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Not paying with cash

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Re: Not paying with cash

#251

Post by homefree »

bluGill wrote: post #143
homefree wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a funny experience with a French cheese shop in SF for this - I tipped a $2 bill and he called me back in confused thinking it was fake, but was good natured when I showed him it was real.

Last time I was in Mexico (walked across the border so many Americans in the area and they list prices in both us and mexican currancy) I paid with twos because that is all I had, which really confused the clerk, but her manager had no problem.

I had to go to El Salvador for a work trip a while back and brought a bunch of fresh $2 bills with me. They use USD as the currency there, but they're constrained by what's in circulation. I thought it would be fun to have my $2 bills there for maybe years, I'm not sure if they have any others!

Re: Not paying with cash

#252

Post by noduerme »

reorder9695 wrote: post #203
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

I don't know how it is in Europe, but there are some very competitive offers in the US. The Visa I use pays back 3% on travel and dining, 1% on everything else. In some cases because of how travel points work, you can book travel through the card company and get 5-10% back (if their hotel rates are equivalent, which is sometimes), then use those points in the same fashion at 1.5x redemption rates, effectively giving you 15% back on hotels and 7.5% on flights.

I travel and dine out a lot. All my personal and business expenses go on that one card. I also use it to pay for all the servers and infrastructure for my clients, which they reimburse me for. If I'm out to dinner with friends, I try to use my card and have them send me cash. All this adds up to several thousand dollars a year.

Re: Not paying with cash

#253

Post by cyberax »

iwanttocomment wrote: post #218
cyberax wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Walmart/Walmart.com TOS and Privacy Policy documents only say: > We collect your personal information from technology we use in and outside of our stores. For example, our point-of-sale terminals process your credit card information when you complete your purchase [...] Which is pretty obvious. Nothing about them explicitly tracking in-store purchase history via credit card numbers, which as above, they certainly…

> The Walmart/Walmart.com TOS and Privacy Policy documents only say

Neither applies to in-person transactions. You don't sign anything when you enter Walmart.

The rules are specified in PCI-DSS and also there are explicit laws in many states. There is wording that the card details or derived information can only be stored for legitimate business or legal reasons (i.e. associated with the transaction itself).

> If you use a credit card or a coupon, or fill out a survey, or mail in a refund, or call the customer help line, or open an e-mail we’ve sent you or visit our Web site, we’ll record it and link it to your Guest ID

You need to have a ToS acceptance somewhere along the chain. They can't use credit cards without notifying you.

Re: Not paying with cash

#254

Post by [deleted] »

cyberax wrote: post #253
iwanttocomment wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Walmart/Walmart.com TOS and Privacy Policy documents only say: > We collect your personal information from technology we use in and outside of our stores. For example, our point-of-sale terminals process your credit card information when you complete your purchase [...] Which is pretty obvious. Nothing about them explicitly tracking in-store purchase history via credit card numbers, which as above, they certainly…

> The Walmart/Walmart.com TOS and Privacy Policy documents only say Neither applies to in-person transactions. You don't sign anything when you enter Walmart. The rules are specified in PCI-DSS and also there are explicit laws in many states. There is wording that the card details or derived information can only be stored for legitimate business or legal reasons (i.e. associated with the transaction itself). > If you…

[deleted]

Re: Not paying with cash

#255

Post by BobaFloutist »

Izkata wrote: post #250
toast0 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a 2% discount on everything doesn't take a lot of time, or cost me anything directly. I did have to call the issuer once to get it changed from 1.5% to 2%, but there was a pretty good ROI on that ten minute phone call. I also have a 4% card, which took a good amount of effort, and needs regular attention as the issuer has realized it wasn't a good idea and is changing the deal. Now it has a limit and then fal…

> Getting a 2% discount on everything Some years ago I looked what my bank offered and there were a lot of exceptions, it was very far from "everything". I think the math came out to saving like $100 total a year, not really worth it.

