to discover Cannes, sightsee and/or ‘sleb watch’, it is more than I’ve suddenly suffered a massive shyness. I don’t know how accepting the French are to electronic payments, the systems they use, the language surrounding currency and transactions – instead of finding out the hard way I have inadvertently chosen to avoid the situation entirely.

I’ve been here for the best part of a day and I thoroughly regret my decision so far. Catching a taxi into town with a woman from the same hotel showed me just what I have missed out on today. And for what? Saving my skin from a few momentary bouts of awkwardness? Frustrating a local with the typically British language barrier? It isn’t as if one or two awry experiences would do the English reputation a huge injustice – I think, in some parts of Southern France, ‘we’ have very little left to lose!

I can remember doing this exact same thing when I first started LosingFace, I found myself taking the easier, less experiential, options when it came to stepping outside of my comfort zone. It took months to overcome and the longer I left it; the worse it became.

Worse still – the less I would have to write about!

I fly home tomorrow afternoon. I don’t have months to get over this; I have hours if not minutes! I hereby declare that; tomorrow I must wake up, check out of my room and not look back. Mediterranean France is wonderful and I must make the most of my time here.

Obviously, if tonight goes the way I expect it will and tomorrow arrives with a throbbing head and without waking up, the above declaration is void.

More Numbers = More Safety / More Confusion + More Effort

When I woke up this morning, waiting in my email inbox from a dear friend and long-time-loyal to Losing Face, was a link to an article from the BBC News website. The only other text was, “Get on this quick…”

It is about the new Emue card technology, aimed at tackling the growing level of internet and phone card fraud or, as the pros refer to it, ‘Card Not Present Fraud’ (CNP for short). The Emue technology isn’t all that new, Australia has already had a trial run (complete with prop-destitute trailer) last year and Visa have been talking about it for a good 18 months, still this is its first real public break in the UK.

Reading it within minutes of waking up was more than a little tricky but, two or three attempts later, it made sense and I’m left with mixed feelings toward the proposed technology.

The card has a built in 4 digit code generator which will be needed whenever making a transaction online or over the phone, therefore eliminating [or at least reducing] the ability to thieve a card, go to an internet café and blow a couple of grand on bits and bobs from Amazon.

As a concept, that is grand; I, myself, have fallen victim to CNP fraud only this year and it is quite a horrible ordeal. Whilst your money is still ensured by your bank, the lack of an actual event makes the entire experience quite murky and uncertain. At least having your card stolen in person provides an awareness of what is happening and what might then happen!

With CNP, you might be utterly unaware of any ill behaviour until a voice at the end of a phone line casually informs you that someone has pretty much drained your entire account from the other side of the world whilst you slept soundly and unaware.

But, whilst the concept is bang on, and there is a clear and present cause for concern surrounding CNP fraud, is this the right mechanic to solve the problem?

Assuming everything works, and Visa are confident that the battery life on the card will outlive the valid dates, I am sure this really is will dramatically reduce CNP fraud following a worldwide roll out.

But, what happens when it doesn’t? Buttons that need to be pinched rather than pressed, a little LCD screen that could crack… operationally, a number of new things could go wrong that would result in needing a new card more frequently than our current system.

Personally, I’d rather have to order a new card every 6 months than have to go through the uncertainty and rigmarole of losing a load of savings to some faceless arse-hole hiding away somewhere in the world but I can’t help thinking that this creates a new set of user-facing problems whilst resolving a worldwide concern.

Isn’t there a way of securing online payments that doesn’t rely on additional, physical processes? And why does the resolution usually boil down to numbers and codes?

If a bank card is personal, the money that that card represents is personal and the purchases made with that card are personal, surely there is an opportunity to do away with adding more identity that will inevitably be copied and relying on physical ambiguity and personal recollection?

What if the online (CNP) access to my current account had nothing to do with my day to day electronic access (whether that is a card, phone, sticker – anything) and instead was simply something I had engrained in me?

If I was to purchase a CD from a website and, when settling my order, I had to submit utterly unique and personal anecdotal information plus one bank-issued serial?

The bank serial could be different from my actual account number thus reducing the online/offline data cross over, the personal information or passwords could be three tiers deep, and all of which would never need to be written down or stored because it is all already deeply engrained in my personal memory. Hell, one of the references could be a favorite quote or sentence from a favorite book or film or song!

As an example, below are four variables that could, literally be anything. Even the people that know me inside out wouldn’t know what to write if there weren’t any prompts next to the input boxes.

