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Not paying with cash

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Re: Not paying with cash

#201

Post by newscracker »

I feel there’s very little hope for privacy and freedom if people like the author — who claim to be for privacy and understand the implications of digital payments — choose cards all the time “because it’s convenient”. Convenience and coercion (by the businesses not accepting cash or governments forcing more “cashless”) are what the common person succumbs to.

I’m not saying that everyone should switch to cash for everything all the time. But the more that privileged people switch to digital payments and eschew cash, the more difficult it becomes for those who rely on or want to use cash to do so.

Choosing privacy could mean a little more (or a lot more, depending on one’s views) inconvenience. Hopefully there are still enough people who use cash and keep cash payments alive for longer (which helps many other people who may not be as privileged or as educated as a different crowd).

Re: Not paying with cash

#202

Post by bob1029 »

From a business owner perspective, it can be cheaper to operate a card only business than a cash only business, especially if you intend to do it legally and with a proper bank.

There is no bank on earth that will service a cash heavy (only) business for free. The cost/risk/fees of moving the physical cash around can be worse than what Visa charges.

You could go one step further and think about it from the bank perspective. The cost of physically transacting cash when you could send a packet across the ether to accomplish the same is a wild increase in energy expenditure, etc. Someone had to physically drive to the bank to move the cash. There's no other option. Possibly in a gigantic armored vehicle. Often times multiple times per week. Handling all of this activity is very expensive for all parties involved.

Re: Not paying with cash

#203

Post by reorder9695 »

noduerme wrote: post #148

I'm very sympathetic to both the cash-as-privacy and cash-as-fair-access (for unbanked people, to goods and services) arguments, and I won't support any business that doesn't take cash. Credit cards are a snare for the chronically indebted, to shake pennies from their pockets to transfer to the wealthy. However, if you have no debt (which is enough to be considered "wealthy", IMO), you'd be a fool not to use a credit…

Maybe credit cards are different in Europe but I've never seen one with significant benefits really, granted I could be looking at the wrong ones but I have an excellent credit score and presumably could get one. To me a credit card is smth I have so I can put a few transactions though a month and it pays off via direct debit, for the sole purpose of building a credit score for when I do need a loan

Re: Not paying with cash

#204

Post by jongjong »

I hate cash and its digital equivalent. I only use it because I am forced to, against my will, because everyone else has been conditioned into thinking that it has value. Fiat money is the root of all evil. Besides the way it systematically steals wealth from the worker class and gives it to the owner class, there is nothing else to say about it.

Many reports have been written about the mechanisms via which the monetary system steals wealth from the working class. I'm tired of linking to them. The conditioning is too strong. Frankly the more this goes on, the more sympathy I feel for the owner class for their contempt for the sheeple. I'm starting to think they are right. People are dumb and evil and should be milked for all they've got.

I mostly feel bad for those of us who can see what's going on and are treated the same as the sheeple.

Re: Not paying with cash

#205

Post by frm88 »

jppope wrote: post #81

I prefer cash, not for the reasons mentioned. First, cash makes me really think about what I'm buying. It doesn't poke you the same way when you tap a card... which is obviously one of the main reasons they want you do use cards. When I use cash, I am reminded of when I didn't have a lot, which keeps me from spending without thought. Next, its a hallmark of the middle class to spend money that you don't have. Myself…

I'm like you for mostly the same reasons plus an additional one: pure spite. Supermarkets like Aldi no longer show or print out the return amount of money to your payment. The officially given reason is: staff is faster than the register doing it in their head [0]. Naturally that doesn't mean the customer is just as fast checking the correctness of the amount returned because frankly, who of us is used to this any more. So I make it my choice to stand and keep up the line until I have checked the return-amount. In this way I have had to discuss mistakes made by the cashier twice already this year, causing even more delay.

The real reason is that they want you to use cards, not cash and as far as I can tell, it's working. However, I find this kind of policy hurts people, particularly children, elderly people and disadvantaged.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.de/wirtschaft/aldi-spart-rueckge...

Re: Not paying with cash

#206

Post by frm88 »

Gathering6678 wrote: post #82

I was surprised to know recently that, in France apparently, there are quite a lot of shops that don't accept cash. I thought it was going to be the other way around: shops stipulating "cash only". In my country, there are actually regulations mandating the acceptance of cash (unless it's an unmanned booth or certain vendoring machines, if I remember correctly).

You can protest this, since it's illegal: all stores in France must accept cash https://www.banque-france.fr/en/monetary-strategy/means-of-p...

Re: Not paying with cash

#207

Post by account42 »

rtpg wrote: post #32
csinode wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> work offline (you don't need network at-payment, nor does the terminal) Surely this is massively vulnerable to double spend attacks?

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…

It's really not that big of an issue when the spends are reasonable sized (e.g. public transport). You don't need to prevent literally all fraud, just enough that it becomes an acceptable cost of doing business. Fielding customer complaints because they couldn't ride due to an offline reader isn't free either.

Re: Not paying with cash

#208

Post by account42 »

raincole wrote: post #120
csinode wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> work offline (you don't need network at-payment, nor does the terminal) Surely this is massively vulnerable to double spend attacks?

In Taiwan, there is a similar system called EasyCard. That works offline. ...And as you expect it is vulnerable to double spend attacks. Hilariously the vulnerability was revealed in 2014 and nothing has been done to mitigate it. Yes, you can double spend in Taiwan today if you don't mind risking jail time. From my (rudimentary) understanding of CAP, there is no prefect solution to this. I wonder how Japan handles it…

You can also "double spend" cash with fake bills. Zero fraud is never a reasonable design goal.

Much easier than double spending would be to use a student or other reduced fare card.

Re: Not paying with cash

#209

Post by bfg_9k »

dlcarrier wrote: post #91
bfg_9k wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much anywhere in Australia that isn't a big chain

I've heard electronic direct payments (like PayPal) are much more common in Australia than the US. Do they charge similar fees to credit card transactions?

Yes and no. I've never heard of someone trying to use PayPal to pay someone else, however we do have PayID which is linked to your phone number (I hate it, since you can plug anyone's number into the PayID system and see who owns it). This is free and instant, however you don't really pay businesses with this.

Paying businesses you can use EFTPOS which I believe is run by the central bank and has very low fees on debit cards, or the usual credit card networks/Apple Pay/gpay.

Re: Not paying with cash

#210

Post by account42 »

charcircuit wrote: post #168
CapricornNoble wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Because my coin purse isn't going to randomly decide that it doesn't like the transaction.
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