Notting Hill Carnival Returns Amid High Inflation

This week, and for the first time since 2019, Londoners gathered for the annual Notting Hill Carnival, a street festival and celebration of the city’s Caribbean cultures that typically attracts over a million people and contributes over $100 million to the Kingdom’s economy. United.

After all the floats, costumes, food and music, the logistics and commerce that make the whole event possible stimulate an intensification of economic activity that culminates on the last weekend of August.

According to Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, “the community-led celebration of Caribbean history and culture has become one of the world’s biggest street festivals and part of the fabric of this city,” The Mirror reported.

But as Londoners and hundreds of thousands of visitors take to the streets of Notting Hill this year, they are likely to notice some changes that have taken place in the past three years.

For starters, the biggest inflation the UK has seen for 40 years means the ubiquitous Red Stripe carnival cans will be more expensive than revelers remember. Heineken, the Dutch drinks giant that owns the Red Stripe brand, recently reported that it had applied 17% year-on-year price increases across its portfolio of brands in Europe.

Look more: The UK’s 10% inflation rates are stretching wages and consumer patience

If rising beer costs don’t slow down carnival-goers, striking bus drivers might. A 48-hour bus strike is underway in parts of West London amid an ongoing pay dispute. With double-digit inflation, London’s public transport workers have been staging strike action throughout August as they claim a 2-4% pay rise is a cut in real wages.

Apart from the burden on people’s wallets, Khan admitted that the cost of living crisis has had a material effect on this year’s celebrations. “We’re seeing those who want to have floats, those who want to have sound systems, pulling out because they can’t afford to pay their bills,” he told reporters.

Street vendors turn to contactless POS solutions

While the macroeconomic climate may be chilly, Londoners enjoying the festivities can be grateful for a development in recent years – the evolution of payment rates among small businesses.

In London’s post-pandemic payment landscape, more street food vendors are using mobile POS terminals than ever before.

As UK Finance recently reported, cash last year accounted for just 15% of transactions in the country and contactless payments are more popular than ever, a change the trade group partly attributes to the continued spread of card-accepting devices among smaller businesses.

Connected: Card is King in the UK Payments Landscape, but Digital Wallet Use Grows

In an event that has suffered from long queues at ATMs in the past, the declining prevalence of cash in the UK economy will cause many visitors to Notting Hill to breathe a sigh of relief.

And with mobile POS terminals now a popular option for even smaller commercial operations, the UK’s biggest players are fighting for a share of the SMB market.

More on this: Revolut takes on Square, PayPal in the UK with POS readers

Just last month, Revolut marked its first foray into the POS solutions space with the launch of the Revolut Reader in the UK and Ireland, noting at the time that the lightweight card reader is “designed to allow merchants of all types accept payments anywhere.”

Read: UK SMEs give customers the cheap, contactless payments they want

Ben Ramsden, head of SMEs at PayPal, also spoke out in an interview with PYMNTS, linking the rise of contactless payments to “people not necessarily wanting to handle cash as much” during the pandemic. These factors have informed PayPal’s POS strategy, which increasingly emphasizes convenient and mobile solutions for small businesses, such as Recently launched Zettle SoftPOS “Tap to Pay”.

Connected: SoftPOS drives adoption of contactless payments by EU merchants

So, between record inflation and high consumer costs that could have potentially led to lower sales, there’s one thing this year’s Notting Hill street vendors don’t have to worry about – an abundance of options when it comes to take-out of payments.

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