Live data from Hacker News

Not paying with cash

rubenerd.com

161–170 of 259 posts

Re: Not paying with cash

#161
post #139

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 think this writer focuses on the buyer side but on the merchant side, there are similar tradeoffs. People (employees, robbers etc) steal cash and it adds work to close out registers at the end of your day. Having no cash in your store solves those problems. 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…

Pretty scummy way to reject the people you rely on to fund your cause.

Do you get paid from this non-profit you run?

Re: Not paying with cash

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the places I buy from charge an extra 3% for credit card transactions, so rewards cards are just giving your money back, but worse.

Curious what part of the world this is in. I can recall a grand total of three places I've seen in my area do this. It's a tiny minority here.

a lot of places do it automatically so everyone is paying slightly more on every purchase. A lot of gas stations openly advertise a lower cash price.

There is a local supermarket chain that doesn't accept credit cards at all because they'd have to raise their cash price.

Everyone pays for credit card fees. Not just the people using CCs. Then CC companies pocket those crazy high fees while giving a lil bit back as "rewards".

This is a good example of a system we've normalized in this country which harms most people.

Re: Not paying with cash

#163
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip". Because tax evasion? Otherwise credit card interchange rates are nowhere that high, typically 3%.

Square is 2.6% + 15¢, so to get 5-7%, you could be doing most transactions under $5. That seems to require fairly high sales volume to make any decent wage though, so there is an added transaction cost for them to “keep good change” instead of serving more customers

Cash costs as much or more to handle.

Potentially ranging from 4.7% to over 15%, costs include labor for counting change, closing drawers, preparing deposits, security expenses like armored transport, bank fees for cash services, insuring against significant risks of theft and fraud.

Re: Not paying with cash

#164

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 always carry cash. Just tonight, I saw that the local sandwich shop that I frequent put up a NO CASH ACCEPTED sign. I asked why the change and the worker said it is due to employee theft. I asked if the tip jar still accepted cash. “Yes,” he said.

Re: Not paying with cash

#165
post #26
post #9

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…

There’s not a reasonable solution using global Android phones, but you could obviously just buy a physical IC card and use that, which is what I was suggesting here in the first place.

In China I could use alipay. It was a bit different since it was qr code driven.

Re: Not paying with cash

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip 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…

> they need to count the time lost to counting the cash as you pay Do they? Unless the shop's always serving customers, this may be free time.

Even if the place is jacked, if you have enough staff, this could be one trustworthy person (under camera surveillance) that has other functions throughout the day.

Re: Not paying with cash

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip 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…

Many banks also charge fees to process cash deposits for business accounts, as well. It's still often a tenth of credit card interchange fees, but between that, labor to balance your cash drawer, and actually go to the bank to make the deposit, the difference isn't as substantial as you'd make it out to be if you only look at the direct surcharges to process the payments. That said, while I default to using Apple Pay…

[dead]

Re: Not paying with cash

#168
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would personally argue that 20,000 yen is not a low maximum balance for day-to-day purchases like food, because you can recharge so easily. Before Suica (and a bit concurrently), JNR and later JR issued "orange cards" that included both high value formats and lower value formats. The "high value" cards were 5,000 yen and 10,000 yen respectively, so the new maximum is 2x the previous "high value" orange cards that t…

>Carrying 20,000 yen in cash is easy when it's 2x 10,000 notes, but when it's a mix including coins, it's a pain. Carry a coinpurse. I use an old faux-suede Samsung camera pouch.[1] Plus it's fun when someone is running an errand for you, like getting you a snack from the konbini across the street, and you plop your coinpurse on the desk with a thud, then pour out a handful of 500-yen coins and say "this should cover…

Why have a whole purse when it is already built into your phone which you already are carrying around anyways.

Re: Not paying with cash

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "standard" in question here is NTT Docomo's Osaifu-Keitai, which is used only in Japan and requires both licensing and a special flavor of Sony's Felica chip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaifu-Keitai I can't really fault Android manufacturers for not wanting to pay extra for every phone in the world to get a bit of proprietary tech that's completely useless outside Japan.

No surprises here, it's Sony. The same company that use propertiary memory card on PS Vita.

The same company that has a weird dichotomy between sometimes using other industry-standard data formats, but at times either succeeding (UMatic, Betacam, Professional Disc, Video8/Hi8) and sometimes failing (Betamax, Memory Stick) to have a dominant media storage standard. And sometimes they have products that accept industry standard formats (I have an older prosumer camera from Sony that supports SD, Memory Stick Pro Duo, and a proprietary flash format that is mostly used to record two formats at once, and they made plenty of VHS VCRs).

Re: Not paying with cash

#170
post #9

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…

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…

What do the international android phones support and does it require licensing?
Post reply on HN