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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

#231

Post by bradfa »

runnr_az wrote: post #84
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.

At least in PHX, I’ve been seeing a lot of businesses with a 2-3% surcharge for cards

Same here in upstate NY. Mostly smaller businesses like pizza joints and such but pretty much every gas station has been doing this for years.

The only cashless place I’ve seen around here is the major sports stadiums, everyone else seems to greatly prefer cash over cards.

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

#232

Post by arrowsmith »

yftsui wrote: post #180
nonrandomstring wrote: post #162

Almost every comment is about politics, choice, privacy, rights, markets and percentages. There's a completely different take; Civic resilience From an operational and strategic security POV, cash is a vastly superior technology. It doesn't need electricity, a network of cables, satellites and routers. Therefore cash in circulation acts as a buffer that provides economic stability and continuity of operations. Also,…

Cash is a superior technology for security -> Huh? The bullet proof glass cage protecting the cashiers is the “technology”.

Well at least it limits people to stealing from the building they're currently inside rather than from anywhere with an internet connection.

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

#233

Post by grvdrm »

rascul wrote: post #112
lotsofpulp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't love that I also have a 3% tax going to VISA/Mastercard/Amex/... You don’t. The merchant you are buying from is choosing to pay 3% for credit card payments because they believe incentivizing people to pay with credit cards will result in them earning more (via higher prices or higher margin goods) than incentivizing them to pay with debit/cash. If a merchant wanted to, it would be trivial for them to give y…

> > I don't love that I also have a 3% tax going to VISA/Mastercard/Amex/... > You don’t. The merchant you are buying from is choosing to pay 3% for credit card payments because they believe incentivizing people to pay with credit cards will result in them earning more (via higher prices or higher margin goods) than incentivizing them to pay with debit/cash. Today I picked up flooring from a place that gave a 5% disc…

You’re not alone. I just paid for something that added a 3% convenience fee for paying with a card. I don’t see it frequently but the behavior is out there.

Otherwise I think the incentive point is exactly right. My town allows you to pay for parking with a mobile app and CC. I’m sometimes charging a dollar total to the card for parking. Not much left for the town after the fees. But I always have my phone and can pay vs carrying cash or coins to pay.

My guess is the town makes more overall in parking fees because of that app

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

#234

Post by lazrgatr »

Argentina has effectively a cash-only economy. Queues in excess of an hour at the supermarket are fairly common partly because of the overheads in having everyone pay with cash (needing to empty the tills, validate large notes, taking time to get correct change out and/or giving change).

Let's not be so quick to say that card payments are all bad.

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

#235

Post by cornholio »

bagels wrote: post #126
maximilianroos wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...then don't buy things from those businesses? We need a stronger reason than "I want that" to force businesses to give us things — otherwise how do we decide whose preferences we should mandate?

There is an element of injustice, the poor and immigrants may not have the same access to banks and credit as others do.

Perhaps we should fix that? I mean, if you can't get banking services, how exactly are you participate in the modern economy? Is it a good idea forcing homeless to deal with cash, when they are the most vulnerable population to drug abuse? How can they safely save to prepare some solution for their situation?

So many questions, with "how will you buy your coffee" very low in the order of priority. Electronic money remittance should be seen as a basic human right.

Seems like neither side really cares about these people, but they make a useful rhetorical prop.

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

#236

Post by mnw21cam »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #162

Almost every comment is about politics, choice, privacy, rights, markets and percentages. There's a completely different take; Civic resilience From an operational and strategic security POV, cash is a vastly superior technology. It doesn't need electricity, a network of cables, satellites and routers. Therefore cash in circulation acts as a buffer that provides economic stability and continuity of operations. Also,…

The problem with cash being a thing that keeps working if the lights go out is that there isn't enough of it in circulation to meet the demand if all the lights go out. Having a bit of cash means that you can still pay for your purchases if one random shop has a technical glitch with their card reader, but if the card payment system for a whole country falls over then there just isn't enough lying around to cope with everything that we want to do. It's a failover system that isn't adequately scaled.

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

#237

Post by robertlagrant »

bagels wrote: post #139
komali2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without State intervention there's nothing stopping businesses colluding to all go cashless. Or... all together do something else that's bad for us. Or monopolizing. The strong enough reason is "it's better for the people." It's easy how we decide whose preferences we mandate - we mandate people's preferences, and businesses find ways to make money within those constraints. There's no issue making profit like this, s…

Yeah, I wonder if the card processors have considered kickbacks to go cashless.

I wonder if security vans, safe vendors, permanent dye vendors, business insurance vendors have considered kickbacks to ban cashless.

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

#238

Post by robertlagrant »

bigtunacan wrote: post #109
maximilianroos wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, no one is rejecting the notion of regulation. But personal preferences are a bad way to choose regulation — businesses can aggregate preferences much better than the state can.

It isn't about preference. It's well understood that refusing cash payments has an outsized impact on both the impoverished and underrepresented classes. One easy way to keep the homeless from coming in to make purchases is to refuse cash payments. The government's job isn't to cater to business preferences it is to look out for the well-being of the people.

> The government's job isn't to cater to business preferences it is to look out for the well-being of the people.

Businesses are also run by people. Everything is people. The difference here is the government wants to impose cost on businesses to solve problems it should be solving. It could solve them by issuing every homeless person with a credit card that gets topped up by X a month. It would rather just write a rule, take the credit, and have someone else pay all the costs.

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

#239

Post by kgeist »

seanhunter wrote: post #206
AllegedAlec wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck when a bank decides to freeze your account because you called a politician a fat pig.

Are you referring to a specific incident here? Do you have a reference?

In my country, we have a similar system like in India (in fact, we copied it from them) and I've experienced this situation: a government-run gas company mistakenly claimed I owe them money, and the bank withdrew the claimed amount without due process, because they have some sort of mutual agreement that all their claims are legit unless I bring the issue to court. I won and they had to return the money.

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

#240

Post by HWR_14 »

amrocha wrote: post #166
runnr_az wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in PHX, I’ve been seeing a lot of businesses with a 2-3% surcharge for cards

Huh, I thought that wasn't allowed by the card issuer rules. Isn't that why a lot of places don't take Amex? Because the fees are higher but they can't add a surcharge to cover it?

The rules were changed, I believe in some of the financial legislation passed post-2008.
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