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Not paying with cash

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Re: Not paying with cash

#181

Post by Shank »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #121
Shank wrote: 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…

I do carry a coin purse, and I have no use for 1 yen coins. Sure, 10 yen, 50 yen, and 100 yen coins are easily spent, but 1 yen is not. Same issue with pennies in the US.

Re: Not paying with cash

#182

Post by Shank »

m463 wrote: post #45
Shank wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe there is a less limited suica card you can get (not a traveler), but I think you need a japanese address. You don’t need a Japanese address. Simply visit any Suica vending machine, change the language to English, and purchase anonymous Suica. There are various preloaded options you can purchase, but typically you cannot recharge e-money via cash.

the vending machine card was the red one, right? I though there was a (blue?) one that japanese citizens could get, sent to their address.

> I though there was a (blue?) one that japanese citizens could get, sent to their address.

No, there are no citizen specific IC cards unless you want extremely esoteric ones, like for senior citizens or children. All of the major nationwide mutual use transportation IC cards are freely available at the stations their operators carry. That's anything in the red box on this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica#/media/File:ICCard_Conne....

Re: Not paying with cash

#183

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

> cash makes me really think about what I'm buying. It doesn't poke you the same way when you tap a card

This may be generational, but I’m exactly the other way. Cash in my mind is “spent” when it leaves my bank account. Using it afterwards is less like spending money than, say, casino chips.

When I want to be unrestrained in spending, when say on vacation or treating a friend, I’ll take out cash and then spend a mix of cash and card. The card transactions feel real; the cash lets us splurge.

Re: Not paying with cash

#184

Post by dlcarrier »

normie3000 wrote: post #152
al_borland wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only data breaches, but people skimming or copying the card. I went to a restaurant a while ago and some random employee decided to grab our bill to “help out”, not our waitress. I was splitting the bill with someone else and both our cards had fraudulent charges in the following days. I still find it crazy that we let waitstaff walk away with our cards in the US. One of my cards is very thick and metal. I found…

This is a wild amount of fraud. Is this US-specific? Are cards still using magstripes there?

Credit cards don't use a PIN in the US. Debit cards also work on credit card networks, so PINs are at best optional and are never required, making them entirely worthless.

Re: Not paying with cash

#185

Post by Shank »

asciimike wrote: post #173
cocogoatmain wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's working now (https://atadistance.net/2023/12/15/apple-pay-suica-visa-rech...) and has been working since ~2023. The last hurdle many face is that if you disable location services, sometimes the transaction is still blocked as they can now geofence it to just Japan with foreign bank cards.

Re: Not paying with cash

#186

Post by Robelius »

snypher wrote: post #161
r0m4n0 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What’s scummy about this? Seems like the poster was giving a perspective where they are trying to maximize outcomes of the non-profit rather than maximize dollars raised.

Re: Not paying with cash

#187

Post by dlcarrier »

bluGill wrote: post #150
crooked-v wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a reference to awards miles/points... but that's definitely not "for free", you're paying for it with the 2%-3% markup imposed by the merchant processing companies and at the baseline just getting that same amount back on the other side. With that said, with some careful finagling you can get outsized value out of it, especially for flight or hotel upgrades.

It is free because dealing with cash costs the merchant even more than the 3% fees the card costs. If there is a discount for cash it is because they have not counted the costs which are not obvious

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-pop business, delivery costs could add up, but they are likely to be in a more-time-than-money situation, and make bank runs on the way to or from the business.

There's also a lot less liability, because counterfeit money is easy to detect, and there aren't any fees or losses from stolen cards or chargebacks.

Re: Not paying with cash

#188

Post by rascul »

bluGill wrote: post #134
lvspiff wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

Many of my cash transactions are approximately as fast as or even faster than card transactions.

Re: Not paying with cash

#189

Post by toast0 »

jaza wrote: post #85
spankalee wrote: post #31

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.

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 falls back to 2%. Probably still worth the effort.

Miles/points seems like a lot of work though. I could see a study showing that's not worth the effort for most people... but I think the thing there is to find a card with points that are valuable for you and then maximize that, so there's not a one size fits all there.

Re: Not paying with cash

#190

Post by mhast »

al_borland wrote: post #156
normie3000 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a wild amount of fraud. Is this US-specific? Are cards still using magstripes there?

Cards still have magstripes, but we generally use chip + signature or tap-to-pay now. I haven’t actually swiped my card in a couple years. Visiting Europe, I really like that the transaction is done right in front of you. The pain point is that my card is chip + signature, when everything there is chip + pin. When I last visited London I would stop into the store and went to the self-scan. I had to wait for the atten…

Using chip and pin is what makes the system secure. The PIN is verified by the chip on the card so it can't be skimmed. (You can copy the PIN of course, but you also need the same physical chip to clone a transaction.)

Signing the recipe is a useless security theatre. That's why it's not done in Europe.

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