PAYING council tax, social rent and for garden waste bins will have to be done without cash from April.

Oxford City Council is planning to go cashless across various service areas during this year, with the aim that it will be able to save £45,000 a year.

The plan to go cashless is part of the cuts made in the city council's budget.

Instead of allowing customers to pay with cash, the council will put in place 'enhanced systems' to accept payment using Direct Debit, BACS and credit and debit cards, though customers will still be able to continue to use cash at PayPoint outlets and post offices across the city.

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According to the council, the use of cash and cheque payments has reduced rapidly during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Because the council was no longer seeing customers face to face as of March last year, a temporary system of reduced cash and cheque handling was implemented.

It has shown that cash and cheque payments amount to 0.52 per cent of transactions but are expensive to run

Nigel Chapman, cabinet member for Customer Focused Services, said: “There are those who may still need to pay in cash or cheque and it is important that they still can. So the city council will ensure that they will still be able to pay council bills, including rent payments, by using any of the well-established 42 PayPoint facilities spread across Oxford."

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