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Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#391

Post by _xivi »

xadhominemx wrote: post #376
_xivi wrote: post #98

I think the ongoing banking crisis in Lebanon (similarly in Egypt and maybe elsewhere too) where there are restrictions on people's access to their deposits or making international transactions should be on everyone's mind when talking about eliminating cash. The downside of going cashless aren't hypothetical or as far-fetched as people think. The whole society can be put on hold overnight. We can see this happening…

What difference does the elimination of paper money at POS make to ability to access electronic deposits? Unless you are saying people should not bank at all and keep cash under the mattress?

> What difference does the elimination of paper money at POS make to ability to access electronic deposits?

The difference it makes is that now you only have one way to access your savings. Any failures, technical issues, outage, etc. and you're out of luck to say the least.

The principle is that you shouldn't rely on a single system ever. If you're eager to go that way be my guest. I was using a real life scenario of how that turned out bad for people.

I don't care about paper vs electronic. I care about relying on a single point of failure.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#392

Post by dfawcus »

I was in a large supermarket (Tesco) today where they were experiencing "technical difficulties". A repeated announcement over the tannoy stated they could not accept contact-less payments, not by card, not by phone.

They were still accepting cash and physical card insertion (Chip & PIN, or Chip & Signature).

Despite that lots of people were getting flustered at the checkouts (manned and self service) when they were unable to pay. Always carry some cash!

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#393

Post by Ekaros »

SoftTalker wrote: post #286
noodlesUK wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were already costs. There were always costs and risks associated with cash handling: armored trucks doing cash collection, risks of money in tills being lost. If it really were a lot cheaper you wouldn’t see businesses clamouring to go cashless. That’s not to say I think cash should go the way of the dodo, but I don’t think there’s that much difference paying g4s to collect your money vs Mastercard. IMO the ben…

Yes there are costs to handling cash. And they are vastly higher than the cost of handling bits. A 3% fee to write some bits to a database is insane. A 3% fee to pay all the people who need to handle the currency in a cash transaction is probably not covering costs.

3% is insane. As why many sane places in world have set much much lower limits...

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#394

Post by Ekaros »

tyfon wrote: post #281
noodlesUK wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you based where derisking is illegal? Here in the UK it makes the news fairly frequently when someone notable becomes unbanked because of CIFAS or SARs or similar. Also, I wasn’t able to get a debit card until I was 12, but perhaps that has changed over the past few decades.

I live in Norway. My kids got a card at around 5, but they are older now. Not with visa/mastercard of course :)

Hmm in Finland it seems there is "Basic" card. Which I think is technically just more limited VISA debit card. Preventing such things as overdrafts.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#395

Post by berkes »

unicornmama wrote: post #217
berkes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this "preposterous"? I never mentioned privacy, and certainly never claimed bitcoin provides it. Also, bitcoin never claimed to enable privacy (contrary to monero and zcash). All it ever claimed was to be pseudonymous. It has been crystal clear to anyone in the field that "if people can link your addresses to your person, they know all your transactions". In fact, this has often been presented as a feature (th…

Nonsense. Satoshi’s Bitcoin white paper has a section on Privacy.

Almost a third of that chapter is explaining the shortcomings and caveats of the system.

> Some linking is still unavoidable with multi-input transactions, which necessarily reveal that their inputs were owned by the same owner. The risk is that if the owner of a key is revealed, linking could reveal other transactions that belonged to the same owner.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#396

Post by Ekaros »

jasode wrote: post #254
Espressosaurus wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.3% vs. 3-4%

>0.3% vs. 3-4% No, the total costs of handling cash currency & coins for large businesses will still add up to 3% or more which is in the range of the fees of credit-cards processing. Costs of accepting cash also includes: - paying for armored trucks and security guards to transport bags of cash to the bank - percentage of cash lost to crime such as --- employees/cashiers theft/skimming by handling cash, --- robberie…

Time spend managing the tills that you do not either have too much money at one time or have enough money always to give change... Oh and at the end of shift counting the money...

Like today I returned some deposit bottles and they had run out of 20€ bills... Which should be the most common ones. Going on trip so I preferred 10€ bills, but still...

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#397

Post by multjoy »

atmartins wrote: post #375
gizmo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s such a misrepresentation. The credit card fees exist because customers get benefits like delivery insurance, return insurance, holiday insurance, cashback, free credit, etc. If you just want to transfer bits you can do that for next to no fees (in Europe, where digital payments without consumer protections are common).

Cash back? Attention is finite and I don't want a payment processor forcing me to pay a fee so I can turn around and try and earn it back. How about lower the fee and let me keep that 1%?? Then I can earn interest on it for the month, not them. And then I don't have to read additional terms and conditions, use it or lose it, book travel through their marked up garbage store, etc. It's insane to me that you'd defend c…

They're talking about being able to take cash out at the point of sale, not the shit discount model.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#398

Post by hackstack »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #380
xadhominemx wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get 95% of it back in the form of rewards, so it's not really a tax at all.

It seems kind of like a scam, though, credit card rewards. I don’t know enough about it, I generally don’t like participating in those sorts of things. Do you have a ref on the 95%?

Let’s just take 95% as a true figure … first of all the 5% you don’t get back is a straight up loss. The rewards you get at the end of the month are fine (eg cash back) but you’ve missed out on earning interest on the money you “get back”

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#399

Post by multjoy »

noodlesUK wrote: post #265
tyfon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children and old people here all use cards or apps. And derisking is illegal, so you have to provide a bank account and cards to anyone who wants. The high risk customers just need more follow-up on terms of AML.

Where are you based where derisking is illegal? Here in the UK it makes the news fairly frequently when someone notable becomes unbanked because of CIFAS or SARs or similar. Also, I wasn’t able to get a debit card until I was 12, but perhaps that has changed over the past few decades.

It rarely makes the news and it happens all the time, but usually because people don't see fraud as criminal until it catches up with them.

Re: Physical cash is dying–and you don't need to be a conspiracist to worry

#400

Post by multjoy »

Espressosaurus wrote: post #236
gruez wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Citation needed. I've been depositing cash for years, with multiple banks, and nobody has ever charged a "handling fee". It's a fee associated with business accounts. > https://www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness/deposits/resourc... >Cash Deposit Processing No fee for first $7,500 in cash deposited per statement cycle at an ATM or Financial Center; then $0.30 per $100 deposited thereafter

0.3% vs. 3-4%

Square will do you 1.75%, no contract, no fees and now you don't even need a physical reader as you can do contactless payment on your phone. You can get it lower with other providers if you negotiate right.

Nobody is paying 4% for any cardholder-present transactions.

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