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Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

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Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#211

Post by brainwad »

arresin wrote: post #46
JadeNB wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bad feeling I get from cashless is "what if some future political conflict will lower the status of my ethnicity to such a low position, so I'll be denied buying food and nobody will care?" or some similar scenario. I don't mean to be obtuse, but how would cash solve this? If someone is bigoted against you and won't take cash from you, or marks up the price or engages in some other less obvious manipulation, an…

Huh? With cashless you can’t spend at all if your account is frozen.

So the alternative is, what, you can spend whatever is left in your wallet, but the rest of your money is still frozen? The difference from maintaing physical cash seems very marginal. Or are you suggesting we all pull all our money out of bank accounts and store it in cash under the bed, just in case one day we get unpersoned? The costs of doing that vastly outweight the expected benefits.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#212

Post by eimrine »

brainwad wrote: post #194
logicchains wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give the government the power to block financing to anyone they declare a terrorist then they'll just declare anyone who opposes them to be terrorists.

Empirical evidence suggests otherwise, at least in liberal democracies.

survirorship bias

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#213

Post by nazcan »

BJones12 wrote: post #205
rootusrootus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it would get complicated fast. Doesn't cash have its own additional handling costs that don't apply to credit card users? I'm not sure it's as easy as saying cash users are subsidizing anyone else.

For businesses to deposit cash at RBC (the largest Canadian bank) here's an account that charges $2.50 per $1,000 (branch), $2.25 per $1,000 (ATM) https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/business/accounts/flex-choice-b... Which is ~0.25%. Presumably a cash register also has some amortization on it.

That does not include the cost of staff processing it.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#215

Post by 1over137 »

nick_ wrote: post #130
sbarre wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol do you actually live in Ottawa? Calling downtown near the Parliament buildings "the most affluent areas around the nation's capital" is pretty hilarious.

You can tell when people have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when they think downtown cores are where rich people live.

Outside the USA, including Canada, downtown cores are where (many, but not all) rich people live.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#217

Post by rperez333 »

anttiharju wrote: post #125
janice1999 wrote: post #6

Governments really need to break the Visa and Mastercard Duopoly. Not mentioned in this article, but certainly related, was the Canadian governments unprecedented step to freeze hundreds of bank accounts of protestors during COVID protests using their Emergencies Act. While I couldn't be more politically removed from the protestors, using a legislative power envisioned for war like conditions to personally ruin prote…

You may be interested in reading about digital euro https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht... Although it's nothing concrete yet afaik

Most countries should study the Brazilian system called Pix. It's faster than Interac, controlled by the central bank and very accessible to its population. https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#218

Post by CamperBob2 »

gruez wrote: post #162
CamperBob2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep deprivation is torture under the Geneva Convention. It's rightfully considered a war crime. You don't get to do that to other people. Not in my idea of a civil society.

Get a grip. Honking is honking. Comparing it to "war crimes" like killing civilians makes little sense and is disingenuous[1]. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...

Translation: "I don't live anywhere near the affected area, so I didn't experience it. If I had, I could have just left town for a while and waited for the whole thing to blow over. I don't see the problem."

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#219

Post by kredd »

jpnguyen wrote: post #14

Japan has tap payments for public transit and restaurants for decades, while simultaneously being very cash driven. Will be interesting to see how the cash meta evolves with different countries and cultures.

Japan’s government is also pushing towards cashless society right now. Younger generations are accepting it as well. My friends at PayPay and similar companies are pretty set on increasing their userbases YoY.

I live in Canada, and honestly, nobody in any of my circles carry cash. The only use cases I can think of ate casinos and drugs. All the comments about “privacy, freedom and etc.” sounds like noise, and highly unlikely for younger people to even care about.

Re: Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

#220

Post by fzil »

NeoTar wrote: post #193
somerandomqaguy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not credit card fees, bank fees. Almost every bank account in Canada has some sort of monthly service fees associated with them. You need to have a considerable amount of wealth accumulated in order for those fees to be waived. If my understanding of how Europeans bank is correct, such fees aren't as common.

You are not correct. Having a monthly fee for a bank account (typically around 5 EUR) is common in Germany.

to expand on the parent's comment a little bit as well, most of these canadian bank accounts also have fees per interac transaction depending on the account. The richer the person, the more money in your account and more fees you can get waived. until recently I would not send interac e-transfers because it would cost me $.50 per transaction after the first 5.
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