Basic, mindless, catchall 2% cashback cards exist. I keep a Fidelity, since you can set it to automatically points every time you earn 50$, which can immediately go into a brokerage account and be held in a moneymarket fund earning ~4% annual interest. Which is not a huge deal, but it's a very hands off approach.

Re: Not paying with cash

#256

Post by dlcarrier »

bluGill wrote: post #215
dlcarrier wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs a few hondred a month for a cash delivery service. Even if you're only handling a few thousand dollars a day in cash, that's still only around a 1% cost. For most stores, it's probably a fraction of that. Other than that, it's just a few minutes of time to close out the register, which is the one thing employees do reliably quickly, because they get to go home afterward. For people running a little mom-and-p…

most of the cash costs are time counting it not moving it to the bank. Those seconds add up. There is also loss to crime since you will get managers stealing from the safe, and clerks form a till - both done in ways you cannot prove. And outright robbery. Having been the manager at a place that handled a lot of cash, I spent several hours every shift counting all those tills. The clerks might only need a few minutes…

I've spent plenty of time counting cash and filling out bank deposits, but it was a volunteer position, so we did everything by hand. It's pretty error prone, but we only had to do it once if the cash matched the receipts, which it usually did.

Bill counting machines start at less than $100, and they make it super quick, so accuracy and handling time isn't really a problem any more.

Most retail theft is of inventory, not cash, and chargebacks will easily surpass lost cash anyway.

Re: Not paying with cash

#257

Post by seabass-labrax »

IAmBroom wrote: post #232
seabass-labrax wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This point - that EMV cards have the effect of siphoning money out of many countries to the USA in payment processing fees - is one of the primary motivations behind the development of Wero[1]. For those that haven't come across it yet, it's a new payments system based on 'instant' SEPA wire transfers. It is starting to gain ground now, particularly in Germany and the Benelux. I'm not aware of any smartcard-based imp…

> This point - that EMV cards have the effect of siphoning money out of many countries to the USA in payment processing fees... Money isn't sent to the USA. It is sent to the banks that own your particular credit card. Many of these are certainly in the USA, but your statement makes it sound somehow patriotic/anti-USA to avoid using credit cards.

There is a component that is directly paid to the card schemes such as MasterCard and VISA. See this page from Barclays[1], for example:

> Interchange: the fee we pay to the card issuer, i.e. your customers’ banks > Scheme fee: the fees we pay to the schemes, i.e. Visa or Mastercard

> Visa Consumer Debit > Interchange fees 0.1% to 0.2% or 0.02€ > Scheme fees 0.0082€ + 0.11% to 0.312%

Obviously all the large payment card schemes have investors and subsidiary legal entities all around the world, and not all of the card schemes are from the USA. However I think it's fairly clear that at least 1/1000th of total card transactions everywhere in the world ends up flowing into the USA eventually, and that's without accounting for licensing and accreditation fees for the technology underpinning the system, also mainly from the USA.

I'm not surprised that European politicians would like to get hold of that money for domestic purposes by promoting Wero, and no doubt if political/propaganda gains can be made by presenting this as patriotic, at least some will try.

[1]: https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/content/dam/barclaycard/docume...

Re: Not paying with cash

#258

Post by singpolyma3 »

account42 wrote: post #213
singpolyma3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. Taking cash is basically a marketing expense not an actual way to get paid.

Which is of course why no store was profitable before the invention of cashless payments.

At that time the amount of cash you got was obviously much higher, so the costs of handling it as a percentage were lower.

You also wanted cash on hand at the time for obvious reasons (all your expenses were in cash) so having it coming in was inherently useful.

Re: Not paying with cash

#259

Post by CapricornNoble »

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.

You would give someone your PHONE to go buy a snack for you across the street? And tell them your screen unlock combo?

Dumping some coins out of my coinpurse is far superior analog, low-tech Access Control to my money.

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