I have never banked online.

I have only once ever shopped on Amazon.

Outdoor cash machines have existed for more than six decades and I have never used one.

I still post cheques to pay some bills.

Young people must think I’m a creature from outer space.

Maybe it’s taking time to drag me by the scruff of the neck into the 21st century but I find many 20th century methods still work – and I think some modern developments are overrated.

So I haven’t always bothered to keep up and there is no law that says I have to.

The foremost method I use to pay is cash because I am so used to it.

And when you have to physically turn up at a bank to draw out the notes it helps you think about how much you might be spending.

Better than blindly maxing out the credit card and forgetting about the cost until a horrendous bill comes at the end of the month.

My first choice at the bank is to go straight to the teller, otherwise I use the indoor cash machine but never an outdoor one – never in a million years.

And that’s even though they’ve been around since the 1960s.

The reason? Outdoor ones can be rigged and I have already seen friends and family fall foul of that. There is the stress of discovering money has been stolen from your account, probably not straight away, and the worry of whether it will be reimbursed.

Better to make the time to go into a branch, even though they are disappearing. When they all vanish I might have to rethink my strategy.

But with so much financial service I need still there, I have never bothered to bank online. Again, starting as a novice I fear I could be wide open to someone grabbing my funds.

Cash is Freedom is a campaign against a central bank digital currency.

It argues that money dependent on the internet is vulnerable to theft through cyber attacks and causes a loss of financial privacy.

It adds that having no cash stops the simplest of payments such as tipping waiters and waitresses and donating coins to homeless people in the street and buskers.

Over recent years there has been a move by councils and companies to get people to make cashless payments for car parking.

The RingGo app system has had a mixed reaction, with some saying it is incredibly easy to use but others finding it confusing.

The now-closed De Bradelei Wharf Shopping Centre in Dover last year had lost 40% of revenue because the car park was changed to only taking RingGo payments.

That was the complaint of the then-site manager Sally-Anne Vokes.

People were either no longer bothering to come in or were using the council seafront parking spaces outside where they could still pay cash.

A survey published by KentOnline when it then covered the story showed that 53% still wanted to pay for parking by cash, 17% by card and 31% by RingGo.

This July the centre closed and Mrs Vokes believed RingGo was “the final nail in the coffin”, although senior management primarily blamed running and maintenance costs.

When I researched the story last year I did try to use RingGo and momentarily got the hang of it – then I forgot how to do it and never tried again.

Why should I bother learning a new system, possibly making a mistake and ending up with a parking fine when coins are so foolproof? Even the card touch system is acceptable.

Besides, not everybody has smartphones, which was the complaint to Canterbury City Council last year when it was rolling out RingGo.

At a council car park in Dover I saw a young man taking several minutes to pay because he was struggling to use the app.

I told him: “Give up and use cash.”

He let me nip in ahead and I paid in seconds by coins.

For most of my bill payments I post a cheque, again because it still works – most companies and organisations still accept them and they do get through by post.

I only fell foul with my gas company, which for some reason was not receiving my cheques in time.

So last winter I set up an online account and now pay by credit card and automated phone service, which I admit is easy.

Sometimes I pay by direct debit if a service provider insists – you just adapt when you have to.

You now can only book airline tickets online and you find that doing so becomes as straightforward as filling out a paper form.

But I share the resentment in some quarters of technology being unnecessarily dumped on us and having to learn and operate someone else’s new system.

We are expected to do work that a company employee should be doing – and without being paid for it.

I have stopped using one fast food restaurant because it demanded ordering by touch screen. I ended up having to ponce around trying to use it for five minutes and got the order wrong,

Now I use restaurants and cafes where human beings serve you and that still accept cash.

In food stores I go straight to checkout with a member of staff at a till rather than the self-serve machines.

It is my hope of helping keep staff in work but I notice many customers still not getting the hang of the machines and store workers have to help them.

The point is these new systems can create unnecessary work and effort – the simplest tasks are made complicated.

In the 1980s Audi advertised with the slogan “vorsprung durch technik” (progress through technology).

What’s German for “one step forward, two steps back”?

