291–300 of 325 posts
Perhaps its legacy will be more about portraying human nature that largely saw it as an opportunity for scams, schemes, greed, speculation, money laundering, and other nefarious activities.
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…
It’s actually super easy to do but the public will hate it. Pass a law that credit card surcharges MUST be added onto the final price. That 2% cashback you get for using your Amex isn’t due to Amex generosity. That’s literally what retailers pay. Right now I will absolutely use my cc for anything I can. It’s literally cheaper than cash and users of cash subsidise all my purchases. The only way to fix this is to force…
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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. Onc…
You are also eliding all the positive features of electronic payments, like being theft-proof, being much quicker to pay with, and being trackable for my own benefit.
> for-profit banks
The banks run their retail banking businesses as a loss leader for their savings accounts (the "deposit franchise"). If all the banks were mutualised transaction costs would probably go up, not down. Also, doesn't exactly the same argument apply to cash? Where do you think businesses get their cash floats from? They get them from banks.
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If I am alone, I will still pay in cash (I will make sure to take as much money with me as I need or more). If I am going with someone else (which is more common), usually they will want to pay with a credit card (although I can still pay directly with cash, e.g. in case they do not have a credit card either or if they want me to pay for my own food instead), and if they want me to pay them back then I will.
As someone who doesn't use cash much, I'm curious about what happens when you enjoy some service like a restaurant, where you don't know that they don't take cash until you're done and they are waiting for you to pay? If they only take credit cards, and all you have is cash, what then? Return your food from your stomach? Surely they'd rather take your cash than have you walk out without paying. So at the end of they…
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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.
The Canadian trucker protesters were not "terrorists" by any stretch of imagination, but sure let's assume otherwise because it helps us sleep better at night, right?
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> Canada, a Western country with lots of "freedoms", did what it did because those truckers, etc... were a "threat" to "democracy". Can you stop exaggerating for dramatic effect? You can agree with them all you want, but occupying public places for weeks in a highly disruptive normal is a threat, yes. Anywhere on the planet, try pulling the shit those people did (half of what they were protesting about didn't exist,…
You’re gonna end up with a shitty society then. I’m one sane person who could agree which invalidates your conclusion
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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.
No they didn't. In the olden days, you would get your paycheque, cash the whole thing, and then spend that money until next paycheque. That's no different to having your pay go directly to your account, and then spending directly out of your account by card.
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The dual-network cards are Visa/Mastercard "debit" cards, which look like a credit card but sometimes don't work like one. I never had a problem with my dual-network card when physically visiting the States, but for whatever reason, some online payment systems (especially ones in Canada) have trouble with it. And vendors are clueless as to what the problem is when the debit CC number fails to go through. Just recentl…
Why do you prefer debit over credit? Aren't the consumer protection benefits greater with credit cards?
Yes, consumer protection regulations (and benefits) are better on credit cards (at least in the US, I don't know about other countries).
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Sounds like a mirror of the Girocard here in Germany. My bank card now has both girocard and visa on it, and works online. Allegedly, Wero, coming from the banks of the EU, should in the next year or two, unite all the similar national systems across Europe in to one, I guess kind of like UnionPay.
Same in Norway, we've always had BankAxxept and Visa on debit cards and most credit cards have been Mastercard. BankAxxpet handles the vast majority of transactions.
https://www.interac.ca/en/content/news/interac-collaborates-...