The days of cash, the golden era of dodgy earnings, questionable tax returns and mattresses propped up by mountains of the paper stuff were probably very exciting but the realities are not so thrilling.

Cash, tons of cash, in bags, in stacks, wads, literal mountains of cash that you couldn't get into the bank for fear of HMRC seeing it and you losing 20% or even 40% for larger companies. Loads of dodgy reports, tax documents and many, many trips to collect your earnings from all of your cash business ventures. It all sounds great until you lift the lid and look at the risk to reward ratio.

First of all, the cash, it's untraceable, again, great until someone steals it. That vending machine that makes you so much money has a terrible quality lock and is publicly accessible, lose one load and you might as well have just taken nothing that week.

Secondly, if the cash is still there, you need to move it, another glaring security issue, most of us don't have brief cases with wrist chains, armoured vehicles and the ability to get to the bank without being attacked for that oh so exciting cash.

Then if you made it to the bank and you can't put it all in there because "the revenue" will see it and know exactly how much you made and come knocking for their share. So you keep it in a flimsy safe in your office, your back bedroom, great until the same thieving scum take that as well. Not to mention the mechanics of coin operated vending machines, we know they suck, we've all used them where that pound just won't be accepted. It's probably a dirty contact in the machine, it's probably a dodgy connection or worse still, it's a fake coin. Fake coins in the UK make up for around 3% of all those in circulation. So you've also got a good chance you'll also collect a bunch of those in your unmanned vending machine.

Assuming you don't have your earnings stolen, you don't get any fake coins and you don't have a problem getting it into the bank and HMRC don't notice. What happens when you want to sell your successful vending machine company. You personally know how much it's worth but you can't simply sell it for that because then it has a public price, a valuation against the earnings you didn't declare in the first place. So you have to sell it for your dodgy price and the whole exercise in cash was a pointless one.

So all of that and you still think credit card readers are an expensive option?

One customer, one button, one beep, no cash, no security issues, no staff to collect the cash, no personal risk and money in your bank within two days.

Then most importantly a real valuation of your hard work before you sell it, surely it's a no brainer?!