Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 325 posts

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

#41

Post by mattmanser »

siliconc0w wrote: post #7

Cashless is convenient but effectively amounts to automatic inflation. Not just from the merchant fees but making it easier to slowly raise prices/fees/tip %. Plus whatever % of the population is dumb enough to revolve credit and get buried in debt.

There's fees for handling cash as well. They're just less obvious.

In the old days, those armoured vans used to have to go to stores every single day at peak times (Xmas, etc.). Plus you've got to pay for bags of change to be delivered. You've got to pay for a safe, insurance for your safe, plus a hard limit that safe is allowed to hold. If you're going to go over you need to request an on demand pickup from the cash people. You've got to have people in store collecting the cash, accounting it, trying to catch embezzlement, the cost of embezzlement, etc.

All those costs were added on to the cost of goods.

I used to work in the industry in the 90s, can't remember what any of that cost now, but I reckon it's comparable to the card merchant fees.

Yes, the present duopoly is taking the piss with their fees, but accepting cash is also expensive.

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

#42

Post by stavros »

zzo38computer wrote: post #40
stavros wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when you go out to a restaurant, café, pub, etc?

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.

Ah OK. I'd want to pay for myself in cash, just so the business counts my "vote".

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

#44

Post by radicality »

BarryMilo wrote: post #27
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…

Break? It's practically enshrined in the law, seeing as any given bank can only have one credit card affiliated with it. So if I'm e.g. a normal National Bank client, I get to have a Visa card or no card at all. I suppose online banks could change things a bit, but without that, introducing a new credit card provider is practically impossible.

> any given bank can only have one credit card affiliated with it.

Is that true? Is that an actual law, or some anticompetitive terms&conditions from Visa and Mastercard? If anything feels like the law should ban this kind of anti competitive behavior.

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

#45

Post by Magi604 »

I feel like it would be easy to just mandate stores to have to allow for cash transactions. It seems simple to enforce too, just walk into a store and try and by something with cash. If not, report/fine.

As a Canadian, I also feel like there are so many more pressing issues right now, like housing, employment, inflation, immigration. Does this cash/cashless issue somehow affect one of these things?

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

#46

Post by arresin »

JadeNB wrote: post #39
acadapter wrote: post #20

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.

> 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.

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

#47

Post by err4nt »

radicality wrote: post #44
BarryMilo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Break? It's practically enshrined in the law, seeing as any given bank can only have one credit card affiliated with it. So if I'm e.g. a normal National Bank client, I get to have a Visa card or no card at all. I suppose online banks could change things a bit, but without that, introducing a new credit card provider is practically impossible.

> any given bank can only have one credit card affiliated with it. Is that true? Is that an actual law, or some anticompetitive terms&conditions from Visa and Mastercard? If anything feels like the law should ban this kind of anti competitive behavior.

It doesn't appear to be true if you check websites of Canadian banks (e.g. CIBC, RBC, BMO, Scotia…) they all offer Visa and Mastercard, and Scotia even also offers Amex as well.

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

#48

Post by sudosysgen »

BarryMilo wrote: post #27
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…

Break? It's practically enshrined in the law, seeing as any given bank can only have one credit card affiliated with it. So if I'm e.g. a normal National Bank client, I get to have a Visa card or no card at all. I suppose online banks could change things a bit, but without that, introducing a new credit card provider is practically impossible.

I don't think that's true. My bank (in Canada) offers both Visa and Mastercard, and I have both.

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

#50

Post by tonetegeatinst »

vhcr wrote: post #25
tonetegeatinst wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMR is probably your best bet for privacy digital currency. That said XMR isn't stable like the USD is, but it also didn't have infinite printability as once market cap is reached then only tail emmisions are rewarded for mining....iirc that a set value of 20. XMR is the best for privacy, is resistant to asic mining and GPU mining, and is a time proven crypto. That said if your just using it so you can gain money fro…

Just to be nit-picky, but Monero can be mined with GPUs.

I know, but it has adopted changes so it's more efficient to use a CPU to mine.

Not saying GPU mining is dead, but its at least resistant to it.

Post reply on HN