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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

#281

Post by rustcleaner »

itake wrote: post #94
radicality wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it easier to raise prices/fees/tip % with cashless vs cash payments ?

cashless has higher tx costs, charged by the payment network. This puts upward pressure on prices, even for cash. it is also much easier to spend $250.99 on a credit card than to count out 13 sheets of paper and 9 coins. People went from spending the cash in their pocket to cash in their bank account, increasing demand for products.

>People went from spending the cash in their pocket to cash in their bank account, increasing demand for products.

I hate how so many just don't have the game theory of commerce in the forefront of their minds. It's always "Boy this stuff sure is super convenient," and "nevermind those crusty privacy kooks over there!"

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

#282

Post by JacobThreeThree »

sbarre wrote: post #273
JacobThreeThree wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one where the protesters blockaded rail lines for months causing layoffs and many millions in lost revenue. Why didn't the government shut down these protestors bank accounts? https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/via-rail-layoffs-1.5468617

Not really "lefties" here, but this is a reasonable example... I will say that First Nations issues in Canada are pretty complicated, particularly when it comes to unceded territories and the rights around those. It's also worth mentioning that those rail line blockades in Ontario were done in support of other protests in BC where the government eventually sent cops in riot gear to dismantle the blockades by violence…

>the government eventually sent cops in riot gear to dismantle the blockades by violence.

The Ottawa police did the exact same thing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/world/canada/canada-truck...

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

#283

Post by rustcleaner »

brainwad wrote: post #184
stavros wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all fun and games and bogeymen until you get hit with capital controls and you're limited to 70 EUR/day cash withdrawals. The happy path is great until it's not. You can think "it won't happen to me" all you want, but that doesn't mean it won't.

How will cash help against capital controls, exactly? Unless you are poor, you never have more than a tiny fraction of your wealth in cash anyway. So when capital controls are declared, you will still be screwed.

"Who would store $10,000 US in the wall between the bathroom and kitchen? Silly goose should know banks exist!"

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

#284

Post by olalonde »

threeseed wrote: post #104
olalonde wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AML/KYC mostly.

No. We shouldn't make it easer for criminals to conduct terrorism, human trafficking, fraud etc just to make it slightly more economical for startups to compete with Visa/Mastercard.

As if AML/KYC actually prevented anything...

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

#285

Post by xethos »

brainwad wrote: post #189
djhn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why oppose? Privacy. Freedom. Democracy. Equality.

TBH I don't see why the market sellers should have to pay for that. Like I said, the solution is to offer a privacy/freedom/etc-preserving electronic payment system that is a real successor to cash, but still has the low costs that make businesses want to go cashless and the convenience that makes consumers want to.

None of this solves the simple visual of "I'm running out of cash in my wallet, better slow spending down"

I could log in to my bank online and check, I could keep a mental tally of "I spent this here and that much there, I should have this much...", but both of those are decidely more work.

Furthermore, every time I switch back to cash (and my fiancee has independantly noticed), budgeting and saving gets easier. Once again, likely because of the visual and tactile nature of cash

Most damning of all, guess how well credit and debit worked during the multi-day Rogers outage a few years ago. You say "That was a once in a lifetime fuck-up", I'll say "That's not the only reason or time stores haven't been able to process cards"

I'm under 30, and I remember grocery stores around holiday time being unable to accept anything but cash.

Electronic systems aren't actually a solution here. We have a solution, it's called cash; it does not rely on what is essentially a duopoly (Visa/MC), it does not rely on asking permission from a handful of gatekeepers (for-profit banks you'd like to transfer to/from)

Credit unions aren't the solution to the latter either - you can use one, but anyone you're trying to pay is almost certainly with a bank.

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

#287

Post by no_way_1209567 »

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.

Here in Canada, Metro Vancouver implemented a tap payment system with gates for its transit system about ten years ago.

They started by generating outrage about fare evaders (the previous system was an "honor" based proof of payment, at least for the train). They claimed to be losing ~3 million $CAD yearly to fare evasion.

Then they made a plan to retrofit all the train stations with fare gates, and get new machines for the buses. The cost of this work was ~100 million $CAD.

I thought, well that will take some time to amortize. Then I learned that the maintenance cost of all this extra crap in the stations was on the order of $3 million/year. Clearly it was never about fare evasion.

You can buy a card with cash, and charge it with cash at machines in the stations, but there are strong incentives to link your account with a credit card.

The truth was confirmed several years later when I read an article in a local paper quoting someone at Translink who said their policy is to share trip data with police on request, without a warrant.

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

#288

Post by makeitdouble »

throw0101b wrote: post #269
makeitdouble wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right move here would be to force banks to accept them and/or as a society pay for a system where they get access to electronic money. Basically make the effort to move forward, not make the pledge to stay behind forever.

> The right move here would be to force banks to accept them and/or as a society pay for a system where they get access to electronic money. It's not just about forcing banks, but also about the people trusting banks and institutions, which have historically not been kind to (say) black people. Lots of folks could perhaps (e.g.) not be able to keep minimum balances that would avoid monthly service fees, then you get…

On the trust of the institutions part, this is sadly true, there's a lot of baggage.

In this day and age I think that ship has sailed, in that it's hell to try to live without a smart phone and online payment. Missing a payment because they needed to go pay cash on friday evening and couldn't make it, phoning around to find on duty doctor on a saturday night etc. are things that will become more and more of a hurdle as vulnerable people make the move to the more beneficial online equivalents.

Too many critical things are already impractical to deal with the old ways.

Some EU countries force banks to provide minimum service to anyone with a valid identity. The good part is these accounts have no checking service nor overdraft possibility (any action is done in real time towards the actual account balance, there's no payment coming it two days after the fact with no money to clear it, and anything that bounced is just unpaid, with no additional punishment on the bank side). The bad part is the service provided is really minimal and online banking will often not be included, and at best will be an extra fee depending on the bank.

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

#289

Post by radford-neal »

throw0101b wrote: post #226
radford-neal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A court has ruled that it did not: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/a-judge-ruled-trudeau...

And a public inquiry, which is mandated by the Act itself when it is invoked, said that it did: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Emergency_Commiss...

The court's ruling has actual legal effect. The inquiry's conclusion is, well, just somebody's opinion.

One might also note that the invocation was never approved by parliament (it was terminated before the deadline for the Senate to vote on it).

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

#290

Post by amaccuish »

gmokki wrote: post #199
notatoad wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>some online payment systems (especially ones in Canada) have trouble with it. it's not really anything technical that they "have trouble with", most gateways launched visa debit as an "opt-in" payment method for existing merchants, so if the merchant did not specifically enable it it never got enabled. newer merchant accounts have it enabled by default, so this should sort of work itself out over time. but yes, i do…

EU/Finland has used debit+credit combination cards over 21 years. 20 years ago the card type caused confusion going abroad, especially US, but also some European countries that had not yet introduced the same card type. Some merchants were confused about the extra prompt about which card to use before the customer enters the pin. But it has worked fine 99% of exotic places. I think the 3D secure caused much more trou…

Not here in Germany unfortunately. I miss this from NZ, just one card with savings, credit, cheque all in one.
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