Opinion : Does mobile banking make it too easy to spend money?

There’s definitely a hint of spring in the air indeed it was quite pleasant walking down the High Street today at the start of my regular lunchtime walk around Wycombe town centre.

Luckily I managed to find a spot on a bench in the Parish Churchyard where my good self could rest and east my sandwiches.

I had only just got my lunch box out when one of my friends happened to walk by, he stopped and sat down too and we ate our sandwiches together.

Sadly my friend is not very clever, indeed he works in a pound shop but he hasn’t progressed past stacking the shelves. They tried putting him on the tills but working out how much to charge the customers for the number of items they had purchased turned out to be too difficult for him.

After a few moments my friend took out his portable phone and started pressing the screen in various places. Regular readers will know that my good self so detests those newfangled devices, a proper telephone is far better any day. If I needs to call anyone then a pay phone in a proper telephone box is preferable.

‘There‘, said my friend. ‘All the bills are paid‘. I jumped back in amazement. He may not be able to work out how much to charge the customers at £1 per item but he’s got involved with mobile banking!

Naturally the subject of the conversation turned to banking using a portable phone. It seems that my friend was very unhappy with the whole shebang as it was so easy to move the money that he was always poor.

Yours truly thought it was his addiction to betting on the horses that had put my friend into the grip of poverty but no, it seems that betting took effort and a level of difficulty to dispose of his hard earned money compared with the ease at which several hundred pounds could be spent simply by pressing a few buttons on his portable phone.

Of course this leads me to ask the question of how many more people are spending money like water because it’s so easy to do so?

Surely for those in society who have difficulty in managing their hard earned income there should be limits, safeguards and the like to prevent them blowing their wages all in one go.

The banks prefer people to use the internet as it saves staff costs and the like but surely there is an element of social responsibility to be taken in not allowing the less competent members of society to get into the poverty trap by making it too easy for them to spend their money?

As far as I’m concerned mobile banking is not a very good idea. My good self will stick to the proper method of visiting the bank and speaking to a real person behind the counter.

What do you think?

*My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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