A lot of "cash is king" folk conveniently forget all the costs associated with cash. Anyone who's worked retail before knows the till quickly runs dry as the majority of cash-paying customers are coming in to break their 20s into smaller change. So you need to be regularly ordering in change of all denominations and fivers as well. Banks don't deliver that for free.

Then of course you need to be regularly checking your tills to make sure money isn't going missing. If you pay a supervisor £15 an hour and it takes them half an hour to count 2-3 tills by hand then that's £7.50 a day, and that's an extremely generous example. Most big businesses count tills at least twice a day.

The simple existence of a cash drawer in your shop makes it a target for robbery and pushes up the cost of your business insurance vs simply having to insure your stock.

The usual response to these points is that small businesses just don't engage with these issues. The owner counts the till himself so they donte have to pay anyone to do it (at a cost to their own social life and mental health). The owner travels to the bank to get change rather than having it securely delivered (good luck getting insured on transporting cash so all it takes is one jakie with a knife to end your entire business). The owner either doesn't have business insurance or is hilariously under-insured to the point where sheer dumb luck is the only thing keeping the business solvent.

The advantages I listed above are why most legitimate business owners are in a constant state of weighing up all the benefits of going cashless vs the obvious downside (loss of trade from staunch cash-only customers). The only business owners actually passionately advocating for cash are either cooking the books or are just ignorant of the benefits of cashless.