• Account Reference: 12345678
• Personal ID #1: “I heard that!”
• Personal ID #2: “I’ll love you forever, if I ever love at all.”
• Personal ID #3: Sunbeam S7 Deluxe

Written like this, it is more like playing Jeopardy than a secure way of buying something from the comfort of your home but if, when registering for CNP authenticated transactions with your bank in the first instance, the user was given a choice of 10, maybe even 20 prompting questions in which they choose 3, the answers could be anything as long as they mean something to that one unique user.

No need for pressing extra buttons on a card, or another random 4 digit pin, just memories.

Unfortunately, whilst this is all well and good [albeit utterly unfounded and non-academic opinion] but I have had the great fortune in meeting some of the industry’s leading innovators and developers – I’m positive, anything they are putting forward to trial is the most logical and appropriate solution for a worldwide market… In short, I hope I get to play with an Emue card sometime soon!

I’d still like to pay for things whilst remembering some of the most funny and monumental moments from my own personal history though. If I’m shelling out savings for yet another steep electricity bill; I’d rather do it with a smile on my face.

Punks and Pennies

As I am sure I have mentioned a number of times on Losing Face, I live with two best friends and together they make up a two-piece band called Apologies, I have None.

Living with a band, especially an aspiring, dedicated band, has its occasional frustration (namely regular practice sessions and severe shortage of spare time) whilst it is also comes with an awful lot of perks.

One of which is the incredible and very much extended group of friends that now surround their act loyally and enthusiastically. My housemates are fortunate to have a steadily growing group of people that are more like good friends than they are simply fans but it would now be impossible to separate the two roles.

It has been a while since I have found the time to really indulge in a slice of the culture that they have become such a crucial part of, months in fact. Few things can make me feel as positive about the world like DIY punk can; it is phenomenal how competition is completely disregarded for collaboration and how utterly uncompromising some of the audience regulars can be as to what they like and dislike.

Bands look out for each other; the majority of the crowd know each other and anyone new to the scene seemingly gets swept off their feet and into the thick of things in no time at all. It really is heart warming when compared to the professional life that I lead and the stark opposites that I am often confronted by.

On Sunday there was an all day show at Bloomsbury Bowls in… well, Bloomsbury. From 2pm ‘til 11pm were back-to-back bands; the line up, free entry and venue was a combination not to be missed and I headed down with my housemates and others to enjoy a fun packed day of sweat and tinnitus.

Hanging about with my roomies at shows over the past two years has meant that there have been a growing number of familiar faces at these things and always the opportunity to meet new people, Sunday was no exception.

All day I was meeting people I hadn’t met before, all of whom were lovely and [when they made the connection] some were enthralled to meet “Justine’s Housemate” or the guy that actually lived on “Eason Drive” – something I consider more of a celebratory status than the recent Telegraph honour!

One thing that does occasionally come out, and the actual purpose of this long winded post, is my cashless existence. Some saw the London Paper in November and some heard one of the radio spots I have been lucky enough to feature in whilst others had no idea who or what I was up to or why and it is their reaction that I savour the most.

I’ve never really gone into it with any of them properly before, but I am always intrigued as to which way their opinion might fall.

Some love the anarchical, anti-monarchic slant on my actions – something I personally don’t wish to engage in. Others must immediately think ‘corporate ass’; expressing fear after concern after conspiracy theory. Am I OK with BigBrother knowing my exact whereabouts and spending habits 24/7 or can I sleep at night knowing that a big corporation like Visa has given me a helping hand every now and again or that I might be forced to choose Tesco over a local grocers if I haven’t thought ahead.

It is always great fun relaying the counter argument to whichever moral stance they chose in the first instance. Suddenly the entire situation isn’t so black and white – am I fighting ‘The Man’ or condoning ‘her’ rule? Do I particularly give a shit about either?

I have been witness to some of the most eloquent soliloquies and utterly incomprehensible rants from all manner of people in response to me telling them that I ‘live without cash’ and I hope I will be for a long time.

The scene my housemates are in is about Doing It Yourself, not because it is a trendy thing to say or do, but because they have to do it themselves – it is a lifestyle born out of passion in every case and every sense. Its sheer survival is impressive and hugely admirable even if the vast majority of the crowd don’t realise how perilous their sub-culture is.

There is very little different between DIY punk making the most of what they have got without compromising their passion and devotion and my voyage toward a complete and sustainable cashless existence. We are both defending something we believe in and, with a counter argument at hand, will defend our decision to accept support from someone or something bigger than us when we are given the opportunity to do so.

That is why I can listen to bands like Against Me! on Spotify and that is why I know cash will be a thing of the past in the not-so-distant-future.

