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D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

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Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#151

Post by piaste »

Maxion wrote: post #140
lacker wrote: post #135

I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the govern…

Big problem is AML and KYC related legislation - this is expensive to do for people who are statistical outliers. I.e. people with low income. So it'd have to be government subsidised banking.

Perhaps the free government accounts could be exempted from that red tape, and be capped to a maximum turnover amount such that it isn't attractive to money launderers. Once your turnover exceeds that cap, you have to "upgrade" to a regular account with all the KYC stuff.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#152

Post by basisword »

lacker wrote: post #135

I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the govern…

>> It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card.

The government shouldn’t even need to get involved here. In the UK accounts have no standard charge and come with free debit card. There’s no reason banks in the US can’t offer this other than the fact people think paying for an account is normal so they can get away with it. Do the “app” banks like Revolut and Monzo offer free accounts in the US? Curious if they’re bringing some competition that could force change.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#153

Post by akira2501 »

Guvante wrote: post #21
aketchum wrote: post #15

I have no dog in this fight as I rarely deal with cash and do not run a retail business. However from a conceptual point of view I really have a viscerally negative reaction to not accepting cash. It is a societal acceptance of the rent seeking behavior of the credit processing networks. I already have to pay a sales tax to ${TAX_ENTITIES.length} different government entities, I don't love that I also have a 3% tax g…

Visa gets 1% and the bank gets the rest actually. Which they use to fund cash back programs...

It'd be nice to see what an actually competitive payment processing market would look like. Merchants seem to have no power in this system and I don't see much effort between banks to compete for business, either. These offerings are stagnant and reflect an effort to keep profits artificially high rather than reduce costs and expand on volume.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#154

Post by ma_advertising »

lacker wrote: post #135

I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the govern…

like what European Union did with the basic bank account

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#155

Post by cowsandmilk »

Maxion wrote: post #140
lacker wrote: post #135

I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the govern…

Big problem is AML and KYC related legislation - this is expensive to do for people who are statistical outliers. I.e. people with low income. So it'd have to be government subsidised banking.

I find it hard to believe it is expensive to do AML and KYC for customers whose balances never cross 5 figures. It seems they would almost never go over any thresholds that require reporting.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#156

Post by akira2501 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #50
qup wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a business that went cash-only for the same reason in reverse: the thieves were doing it via chargebacks saying they never heard of the place. Couldn't win disputes even with video evidence. They put in an ATM, can't charge that back.

You can accept debit cards and not accept credit cards. That is actually really common in Europe. Chargebacks for most CC providers are around $50-$100 now, so you can do it for small items, I wonder who uses cash to buy something that would make a chargeback worthwhile for a thieve? They would have to rotate cards around to get that. More likely, thieves were using stolen cards, and the chargebacks were probably leg…

Towing companies often only accept cash for certain types of jobs. They want zero opportunities for disputes or late stage regrets, particularly for towing off private property or illegally parked vehicles.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#157

Post by akira2501 »

supertrope wrote: post #28
dools wrote: post #7

Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.

Make access to a bank account a right. Take all of the unbanked/unprofitable customers and assign them to banks weighted by each bank’s market share. No matter their Chexsystems report status.

Access to cash is a right. You can buy gift type credit cards and periodically "recharge" them for use. It seems to work fine for those who have to use it, but I have no idea what regulations, if any, are protecting those customers.

Anyways, extending this idea to also include an ECH account attached to the payment account is probably not difficult to accomplish and is probably where federal reserve efforts could improve outcomes without forcing banks to take on customers.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#158

Post by piaste »

laurencerowe wrote: post #95
charlie0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are any laws we need to pass is that credit card fees should be disclosed on all receipts and optional. Cash buyers should not get penalized for not using a credit card.

Credit card processing costs in the US are absurd. Interchange fees are around 2% on average vs a cap of 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards in the EU. But cash handling costs a substantial amount too. We should probably all be paying by debit card and charging extra for cash or credit card.

Should be noted that in most of the EU cashback programmes are also not as big as in the US. Never heard of anyone getting "2% back from everything".

That said, a middleman that takes a smaller fee is still much better for the economy than a middleman that takes in an oversized fee and then magnanimously hands back a chunk of it.

Especially when that middleman is a worldwide oligopoly with far too much power. I try to use local e-payment systems whenever possible.

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#159

Post by closewith »

basisword wrote: post #152
lacker wrote: post #135

I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the govern…

>> It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. The government shouldn’t even need to get involved here. In the UK accounts have no standard charge and come with free debit card. There’s no reason banks in the US can’t offer this other than the fac…

> The government shouldn’t even need to get involved here. In the UK accounts have no standard charge and come with free debit card.

Well, in the UK, fee-free basic bank accounts are the result of government regulation(1).

It was part of the UK's implementation of Directive 2014/92/EU (2), which mandated access to basic bank accounts across the EU (of which the UK was then a part).

(1) https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fee-free-bank-accounts-la... (2) https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...

Re: D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

#160

Post by cowsandmilk »

lacker wrote: post #135

I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the govern…

> It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account

Plenty of banks offer no minimum checking accounts. Whenever this gets dug into, the fees they supposedly can’t afford are when their balances go negative, which is harder to justify being free.

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