Innovative ways to cut bank charges

There is an excellent restaurant in North London called Mosaica at the Chololate Factory run by the entrepreneurial Johnnie Mountain who does the odd bit of telly work so you might have seen is face on Great British Menu etcetera.

What you won’t have seen though is the innovative initiative he has introduced at his restaurant to cut down on bank charges. It involves implementing a cash-only policy.

You too could save pounds through a cash-only policy

When a customer makes a booking they are informed that card payments are not accepted and that they should bring cash. However, if on the night they have forgotten their money then they are directed to a cash machine that Mountain has installed. This charges them £1 per transaction and should any customer complain about this then they are given the pound back.

The result of this is that Mountain has eliminated the charges that he used to pay on all credit and debit card payments (a not inconsiderable sum), cutting around £200 per week off his overheads. But not only does he avoid paying these charges, he also pockets 40p from each of the cash machine transactions. The provider of the machine – Cash Point Machines – then keeps the other 60p.

Not surprisngly Mountain is extremely pleased with this initiative and reckons such a policy could possibly be beneficial to other independent retailers who are as frustrated as he was at paying such a high price for accepting card payments.