The Telegraph

Back in October, the Telegraph posted an article about me living without cash for 10 months… in their “Weird News” section. At the time, I thought that was about as much press as I was ever going to get and, for a while, I was really hoping it was. The article got picked up on Digg, the news link sharing community, and it seemed people thought I was everything from a fraud to ‘an arrogant douche’. Even though I know the internet is filled with cynics – it still sucks to be called things by people that don’t know you and don’t care to either.

Well, however many months later, I am featured in the Telegraph again! This time in print [awesome], in one of their Saturday paper [mega-awesome] and I got to write the 1000 word feature myself [super-mega-awesome]! Despite the rather large picture of me looking utterly confuddled, typically dishovelled and baring ALL my card details; it was an absolute privilege to be able to write about my experience for a national broadsheet and it absolutely made my week!

This is a scan of the article for anyone that cares to read it but please don’t feel obliged! Oh, and if you do choose to, click the images to see them full size… this isn’t micro film.

The Cost of Cash on a Community

This morning I read, utterly aghast, about the police inWanstead and Snaresbrook in East London offering locals an escort service from cash machines to their homes.

I’ve been banging on about the safety issues surround cash handling and carrying for a while, in fact my recent piece in the Telegraph included a highlighted snippet quoting me as saying, “mugging me is pointless”. Whilst, although I do agree I am less of a target than some, my lack of cash does not rule me out of the running for a good mugging – far from it. I still have phones and gift cards and often a camera of some sort or another.

None the less, whatever I choose to carry on my person is my own personal decision and, before leaving the house, I will apply the same level of foresight as to where I am going and at what time to what I carry about with me.

I won’t take my DSLR for a stroll around the nearest estate after sunset, nor will sit using my laptop on a quiet bus at any time of the day – it is just logical to presume I stand a good chance of not coming home with my possessions in either case and, whilst it is utterly depressing that our communities harbour such a need for caution and inhibition, it is the community I choose to live in for all its benefits and I am begrudgingly OK with the situation.

I would not, for example, expect a cop to make sure I got home in one piece if I had chosen to go out with my camera.

 

Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

 

Understanding that some people use only cash to live their lives still, I am not questioning the need for better safety surrounding cash points and known trouble spots; but are personal police escorts necessary? Could the money spent on walking vulnerable people home not be spent more effectively on tackling petty violent crime? On educating the more stubborn of our communities about the dangers and perils of predominantly using cash over the security of card transactions and carrying pieces of plastic with nominal actual value?

Maybe this campaign will do exactly that! Maybe those that suffer the laboriousness of booking a police escort or witness the paid effort to maintain the service will put 2 + 2 together and turn to cards all by themselves!

 

Read the Guardian Article Here.

Abundant Coin Forgery

A brief update. The BBC have released a “Spot the difference” themed video alerting the British consumers of the differences between a real and a fake £1 coin.

Whilst this might sound a bit ridiculous, apparently the Royal Mint has recently realised that their estimates of fake currency being used in the UK is almost under half of the actual figures. That is alarming for everyone.

Not using cash, I dont have to worry about this in the immediate instance, but the broader picture of our society is quite worrying –  we are so busy spending our money that we aren’t even really looking at it properly!

Watch the video here!

How To Spend A Penny…

This is a tale of two airlines with an utterly upoosing opinion on cash/cashless existence.

 The first is RyanAir, the budget airline that we all love to hate to use, and their CEO announcing that they are seriously ‘contemplating’ charging their customers to use the facilities by installing a coin-operated system on the doors of the loos.

 Whilst this announcement has been met by obvious and expected public outcry and no doubt intentionally ensuring ‘RyanAir’ is the keyword of every household’s evening meal for a while; this is a bit of a concern for me.

 I am planning on venturing to Berlin for a weekend with friends toward the end of spring and now I’m not just looking out for the cheapest flights available, I’m looking out for flights that aren’t coin operated!

 RyanAir’s announcement might be hot air but the sheer thought of such a backward step seems so ridiculous to me. Why would an airliner actively encourage the use of cash aboard their fleet? Money is very much nationally regional (with exception of the Euro) whilst card and electronic transactions are very much international and (for the most part) generic.

 Whether the tight-fisted board of executives decide to run with this preposterous plan or not I, for one, might have to start planning my international travel according to how long I can ‘hold it in’ for. When I began this cashless adventure I never imagined I would encounter this hurdle.

 Thank you, RyanAir for keeping me on my toes… and my legs tightly crossed.

 The second airline on my radar is American Airlines – for purely good reasons! Although the news might be slightly dated, I am yet to report on the wonderful news that they have outlawed cash transactions onboard their domestic and Canadian flights.