One of the arguments of campaigners against the closure of railway ticket offices is that there is no substitute for human guidance. So people can be helpless if left alone with a ticket machine they are not sure of operating.

They don’t always work and you may have to board a train with no ticket and explain yourself to a suspicious enforcement officer.

Everybody would agree that new technology such as emails, smartphones and the internet have given great leaps forward in our lives.

I first became a journalist in 1987 using typewriters, long before the internet gave me a goldmine for research. I also enjoy using Facebook in my spare time.

Cashless payments in some areas work completely. Bus and tube fare payments in my home city of London have for years been paid for by the Oyster card system. All it takes is to regularly top up the credit, which can be paid for in the smallest provisions shops.

But an early warning of the drawbacks of technology came from Charlie Chaplin In the 1940 film The Great Dictator: “ “We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.”

Around that time it was only inventions like the aeroplane and the radio that were the great leaps.

Today, how many times have you seen people walking in the street like zombies staring into their smartphones? Any thief can snatch it out of their hand,

In fact I’m hearing it is already being done in London with crooks lifting smartphones from outdoor cafe tables right in front of the owners.

With so many details and features of our lives on these phones, their loss is a major blow.

Also, children bullied in the classroom used to be able to leave their tormentors behind at the end of the school day. Now the aggressors follow them into their home via the smartphone.

Hatred and bile against individuals and organisations sometimes seeps out of social media because it is so easy to be perpetrated. Decades ago it was confined to cranks having to handwrite poison pen letters in green ink.

Administration and company work, universally done via computer systems, can also be screwed up.

Just this month we have learned that Birmingham City Council is effectively bankrupt and still has to spend up to £100 million to fix a botched IT system.

One of the most disastrous cases was the Post Office Horizon computer system. In the 2000s it produced wrong transaction figures and led to a mass of innocent sub-postmasters being wrongly prosecuted.

The key is not to have blind faith in technology – to discriminate between the type that is a genuine help and the type that ends up causing problems that were never there before.

An alternative view: ‘Any request for cash throws me completely’

“Sorry, we don’t take cards, cash only.” It’s not something you hear all that often these days, but when you do it tends to throw me off my stride completely, writes Rhys Griffiths.

Who’s still carrying around notes and coins when cards – and even your phone – offer such frictionless convenience?

I don’t consider myself at the bleeding edge of tech advancement, but when it comes to digital banking I’ve gone all in. I bank with Monzo, which has not a single bricks-and-mortar branch – everything is managed through an app where I can see my current and savings accounts, my credit cards and even my mortgage all in one place.

All my cards, including store loyalty cards, are in a digital wallet on my phone, allowing me to pay with a tap of my device in the vast majority of transactions. Here in the UK it feels like most places now take card payments as a default, the only time I carry any significant amount of cash is when I am abroad and some places – neighbourhood bars, market stalls, what have you – might expect to be paid in hard currency.

I completely understand why people might still want to only use cash out of habit. But I struggle with the arguments about convenience. Who wants to have to hunt down a cash machine – many of which these days levy a ridiculous fee for withdrawals – any time an unexpected purchase rears its head? With just my phone in hand I can decide immediately whether or not I want to pay with my current account, our joint account, or a credit card.

Perhaps one area where cash is still king is where someone may have to stick to a very strict budget. If you know you have £40 to last the week, then having that money in physical form may make budgeting easier – when it’s gone, it’s gone. Having a credit card linked to your phone could be a temptation too much for those who are at risk of slipping into debt if they overspend wildly. Being a natural-born worrier, I find it helpful to be able to track my outgoings and incomings in my banking app in real time. It means I can usually be sure we’ll make it to payday in the black.

Security is another factor. A misplaced wallet with £100 in it is, in all likelihood, not coming back with the cash intact if dropped in the street or left on the train. If I lose my cards I can freeze them immediately from my phone, reducing the risk of someone else having a good time on my dime.

But don’t get me wrong – this is not an argument about phasing out all human interaction in favour of technology. I understand why some people prefer to use the checkout at the supermarket rather than the self-service tills, and despite buying train tickets online and downloading them to my phone I completely support the retention of staffed ticket offices in stations.

I like being served by a person rather than a machine, I just hope they have a card reader handy.