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

riksbank.se

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

#311

Post by Scoundreller »

notahacker wrote: post #205
pjmlp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly like that most likely, I am old enough to remember those machines where credit cards left their mark on the receipt, that is why their numbers are higher than the card. Here, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter

Had a taxi driver in Melbourne who used one of those to take me to the airport in 2009 Gave me a bit of a surprise when he cashed in the paper copy two years later and I hadn't been to Australia since...

In Canada, taxi drivers could be charged horrendous fees for these transactions so sometimes you’d see the charge coming through some random convenience store

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

#312

Post by devman0 »

pjmlp wrote: post #18
mrtksn wrote: post #9

It's not about paying by cash but paying by card offline. How is this going to be implemented I wonder. On planes they often accept credit cards even when there's no internet. I assume this is a trust in-credit-based system because they don't accept debit cards, i.e. if you are worth being trusted with a card you can have your sandwich now and we will take care of the bank processing once we are on the ground. So may…

Exactly like that most likely, I am old enough to remember those machines where credit cards left their mark on the receipt, that is why their numbers are higher than the card. Here, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter

Just because an imprinter was used doesn't mean the transaction was necessarily "offline". Depending on merchant's policy, the cashier would call their processor, give them some transaction details and receive an auth code for the transaction which would be written on the imprinted ticket, thus authorizing the transaction at the POS just the same way it's done today (except with humans and phones, instead of an electronic handshake).

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

#313

Post by jeffrallen »

chairmansteve wrote: post #175

Back in the day, we used these machines to take a paper imprint of the card. You would get a copy and give it to the bank. There was a phone number you could ring to check if the card was valid. I never phoned the number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter

Ka-chunk.

It's why the letters are raised on the cards!

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

#314

Post by riffraff »

bongodongobob wrote: post #284
derefr wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're talking about when merchants insist that you give them cash ("cash only"), not when buyers insist on giving cash. The usual assumption is that if e.g. a street-food cart is cash-only, it's not because they can't accept cards (it's rather trivial nowadays) but rather that 1. they don't want to pay the interchange fees, and more importantly, 2. they want to be able to cook their books when reporting rev…

Huh, interesting cultural difference. I couldn't give a flying fuck whether or not merchants I buy things from do their taxes correctly.

Definitely cultural: Italy has a big tradition of merchants evading taxes, and there have been multiple steps over the year to mandate card payments cause those imply the merchant will pay taxes.

So if you are a law abiding citizen you can easily be pissed off that you get to pay taxes and they don't.

For a few years "we don't take card" was widely interpreted as a strong indicator the merchant would evade taxes, and "I won't go there anymore" was a common reaction from some people. These days it's technically illegal and yet you will still find _some_ shops that only want cash.

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

#315

Post by noduerme »

renhanxue wrote: post #292
noduerme wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "buying a used car"... do you mean from a dealership, or from a private party? In America, I almost can't imagine buying a used car from an individual without paying them in cash. Indeed, it's one of the few situations where a large amount of cash is almost always required. It's a pain to go to the bank and get that cash. However, this is not because of tax evasion or something ... it's to avoid any sort…

We usually use an app for that (Swish, it's kind of like Venmo I guess, developed in collaboration between the six largest banks). We don't really do transaction reversals in the same way or as commonly as in the US. Paying for a used car in cash would actually be difficult because handling an amount greater than the equivalent of around USD $1k immediately starts tripping KYC/AML flags at any bank if you try to depo…

Wow... depositing more than $1k would trigger AML. That's incredible. In the US it's not uncommon for contractors to pull $10k cash at the end of a week to pay their workers. Some of that may be due to tax evasion or, just as likely, the workers being in the country illegally. I suppose this is another major reason cash is still "tolerated" in the US, because the casual labor market depends so heavily on undocumented workers. No one besides a few ultra-nationalists would really want to enforce such a thing, as it would drive up construction costs. And the nationalists are paranoid and stock up on cash and gold themselves.

Honestly, that system sounds a bit Orwellian. But also, does that mean that you have to pay a bank transfer fee every time you buy anything?

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

#316

Post by dheera »

mrtksn wrote: post #9

It's not about paying by cash but paying by card offline. How is this going to be implemented I wonder. On planes they often accept credit cards even when there's no internet. I assume this is a trust in-credit-based system because they don't accept debit cards, i.e. if you are worth being trusted with a card you can have your sandwich now and we will take care of the bank processing once we are on the ground. So may…

Cryptocurrency could also solve this problem.

A "debit" card could have 1000 crypto wallets, each with $10 in them. If you want to pay $90, it forks over keys to 9 of the wallets, and they get drained by the merchant as soon as they have a connection.

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

#317

Post by riffraff »

what wrote: post #308
renhanxue wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a cash register and handling cash costs money too, doesn't it? It's just a cost of doing business.

No one has to pay a transaction fee to accept cash. And you didn’t answer why you shouldn’t pay that fee.

What do you think happens to the cash at the end of the day?

Managing cash has costs too, they're just harder to quantify: you have to ferry it to a bank, you have increased risk of theft, fraud, and robberies, you need extra time to actually check the register etc.

And then you risk losing business if you don't offer card payments because it's just more convenient for most customers (you may like wise lose some if you don't take cash, but that's a vanishing market).

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

#318

Post by noduerme »

renhanxue wrote: post #300
what wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t you pay the transaction fee every time you use your card or whatever then? Why should the merchant foot the bill?

Having a cash register and handling cash costs money too, doesn't it? It's just a cost of doing business.

No, it really doesn't, besides the fixed investment of buying a cash register. The idea of being forced to hand over a percentage of all my earnings to private company is abominable. I pay taxes to the elected government, not to some bank. It's why I only accept checks, ACH transfers or cash as payment, and it saves me 3% of my income a year over taking credit cards.

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

#319

Post by riffraff »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #220
tcshit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

So do you like always take split bills for everything? Like when eg. 4 coworkers go to eat together (ie. not a situation where one person pays everything)? Over here in the balkans/mitteleuropa you just put some approximate amount of cash on the table. Same for kids, you're not giving a kid your credit card when you send him to a bakery to get bread, you give him a couple of euros in cash.

Reporting for Hungary and Italy here: at the restaurant you ask for split bills or someone pays and the others will just pay back. It's been a few years since this was a problem, shops have adapted.

But yeah you still give cash to kids.

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

#320

Post by xyzal »

Etheryte wrote: post #5

Some context might be useful here. I spent some time living Sweden not too long ago and Swedes practically don't use cash. It's usually not said out loud, but cash is often considered to be dirty and criminal, to the point that most don't have any at all. Digital payments are very convenient and deeply integrated, so long as you have a local ID which allows you use the local payment system Swish etc. This worked nice…

How does one give money to the needy on the streets?
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