 Lauri Curtis, American’s Vice President of Onboard Service says, “On these flights, American will only accept major credit cards or debit cards for onboard purchases such as headsets, fresh light meals, snacks and alcoholic beverages.”

“Moving to a cashless cabin allows us to streamline the inflight sales process for both our customers and flight attendants.”

 Their planned transition will be fully launched by the summer and following quickly on their heals is United Airlines who have announced the imminent arrival of their ‘EasyPay’ system, allowing passengers to pay for their purchases with all major plastic.

 Always one for light entertainment; I think this video of an American Airlines inflight attendant adding a little twist to the rigmarol of the preflight attendant highlights the stark difference between the American and British attitudes toward a lot of things… 

 Rules are there to be broken and cash is there to be forgotten.

“Please take your change, thank you for shopping at Tesco”

After my penniless week and the subsequent celebratory weekend (in which I undid all the good money saving I had achieved prior) I thought I’d really got the cashless existence down to a fine art again. I’d managed to stop myself popping into EAT every time I walked past for a contactless coffee, I’d resisted making up a minimum card spend at a bar with an extra large drink that I don’t really need – I’d even bothered to take my own very basic lunch to work!

Everything was going swimmingly and a lot of my new habits had lasted through into this week, I could actually imagine myself saving money by the time I next get paid!

That was until Wednesday when everything became undone.

The details are vastly unnecessary to this post and, more importantly, horrific enough for me to not want to retell the hell so I will be brief… for once!

Essentially, after texting my girlfriend just before lunchtime, I received an almost incomprehensible reply from someone lambasting me with insults and laughing that it wasn’t said girlfriend, it was in fact someone who had robbed her.

Taken over by sweltering rage and helplessness I text back asking who this was and what had happened (an utterly pointless exercise that only exacerbated the problem further). More abuse and truly horrendous anecdotes about Netta’s fate followed over the following couple of hours and somewhere between calling the police and googling the enquiries number for Tooting A&E I decided I needed something to eat. I held on to that feeling until I finally found out that she had been pick-pocketed and was actually fine just phoneless and pissed off.

With a sigh of great relief and thankfulness I put down the phone to the cops and grabbed my coat. I deserved a Triple Chocolate Belgian Muffin and nothing was going to stand in the way of me and my squidgy baked goods. Not after the shit I’d just been through.

I made a B-line to Spitalfields Tesco to buy my prize for ‘Most fretting boyfriend in the world… ever’ and got into the queue to pay, eager to get back to the office, make a cup of tea and squander a good 10 minutes before I feel too guilty and get back to work.

As always, I chose the automated checkout instead of the people checkout (I still find the robo-till doesn’t judge you for charging a 90p muffin to your card like a person does). As the shopper in front of me picked up their goods and walked away I approached – the till was just finishing reminding the man to take his change that it was very grateful for him choosing Tesco – an odd sentiment from a stationary robot.

As I went to swipe my delightfully delectable muffin the till reminded the man before me to take his change again. So I waited a moment in silence, hoping it would go back to the start soon enough. The woman spoke again, asking him to take his change. I thought it must have been broken and I was about to rejoin the queue for another till when the automated, over-loud woman’s voice said,

“Please take your change, notes are dispensed beneath the scanner.”

Looking down, I saw a ratty old £5 note sat in the little conspicuous money tray and the man in front of me had clearly forgotten to expect in return for however much money he fed the contraption.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

The man was long gone, and the person behind the one manned till was far enough away from me for him to come and solve the problem. I had no problem picking the fiver up and making the till work again, I just didn’t know what to do with the £5!

I casually placed it behind the robo-till whilst I bought my muffin by card (not needing to hang around for anything more than a receipt) and went to give it to the man behind the till.

As I explained what had happened he looked at me in complete disbelieve, as if it was the first time he’d seen anyone do something that wasn’t a direct effort to benefit themselves. He frankly asked me, “So why aren’t you keeping it? I don’t know what do with it. The guy won’t come back you know?”

I told him about not using cash ever and he looked at me even more inquisitively before very warily taking the £5 from me and slowly putting it behind him by the cigarettes as if he was expecting a post-humous Beedles About at any moment.

Walking back to the office I thought about how I’d completely taken for granted the issue of losing money whilst living a cashless life; if someone loses a card or a wallet full of cards it is a pain in the backside but completely rectifiable – even if the cards are somehow used, the electronic transactions mean that the processes in traceable and excusable and the user doesn’t necessarily lose a penny.

