Cash up front or don’t buy

It’s back to the old days in Greece, where you conducted all your day's business from a roll of often greasy old drachma notes.

It has never changed – cash is still king. Except now it’s euros, the notes that Brussels sprouts, rather than drachs.

So I don’t suppose Greek customers even blinked at being told by the Irish cut-price airline Ryanair they could pay with cash after capital controls caused problems with credit card payments.

The carrier said in a statement it was experiencing “high rates of decline” on their credit/debit cards.

But, despite the cash is king adage, the Greeks have also become on-line-shopping crazy like the rest of the world. So the imposition of capital controls last Sunday evening means nail-biting frustration for the Greeks, as they are no longer able to purchase goods or services from many big international online suppliers.

That’s without adding that their lust for banknotes will no longer be satisfied by weekly boosts by the European Central Bank to the tune of billions of rands.