A wholesale meat supplier in Ulverston has defended its decision to stop accepting cash after it faced a social media backlash.

Ulverston Meat Company, based on North Lonsdale Road, announced on its Facebook page that it would be switching to card payments only due to 'excessive' bank charges.

The change was implemented from Monday, November 18.

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The post received more than 150 comments with many unhappy with the decision referring to the phrase 'cash is king', which aims to highlight the importance of cash as an asset.

Some customers questioned if card transaction charges would be cheaper than bank charges for cash, if refusing cash was legal and how they would pay if, for instance, they lost their bank card.

"Continuing to take cash is problematic for many reasons," said Chris Gray, who co-owns the company with Shaun Atkinson, "and it's more than I was able to fit in a Facebook status.

"It was either 1% on a card transactions or excessive 7% bank charges for cash.

"Also, with National Insurance going up in terms of wages, it's the hours that cashing up takes.

"We've also discovered a few foreign coins and over the last four months, 20 to 25 fake £5 notes - and we have a scanner.

The counters at Ulverston Meat Company (Image: Ulverston Meat Company) "One little old lady didn't realised she'd accepted one and tried to pay with it, and it then becomes a matter of if we're going to stress her out by saying she can't use it."

Chris says one of the biggest concerns about cash is the threat of break-ins as 18 months ago two men broke into a building and although they were caught on CCTV, the culprits were never brought to justice.

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Just a couple of weeks ago, Chris discovered the outside handle of one of the doors had been snapped off from what may be another attempted break-in.

He said: "If people think we have a few grand on-site, we are much more of a target and in the run-up to Christmas, we want to protect our staff.

"Last time, they broke into the office and thankfully, the member of staff who was present had nipped to the toilet, but we have to think that they may not be so lucky if there is a next time - particularly as we have a young girl around 18 who works with us.

"If we don't have cash to take, we're not as much of a target."

The counters at Ulverston Meat Company (Image: Ulverston Meat Company) Ulverston Meat Company offers a 5% discount for all Blue Light Card holders and disabled people.

The company also runs festive competitions offering the chance for two people to win Christmas hampers this year.

Chris added: "We try and work with the community where we can. Although the price of meat has doubled for us in recent times, we have never passed that on to the customer except at times we've had to re-jig our offers occasionally.

"If we were to carry on using cash we would have to mitigate the increase by adding 10% on our prices and we've made this decision so we don't have to do that. 

"We're sorry for any inconvenience caused, and if people can't pay with a card for whatever reason, we're happy to accept PayPal or bank transfer.

"Unfortunately, in these times, cash isn't king and we do have the right to change our payment method in the same way as companies who ask their customers to pay bills online or by card transaction."