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Not paying with cash

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Re: Not paying with cash

#41

Post by Shank »

m463 wrote: post #38
Shank wrote: post #4

One thing I really love that Japan got right was the creation of e-money systems that are anonymous (you can get a Suica for 20,000 yen without any registration information), work offline (you don't need network at-payment, nor does the terminal), and are easily accessible (you can get them at any train station, you can charge them at any ATM or convenience store with cash). In contrast, a debit/credit card usually r…

to me suica seemed limited (for a traveler). you could get one and charge it up with a credit card, but I don't think you could recharge it that way. You could also not get multiple ones. I believe there is a less limited suica card you can get (not a traveler), but I think you need a japanese address.

> I believe there is a less limited suica card you can get (not a traveler), but I think you need a japanese address.

You don’t need a Japanese address. Simply visit any Suica vending machine, change the language to English, and purchase anonymous Suica.

There are various preloaded options you can purchase, but typically you cannot recharge e-money via cash.

Re: Not paying with cash

#42

Post by rtpg »

beeflet wrote: post #39
rtpg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding here is that there's less risk of double spends here because of the extreme difficulty of cloning the smartcards involved. So to execute the double spend you would have to find an authorized card provider, convince them to load and sign your double spend-capable program onto the smartcard (with their signature!), and then be found out within a week when reconciliation is off. So doing a double spend…

Or you can extract the secrets from a smartcard using a variety of side-channels. But the juice is rarely worth the squeeze.

Maybe you can, but I had the impression that it would be quite difficult given physically unclonable function-y stuff. Handwave-y and I have no clue if Suica-style payments use it but that was my impression.

Re: Not paying with cash

#43

Post by neilv »

Buried. Remember to upvote if you comment.

    124. Not Paying with Cash (rubenerd.com)
         20 points by mikece 1 hour ago | flag | hide | 40 comments

Re: Not paying with cash

#44

Post by beeflet »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #18

Budgeting with the data trail of a card is significantly easier if you have a lot of transactions. It's also generally cheaper due to cashback and other incentives. Other than that I've always found the idea that cash is "inconvenient" a bit of a child-like argument. Okay, yeah, you have to count some coins, you also have to brush your teeth and use a knife and fork instead of your hands, come on.

The necessity of making change is major usability/privacy/fungibility roadblock that shows up in more than just cash. For example, it presents a problem for chaumian e-cash or other private money systems like pre-MLSAG monero.

If it's possible to do the equivalent of cash, but with some sort of smartcards that exchange some sort of offline zero-knowlege proofs, then that would be preferable over physical cash, because it could eliminate the need for change or marked bills and it would be even more private.

Re: Not paying with cash

#45

Post by m463 »

Shank wrote: post #41
m463 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me suica seemed limited (for a traveler). you could get one and charge it up with a credit card, but I don't think you could recharge it that way. You could also not get multiple ones. I believe there is a less limited suica card you can get (not a traveler), but I think you need a japanese address.

> I believe there is a less limited suica card you can get (not a traveler), but I think you need a japanese address. You don’t need a Japanese address. Simply visit any Suica vending machine, change the language to English, and purchase anonymous Suica. There are various preloaded options you can purchase, but typically you cannot recharge e-money via cash.

the vending machine card was the red one, right?

I though there was a (blue?) one that japanese citizens could get, sent to their address.

Re: Not paying with cash

#46

Post by aleph_minus_one »

spankalee wrote: post #31

The article and none of the comments mention rewards yet, which are the biggest reason to use cards! Credit card processors charge large fees on transactions, which is a huge tax on just about... everything. You can make a lot of that tax back via rewards. And not every card user has a good rewards-paying card - it's usually the more rich that do - so rewards function as a wealth transfer from the less rich to the mo…

> The article and none of the comments mention rewards yet, which are the biggest reason to use cards!

In my observation being that much incentivized by the reward system seems to be a very US-American thing. In Germany, I have never heard anybody seriously talking about that they love the reward system of their credit card. I would claim that at most some (but I think rather few) people in Germany consider some very specific reward that their credit card has as a slight convenience - but nothing more.

Re: Not paying with cash

#48

Post by lisbbb »

The main problem I have with cash is that we don't have denominations large enough to buy much these days thanks to inflation. The $100 is the new $20, but ATMs won't serve $100s. I buy gas for my car, it's at least $35 right there. Groceries run $80-$120 every trip now. I don't know if revaluation is possible, but we need it.

I'm not worried about dirty cash as compared to every purchase being tracked and all the fees for using services like Venmo or whatever exchange service du jour, and they all apply their petty moralizing. It's not the way forward if you value freedom and privacy.

Re: Not paying with cash

#49

Post by cyberax »

> I always get a chuckle from people saying you shouldn’t use loyalty cards in grocery stores and the like… when they pay with credit cards!

Stores aren't allowed to use credit cards to track purchases or to link customers to loyalty programs. That's why you need to use a separate loyalty card, or a store-branded credit card.

Re: Not paying with cash

#50

Post by lisbbb »

Shank wrote: post #4

One thing I really love that Japan got right was the creation of e-money systems that are anonymous (you can get a Suica for 20,000 yen without any registration information), work offline (you don't need network at-payment, nor does the terminal), and are easily accessible (you can get them at any train station, you can charge them at any ATM or convenience store with cash). In contrast, a debit/credit card usually r…

But Japanese people largely still use cash, don't they?
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