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Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

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Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#221

Post by xmprt »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #218
OptionOfT wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, cash has its costs. You need to have a register, more training, more insurance, processing of cash at the bank, having it deposit cash at the end of every day, etc. With credit cards you pay a fee, but you don't have to deal with all of those other things that people often don't consider.

But they already have all this, there are very few merchants that don't actually accept cash at all.

If a significant amount of your business is cash based then the risk is much higher. If you're doing $100 worth of cash transactions per day then your registers and safe probably don't have much and you can probably get away with weekly or even monthly deposits. Whereas if you're dealing with $1000s in cash then you probably want to deposit daily, need a lot more security around your register and safe, and probably have a much higher quality safe too.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#222

Post by ilumanty »

tcshit wrote: post #126
daneel_w wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's usually not said out loud, but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal ..." Are you sure this isn't impression you've gotten from isolated reactions involving a small number of individuals, perhaps just a single individual? I can't relate to the sentiment at all, having lived here for just over three decades and experiencing the popularity shift from cash to debit card. I can, in fact, not recall a…

I’d say he’s correct, people under 60 that uses cash are considered, if not criminal, at least suspicious, like they have something to hide. Or simply wackos. I haven’t used cash for the last 15 years or so. Except for when I had carpenters at home who wanted to get paid in cash (to avoid taxes, so called black money).

> people under 60 that uses cash are considered, if not criminal, at least suspicious, like they have something to hide. Or simply wackos

I feel sorry for you and those people.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#223

Post by avianlyric »

devmor wrote: post #77
g-mork wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EMV standard has long supported an offline transaction flow. AFAIK it was the default almost everywhere in Finland circa 2011, contactless there was almost always instantaneous. Digging into why that was compared to the invariable wait when using contactless in the UK revealed this flow. The card has a variety of risk counters on it that allow it to securely decide whether an offline transaction can proceed, at l…

A lot of internet payments work this way already anyways, not many gateways require auth before capture, processors/payfacs just do it because it gives lower interchange and reduces risk.

That depends on where you are. But all the major networks expect auths before capture, even if it isn’t technically enforced, and will punish gateways and merchants who have low auth rates.

Auth before capture doesn’t generally reduce interchange. What it primarily does is shift liability in the event of a dispute. If a chargeback is raised, and no auth happened, then the merchant simply looses immediately. They have no mechanism for fighting the chargeback. If they auth first, and got an approval, then it’s the banks problem in the event of a customer dispute. The merchant can reply to the chargeback by pointing out the valid auth they received from the bank, and the bank has to go pound sand.

You may see this as different “interchange” rates from a specific gateway. But that’s simply not true at the network level. The difference in pricing just exists so the gateways themselves can price in the additional risk associated with auth less captures, given the gateways are always on the hook, even if a merchant goes bust. The major networks force gateways to have funds kept in escrow that are guaranteed to cover any shortfall that might occur due to individual merchant failure, or failure of the gateway itself. That how networks make sure that zero real risk every accrues with them, they make everyone else put up huge stacks of cash to ensure that every virtual cent that’s in flight at any moment, is backed by a real cent in escrow somewhere.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#224

Post by bobthepanda »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #218
OptionOfT wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, cash has its costs. You need to have a register, more training, more insurance, processing of cash at the bank, having it deposit cash at the end of every day, etc. With credit cards you pay a fee, but you don't have to deal with all of those other things that people often don't consider.

But they already have all this, there are very few merchants that don't actually accept cash at all.

This is a function of geography.

Where I live in Seattle, a lot of businesses simply don't handle cash at all, because break-ins for the cash register are quite expensive to deal with, and they circumvent that problem by simply posting outside the business that there is no cash.

One of the few businesses near me that must take cash, a dispensary, recently had an issue where somebody tried to break in using a stolen pickup truck to crash into the building. They didn't get the cash because they didn't get past the interior bollard system, but they did cause enough structural damage that the roof partially collapsed into the street.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#225

Post by avianlyric »

ErrantX wrote: post #118
mananaysiempre wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those work because they're just a normal visa transaction I wouldn’t be so sure about that. In some payment situations you’re asked whether you’d like to have the transaction go through as debit or as credit—so those two must be different somewhere. And probably in more than just a bit in a packet, as, for example, paying with debit Visas or MasterCards (normal ones, not Electron resp. Maestro) in the Netherlands (…

They use largely the same rails/network (for example Mastercard). The only meaningful difference is on how and when funds are reconciled. Some payment providers ask up front to simplify the flows as it's not totally trivial to determine what sort of card it is, and also because different fees apply - historically some merchants added specific fees to basket etc. (less so nowadays but the UI convention sticks)

> The only meaningful difference is on how and when funds are reconciled.

Nope, even this is identical. These days the difference between a debit/credit card is pretty much aesthetic, from a transaction processing perspective there generally isn’t any actual differences. Differences that people see today are most artificial for the purpose of justifying extra fees, or higher interchange based an entirely arbitrary factor that has zero correlation to any risks that appear in the transaction processing and clearing mechanisms.

Basically the only reason anyone really bothers keeping the difference between credit/debit cards around, is as a technical excuse for discrimination and abusive fees. Notably in the EU nobody cares if a debit or credit card is used, because the EU outlawed all the crazy fees and other bullshit, so now there’s no commercial reason to differentiate between the two 99% of the time.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#227

Post by normie3000 »

bobsmooth wrote: post #198
blurrybird wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I am Australian and we have a similar adoption rate of cashless payments. If a merchant tries to promote cash options I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons - not because of the touted reason that “card payments cost more to process” (they don’t once you factor in the cost of handling cash).

>I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons What's your opinion on that? In NA, for small businesses it's common to offer to pay in cash to avoid paying sales tax.

Where is NA?

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#228

Post by jedberg »

A lot of people don't realize that our entire financial system is eventually consistent. They think that when they go to an ATM and withdraw money, it's instantly gone from their account.

The reality is that in most cases the convergence is so quick it looks like it's instantly gone, but it's not. For example, if the ATM is unable to get your current balance, it will still complete the transaction.

That's why your card has a daily limit -- that's basically the risk tolerance of the bank on how much they are willing to lose if the transactions don't get converge quickly enough.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#229

Post by johannes1234321 »

brewdad wrote: post #146
johannes1234321 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be practical, but many kids I observe in my family etc like to collect the money and see it and are proud of their collection and about what they saved. That goes away with a card ... and I wonder how that impacts the "feeling" for it. Counting and making likes and plans about what to buy is a big part of learning to deal with it.

Like or not the world is a digital currency world for the most part these days. I want my kids to understand that those numbers on a computer screen have real world value. How many young adults get into trouble with their first credit card or debit card because the money isn't "real" to them? In the US it's quite a few.

I don't have a final answer to this. However in m observation with different families and kids is that some start relatively early, before the kid can do arithmetics or such, they can count till a pile got enough money for the sweets or toy they want and then count the other pile to see how much is left and if they can buy the other.

Doing this in a digital system requires first some computing device (be it phone or laptop or whatever) then check the account value, read it correctly, then do some arithmetics and then interpret the result. That's a year or two older.

Re: Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026

#230

Post by coldblues »

Every time I see posts like these related to fiat, my heart sinks. Despite pro privacy sentiments across the site, there is a concerning amount of people who have not only fallen to the trap of convenience, but even consider cash use suspicious or criminal (the morality of tax evasion is a whole different subject, the places where it's most popular often coincides with a corrupt, inefficient government). Soon, cash use will be made impractical due to digital currencies and growing government control, but cryptocurrency will take its place, it has already to a limited extent.
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