But the man in Tesco, or the person that leaves their bag on a bus or unfortunate souls that are robbed or mugged will lose the cash that they have on their person and, in most cases, will be expected to write it off as an irreconcilable loss. Why on earth are people carrying cash around with them when misplacing it means losing it entirely? If you can survive by carrying a couple of worthless pieces of plastic around instead of the direct property of ‘money’, why wouldn’t you choose the first?

Seems a bit silly to me.

The muffin was jolly lovely by the way.

How Hard Can It Be? Pt.4

I didn’t have a chance to write anything yesterday because… I couldn’t really be bothered. I was really tired by the time I got home.

True to my word, I decided to go out last night and I am really glad I did. After work I went to the gym (knowing that that wouldn’t cost me a penny) and then went to meet two friends for a drink, although I actually met them to chat and observe them drinking. Much to my surprise I managed to resist the urge to give in and buy a sumptuous drink. I won’t say it wasn’t difficult – it really, really was – but I gradually realised that I was there for the conversation and as much as the barman might glare and fume with unimpressed, pursed expressions for a few hours, it wasn’t the end of the world and I had a lovely time.

Simple!

Again, today I benefited from my company’s breakfast – two Shredded Wheat and a dash of sugar. Ian Botham would be proud! And then, at lunchtime I popped over to VISA to meet some of the guys and talk about all things cashless/contact less… a pleasant way to spend what turned out to be my first lunch break in weeks! Before I knew it was 8pm and I was getting chucked out of work and I was on my bike cycling home, fortunately between rain clouds and more than happy pootling through the back streets and the park back home knowing that Lethal Weapon 4 was waiting for me with open action-movie arms.

Whilst I do miss all the impulsive purchases, things like coffee and socks for example, I’ve been jotting down the number of times my  cravings get to a point that I would usually cave in… obviously not necessarily sock cravings. I think I have already saved at least £30 on just ‘things’ already. In comparison to the money I earn a week, that is quite a substantial amount of money!

Tomorrow is another day and again I am going out tomorrow night, this time I am jumping into completely unknown territory and am going to something called Twestival. I have no idea what Twestival actually is, nor do I know what to expect or the type of people that will also be attending Twestival. All I do know is that the entire event has taken over my Twistori screensaver and that has pissed me off quite a lot.

I am also quickly beginning to resent any word, real or made up, that starts T-w-.

I will update tomorrow about what the delights of the aforementioned event entailed and whether it hindered my money free week at all.

How Hard Can It Be? Pt.3

Nearing the end of Day One… if you don’t count last night’s efforts.

I’m still at work. I have no real attraction to leave; on any other week I would be leaving to go out with friends or to buy too much food for one sitting, head home, sit, and eat too much food; both of which I enjoy immensely. It is

Usually if I were heading home, although I’d usually keep working, I’d have hired a movie to watch and if I were going out, I’d almost certainly be meeting in a bar or a pub somewhere. Instead I have nothing to do. I have a selection of movies I have seen thousands of times between them all, I have a dodgy Internet connection with nothing to look for and I have a mountain of washing to do. With this in mind, I am happy staying in the warm office until I get chucked out.

Furthermore, it is still raining.

This morning I got absolutely soaked. Although I would never consider myself a fair-weather cyclist, when it rains as hard as it was when it came to leaving the house I would usually jump on the bus and sit in the dry. The bus costs £1 so that left me with no option. I cycled and paid for it in discomfort for the subsequent 6 hours.

My shoes are still drying on the radiator and my trousers still looked like I wet myself – albeit a day ago, which seems all the more squalid to me!

Food hasn’t been too horrific today; the company I work for are amazing and provide their employees with complementary cereal each morning. I chose Shredded Wheat this morning; it was wholesome and delightful and pushed me through to 2.30pm before the stomach-rumbles were becoming too distracting.

To quell my tummy’s dissatisfaction and sustenance deprivation I chewed through 2 Riveta I found in one of my desk draws… a hidden bonus to the reserves (especially as I gorged through the crisps last night).

And now? It is 7.30pm and I’m already looking forward to another breakfast tomorrow morning!

My friend just dropped me a line asking me what I was doing tonight and whether I wanted to meet him for a drink, the answer was no. I don’t think I’m used to this enough to resist yet. I think the best course of action is to go home, curl up with a movie and a tea (yes I also forgot to mention the tea yesterday, sorry).

To make this week’s antics worthwhile, I think I’m going to have to explore a bit. I’ve always said, London is full of free opportunities for fun and I think this might be the opportunity I have to truly prove it.

By the way, I am Twittering or, rather, ‘Tweeting’ this entire experience every couple of minutes. Follow me at twitter.com/jameslacey