131–140 of 259 posts
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…
I got irritated with the profusion of "no cash accepted" signs a few years back and started making a point of always carrying cash, to use whenever practical. I don't take it to an extreme, but I also don't want to live in a world where every transaction is trackable and all commerce is regulated by Visa, Mastercard, Apple, or Google.
In right there with you. I live in a small town and so whenever spending money at a local small business I try as much as possible to use cash. The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". It's difficult for them to keep good change though as people who do spend cash are either $20 or $100 bills which for a few $5-10 items consumes the small bills pretty fast. But in a n…
Because tax evasion? Otherwise credit card interchange rates are nowhere that high, typically 3%.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile, there's no apparent way to pay for a train using an American android phone (or at least I couldn't figure it out last year). One of the two apps refused to install on non-japanese phones, the other installed but refused to run. Had to pay with cash and it was a huge pain. Half the time I inexplicably had to do a fare adjustment, a hugely embarrassing moment blocking the turnstile, especially considering th…
The trick is to get a Suica card, which as an foreigner you need to do at the airport train station before you leave to the rest of Japan. https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/welcomesuica/purchase.html
I got irritated with the profusion of "no cash accepted" signs a few years back and started making a point of always carrying cash, to use whenever practical. I don't take it to an extreme, but I also don't want to live in a world where every transaction is trackable and all commerce is regulated by Visa, Mastercard, Apple, or Google.
In right there with you. I live in a small town and so whenever spending money at a local small business I try as much as possible to use cash. The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". It's difficult for them to keep good change though as people who do spend cash are either $20 or $100 bills which for a few $5-10 items consumes the small bills pretty fast. But in a n…
this is false reasoning on their part. They never have thought about how much cash costs them so it looks like extra money but it really isn't. they need to count the time lost to counting the cash as you pay, then the time to count the money in the till at the end of the shift. Each count above is 2 counts at best the average is closer to 3 because you sometimes get it wrong. There is also theft costs which is generally ignored but a real problem.
credit cards is money right to the computer which is not only fast it makes less mistakes.
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…
Remember that the credit card companies wouldn’t offer points if they weren’t profitable. People tend to spend more on a credit card than they do with cash, and it’s not enough to make up with points. I’m generally a pretty responsible credit user. I pay the whole bill each month and never paid a dime in interest. But I’d be lying if I said I never justified a slightly larger purchase that I would have otherwise made…
I just flew to London for free and our hotel was free (the Westminster) on points. Earlier in the year we stayed in a $900 a night hotel free on points in Quepos Costa Rica. We flew there on a Delta companion pass by having a $350 AF Delta credit card that also has a $200 Hotel credit (Delta Business Platinum).
I almost always fly to see my parents free on points (AirFrance 20K points to book Delta flights round trip). Of course I don’t pay for anything when I go home.
But if you are getting most of your points via spending instead of sign up bonuses, you’re doing it wrong (See r/churning). That is unless you do a lot of business travel.
Either way, we travel a lot anyway. Credit card points increase our travel budget.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s thanks to Android phone manufacturers, which don’t want to pay for a global license for the NFC tech involved. Apple on the other hand does pay for a global license and so iPhones and Apple Watches from anywhere work perfectly with Japanese cash card terminals. I use a digital Suica on my US iPhone during my visits. Supposedly Pixels have the requisite hardware, but Google software locks the functionality to J…
Why should they pay for a licence? Once a technology reaches such ubiquity, there's a strong case for it being part of the technical infrastructure of that society. To me, that means that governments have a responsibility to ensure that the technology is widely available, and arbitrarily locking it behind commercial licences does not help achieve that. To the extent that patents and licensing provide an incentive to…
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…
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…
Various studies have shown that, for the investment needed to "maximise your rewards" (ie time needed to research the different cards on the market / read the fine print of your chosen product / put through payments on a high rewards card; money on signup fees, recurring fees, transaction fees, etc), you'll achieve a much better ROI just investing the equivalent time and money into an index fund.
I got irritated with the profusion of "no cash accepted" signs a few years back and started making a point of always carrying cash, to use whenever practical. I don't take it to an extreme, but I also don't want to live in a world where every transaction is trackable and all commerce is regulated by Visa, Mastercard, Apple, or Google.
I run a non profit with membership dues and I have tried to just boot the 3% of our membership that pay w/ check or cash annually (I haven’t convinced the rest of the board so we haven’t done it yet). It takes so much extra time to follow it in real life, receive checks in the mail, and effort to deposit in the bank. It’s just not worth the time
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Various studies have shown that, for the investment needed to "maximise your rewards" (ie time needed to research the different cards on the market / read the fine print of your chosen product / put through payments on a high rewards card; money on signup fees, recurring fees, transaction fees, etc), you'll achieve a much better ROI just investing the equivalent time and money into an index fund.
Can you point to these studies? Anyone who gives a 3% discount for cash will get cash from me, but I already have all my money in index funds. The effort to maximize points is “use this credit card, get the cash back”. It’s really not that much effort, for rich people with excellent credit. It is of course a hugely regressive system, but that wasn’t the argument you made.