Not paying with cash • Hacker News Board

Re: Not paying with cash

#171

Post by cyberax » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 4:47 AM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #3

I'll always remember the time when the tourist town of Ely, Minnesota, USA had it's single fiber internet cable cut. Pretty much all the groups there trying to rent canoes, equipment, hotels, etc with corporate cards weren't able to do it. We were lucky our group brought cash. A society depending entirely on corporations for currency function is incredibly fragile in addition to corporate payment services being rent…

And we had a power/Internet outage here after a heavy snowfall. My local bakery simply wrote down my credit card number and then did a card-not-present transaction later.

Contactless cards can also do offline transactions, without any Internet connectivity. We support that in our app via https://docs.stripe.com/terminal/features/operate-offline/co...

Re: Not paying with cash

#172

Post by cyberax » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 4:48 AM UTC

iwanttocomment wrote: post #86

cyberax wrote: post #49

> 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.

Here in the US, it's absolutely allowed. Walmart, for example, will by default add in-store purchases using a credit card (and no other identifying information) to the purchase history on a Walmart.com account set up with the same credit card. You can only disable this tracking by going into Account > Settings > Privacy > Data Sharing in your Walmart.com account, where you'll find an option that states "Allow us to a…

That's because you allowed Walmart to do that when you signed for the account. It's buried somewhere in the ToS.

They are not allowed to track you when you don't _have_ an account. With Apple Pay or Android Pay they won't even be able to do that because they get anonymous tokens and not the card number.

Re: Not paying with cash

#173

Post by asciimike » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 4:52 AM UTC

cocogoatmain wrote: post #102

asciimike wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilariously, the physical cards can only be topped up at add fare machines (cash only) or ATMs (cash only). If you go down the "add a pasmo/suica on your phone" then you get into licensing issues with the other cabal (credit card issuers): you need to use an Amex to charge it via Apple Pay (IIRC Visa is now supported, but when I tried it last week my card was declined, so... YMMV).

Assuming you’re a tourist, are you sure it’s not your bank flagging the transaction? When visiting in April I too thought it was an issue with the card when trying to reload on apple wallet, but after two cards declined, found out the transaction was flagged haha Same experience with reloading on the physical machines. It’s quite amusing

Same card worked via Apple wallet for other transactions, and the Visa thing is a known issue historically (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255018680?sortBy=rank). A local friend confirmed the fix, but I can't seem to find any info from Apple or Visa about it.

Re: Not paying with cash

#174

Post by RulerOf » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 4:59 AM UTC

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #79

dlcarrier wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My banks ATM defaults to $100 bills, and it takes a bunch of taps to get only $20 bills.

My local credit union has switched entirely to machined staff, even inside locations (with attendant staff for transaction impossible via ATM). For some silly reason, the machine stocks only these bills: $5$ $20$ $100$ Why waste an entire cash dispenser on fives when it could instead be handing out fifties (or at least tens)... especially at an ATM!? I think it's time for a $1000 bill, again. Let's get rid of bills l…

> I think it's time for a $1000 bill, again.

I agree, but I'd actually like to see 200 and 500 dollar denominations as well. Would keep the same number of distinct bills that way if the three smallest ones were phased out.

Re: Not paying with cash

#175

Post by daft_pink » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

I really like paying cash at self service restaurants now so I don’t have to deal with their tip screen nonsense.

Re: Not paying with cash

#176

Post by seany » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:13 AM UTC

FriedPickles wrote: post #124

Contactless Bitcoin lightning payments. Best of both worlds.

Monero would be ideal

Re: Not paying with cash

#177

Post by scarface_74 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #159

JustExAWS wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s say I have points to get a free flight. Great, now I’m also spending money out of pocket on a hotel, meals, entertainment, etc. That “free” $600 plane ticket actually costs $5k in other expenses, but it’s ok, because we’re earning $100 more in points for spending that $5k. 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 f…

If you have a business and a lot of travel for that, the equation can change. I was speaking more about the average consumer. As far as sign up bonuses go, I have very little interest in credit cards into a hobby.

I am the average consumer. I signed up for an Amex card that gave me 90K Skymiles and I had 30K skymiles already.

It’s fine if you aren’t interested in “the hobby”. But if I have a choice between spending $40k - $60K for 60,000 points and spending $5000 in 3 months to get 60K points, I’m going to choose the latter.

Re: Not paying with cash

#178

Post by hackernewsdhsu » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 5:57 AM UTC

Cash is privacy. Hope all you card-only cucks get taken by the billionaire class, looking to transfer your wealth to them.

Re: Not paying with cash

#179

Post by Shank » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 6:00 AM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #128

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #19

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 the F should an interoperability fundamental like NFC require any such thing as a license in the first place??? It's utterly absurd to have ever allowed such a condition, despite it being a fact that everyone has been just living with for decades. If there is a problem, it is very definitely not thanks to anyone failing to pay a license.

FeliCa isn't NFC -- it's a close standard but it's technically different enough and has different requirements that it has licensing attached because it wasn't made freely available. It's technically also called "NFC-F". FeliCa predates NFC's wide adoption in consumer electronic devices because it was in use in Japan in the early 2000's.

Re: Not paying with cash

#180

Post by latchkey » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 6:01 AM UTC

lisbbb wrote: post #48

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 fe…

> The $100 is the new $20.

Amazing how we skipped right over the $50 bill.