A card-carrying fan of contactless, I'm now contactless-less – and it's not fun

In the first half of 2015, £2.5bn was spent in the UK using contactless cards. I’ve lost mine, and I’m now living life in the slow lane

Here is my problem. I have lost my debit card. This might seem like a minor hindrance. I haven’t, say, lost a limb. But I have lost the means to go about my everyday life as I usually would.

I rely on my contactless debit card as if it were a chip in my wrist. (And I don’t have a credit card, because I was always taught never to have credit cards.)

I use my contactless debit card for everything. When I encounter people who do not have contactless, I reel in horror. It’s almost as if they don’t have mobile phones. Or faces.

I get wildly irritated by shops and pubs that do not accept card payments, because it’s 2016. In supermarkets, if I have to use chip and pin, I can barely contain my fury. In a world in which being five minutes late to a tweet is considered embarrassingly tardy, it takes an awfully long time to use a chip and pin machine.

It has been estimated that contactless payment can halve the time it takes to pay with cash, but in my opinion, that’s a conservative estimate. Contactless is like swimming in liquid gold; cash is wading through treacle.

Published By - Theguardian.com - Sports New, LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Friday 22 April 2016 15.28 BST