Page 48 of The One Plus One
‘So what do you do, Mr Nicholls?’ said Tanzie.
‘I work for a company that creates software. You know what that is?’
‘Of course.’
Nicky looked up. In the rear-view mirror Ed watched him remove his ear-buds. When the boy saw him looking, he glanced away.
‘Do you design games?’
‘Not games, no.’
‘What, then?’
‘Well, for the last few years we’ve been working on a piece of software that will hopefully move us closer to a cashless society.’
‘How would that work?’
‘Well, when you buy something, or pay a bill, you wave your phone, which has a thing a bit like a bar code, and for every transaction you pay a tiny, tiny amount, like nought point nought one of a pound.’
‘We would pay to pay?’ said Jess. ‘No one will want that.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. The banks love it. Retailers like it because it gives them one uniform system instead of cards, cash, cheques…and you’ll pay less pertransaction than you do on a credit card. So it works for both sides.’
‘Some of us don’t use credit cards unless we’re desperate.’
‘Then it would just be linked to your bank account. You wouldn’t, like, have to do anything.’
‘So if every bank and retailer picks this up, we won’t get a choice.’
‘That’s a long way off.’
There was a brief silence. Jess pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them. ‘So basically the rich get richer – the banks and the retailers – and the poor get poorer.’
‘Well, in theory, perhaps. But that’s the joy of it. It’s such a tiny amount you won’t notice it. And it will be very convenient.’
Jess muttered something he didn’t catch.
‘How much is it again?’ said Tanzie.
‘Point nought one per transaction. So it works out as a little less than a penny.’
‘How many transactions a day?’
‘Twenty? Fifty? Depends how much you do.’
‘So that’s fifty pence a day.’
‘Exactly. Nothing.’
‘Three pounds fifty a week,’ said Jess.
‘One hundred and eighty-two pounds a year,’ said Tanzie. ‘Depending on how close the fee actually is to a penny. And whether it’s a leap year.’
Ed lifted one hand from the wheel. ‘At the outside. Even you can’t say that’s very much.’
Jess swivelled in her seat. ‘What does one hundred and eighty-two pounds buy us, Tanze?’
‘Two supermarket pairs of school trousers, four school blouses, a pair of shoes. A gym kit and a five pack of white socks. If you buy them from the supermarket. That comes to eighty-five pounds ninety-seven. The one hundred is exactly nine point two days of groceries, depending on whether anyone comes round and whether Mum buys a bottle of wine. That would be supermarket own-brand.’ She thought for a minute. ‘Or one month’s council tax for a Band D property. We’re Band D, right, Mum?’
