591–600 of 628 posts
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Just nitpicking, but I believe it was Hermes, not Bender. edit: https://external-preview.redd.it/QkC-IFnu4weXJdqXPJCgaswRHAy...
you are right. I'm sure Bender has always on internet connection, so he doesn't need a phone to make phone calls:)
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Why can’t you load the same amount of money on your bracelet before the festival as the cash you would be carrying? If that’s because the festival organizers don’t let you retrieve your money easily or without a cost, that’s an issue with the festival management and not with the idea of digital money. I’ve been to a festival which allowed us to withdraw money freely (I think they had some restrictions such as only 1…
I think my problem with this comes down to ‘why the fuck are you bothering me with this?!’. We have perfectly valid working payment systems (cash, debit/credit), and for some reason you’ve decided that your festivals proprietary payment system is better? Have to load money, have to retrieve money, and have zero insight into how much I’ve already spent without even more apps or interfaces.
My problem with cashless and just about everything electronic tech is: What happens when the network/power fails? What's the goto alternative? No one seems to point that out? It should not stop progress but it's important to make contingency plans in case of mass failure. I wonder if salt as money will be fashionable again? :)
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The locked down nature of Swish and it’s monopoly status is worrisome. I was thinking there was just a ton of NFC readable payment devices that could accept any form of contactless payment like Apple Pay or Alipay or Google Pay etc... this is definitely not a good sign. Regarding the article saying that if central banks become irrelevant due to cash going fully out of favor: that’s such BS. Deposits would just become…
Why is Swish worrying you? It is basically a payment overlay on top of whatever technology runs in the mobile devices. If tomorrow the dominant mobile OS is Foobar, there will be Swish for it and things just keep on working. It is not tied to a US or Chinese megacorporation, so there is no risk of geopolitically-influenced political decisions ruining the show, like those threatening SWIFT, for example. Swish works ju…
How could there ever be a new mobile OS in this scenario? If stores rely on Swish, consumers have to use a mobile OS that supports Swish, so nobody can enter the mobile OS market (except if they pay Swish to provide a port for their OS on day 1).
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You're fooling yourself if you believe nothing can be done about Bitcoin. If the powers that be want it dead they'll outlaw it, and that's effectively game over for any kind of common transaction system. The reason it hasn't so far is because there are too many rich and powerful speculators involved, but those winds could change in a hurry so I wouldn't get too cocky.
Bitcoin is borderless. Lets say for example, a government decides to ban all bitcoin/fiat exchanges in their jurisdiction, what will people who want to obtain Bitcoin do? Answer: They will obtain Bitcoin either directly (on the black market, as payment for labour or services), or they will obtain it overseas, where said government has no jurisdiction. In both of these cases, if hidden from the government in question,…
I grew up in Brazil during hyper inflation, and I have Argentinian friends now, so I understand what it means to obtain currency overseas or on a black market, and I can assure you it's a huge hassle and not something people want to do unless their local fiat currency has major problems. If governments with strong currencies start moving against bitcoin, transaction volume will decrease, investors will lose confidence, and the value will crash out. This doesn't require a coordinated effort, it just requires a handful of major countries to start seeing things a certain way.
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You create a pin when you activate your card/wristband after walking in, yeah. At the Mirage, tips work just like a credit card transaction would - the bartender has an iPad sitting in front of them and you choose preset options or enter a custom one. Typically you place your order with the bartender, they'll ring it all up on the terminal, and by the time you've finished tapping your wristband on the reader and choo…
> No hassle with pens and receipts and handing cards around or any of that. Is there normally hassle? In Europe, and I think this generalisation holds in the countries that commonly pay with a card, the terminal is either mounted on the bar facing the customer, or is portable and left in a similar position. In any case, there's never a pen, receipts mostly go immediately in the bin unless someone is claiming expenses…
Outside of nightlife and restaurants, I almost never deal with paper signatures anymore. Pretty much all retail, etc, does digital signatures and digital receipts, paper receipt upon request.
Its still pretty backwards compared to how most things credit card related work in Europe, but gets the job done and is indeed gradually getting better over here (and, as some of the other posts have mentioned, the saving grace if you don't want to deal with any of this is that cash is almost universally accepted).
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Atleast 99% of my payments in sweden are with a totally normal credit card, the rest with swish. I only use paper money to give to homeless people, can’t remember when I bought something with bills and coins. I think it’s great, I’m more worried about tax evasion than my government knowing what I buy. I’m more interested in my speech being free than my purchases, even though I can see the problem in non-functioning d…
Its not just the government that has this data, but every intermediary in the non-cash payment chain. Mastercard for example sells its payment data to Google, who uses it to correlate online ad viewing with in store purchases. There is no way to opt out of this if you use Mastercard, and other intermediaries do similar shady things with your data.
you can opt out by not using your gmail account as an addres on your mastercard.
and i believe there’s an explicit opt out as well.
this measures conversion but in a privacy safe way, so it’s actually good thing.
the google implementation that is. i guarantee anyone else doing this (i haven’t heard of such though) is leaking data like crazy
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There’s a big club in NYC that does this (Brooklyn Mirage), except they link your credit card to the bracelet and you don’t have to load credit. Makes the lines for drinks move so fast, it’s really outstanding.
Is it really much faster than contactless credit cards? I can see value for certain specialist places, like a resort where everyone is wearing swimwear. Or a fetish club.
By introducing a new payment method they can be sure that everyone has access to it and limit it to just the bracelets.
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Why is Swish worrying you? It is basically a payment overlay on top of whatever technology runs in the mobile devices. If tomorrow the dominant mobile OS is Foobar, there will be Swish for it and things just keep on working. It is not tied to a US or Chinese megacorporation, so there is no risk of geopolitically-influenced political decisions ruining the show, like those threatening SWIFT, for example. Swish works ju…
> If tomorrow the dominant mobile OS is Foobar, there will be Swish for it and things just keep on working. How could there ever be a new mobile OS in this scenario? If stores rely on Swish, consumers have to use a mobile OS that supports Swish, so nobody can enter the mobile OS market (except if they pay Swish to provide a port for their OS on day 1).
It's common for a new product rollout (whatever it is) to have discussions with different companies beforehand, this is how e.g. games magically appear on the market around the same time when a new game console is launched. The game studios get their hands on development hardware and documentation before anyone else.
So I don't see Swish being any kind of blocker for anyone wanting to roll out a new mobile OS in Sweden. Whoever wants to come in first contacts Swish, they do the legal paperwork and then contract someone to build the app.
And it's not like Swish is the only option to pay in stores. It's not that common, in fact. Paying with a debit card is the most common thing.
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> Very few people walk around with that amount of cash today. ... because the cops would stop him, insinuate that the money probably had something to do with crime, and then seize it to line their own pockets cough cough I mean "bolster their budgets."
My grandfather was a WASP in a business suit. He's not going to get stop and frisked in NYC.