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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

#51

Post by singpolyma3 »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #30
blfr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom is usually the opposite of cumbersome and annoying. And current payment tech does not rob us of freedom. I can wire money to virtually anyone in the EU at no cost. I can pay any merchant in the world with a credit card, in any currency, with minimal spread. It's both convenient and greatly expands my options for engaging in commerce. Cashless system operated by regulated banks certainly comes with a risk of b…

You will find out how easily you can wire money to someone in the EU if you decide to hold political opinions that are not in line with the ruling elite. The truckers in Canada for sure found out how "free" the digits of their bank accounts were. Russian oligarchs for sure found it out in 2022.

Blocking terrorist financing is nothing new.

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

#52

Post by chihuahua »

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…

For credit cards, my access can be disabled when the two networks are coerced into blacklisting me. For cash, the imaginary evil powers would have to convince tens of thousands of individual stores to do the same. And even then, it would be impossible to enforce, because with a cash payment, there is no record that could be checked to enforce compliance.

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

#53

Post by surgical_fire »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #30
blfr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom is usually the opposite of cumbersome and annoying. And current payment tech does not rob us of freedom. I can wire money to virtually anyone in the EU at no cost. I can pay any merchant in the world with a credit card, in any currency, with minimal spread. It's both convenient and greatly expands my options for engaging in commerce. Cashless system operated by regulated banks certainly comes with a risk of b…

You will find out how easily you can wire money to someone in the EU if you decide to hold political opinions that are not in line with the ruling elite. The truckers in Canada for sure found out how "free" the digits of their bank accounts were. Russian oligarchs for sure found it out in 2022.

> if you decide to hold political opinions that are not in line with the ruling elite.

Then don't.

It's much easier to adhere to the status quo.

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

#54

Post by arresin »

vundercind wrote: post #10
xvector wrote: post #2

10% is way higher than I thought. Probably Cash is cumbersome and annoying. I wish there was a digital anonymous replacement.

Nearly all of my cash use, by dollar count, is paying service folks (home repair stuff, cleaners) who prefer payment in cash to evade taxes. I very rarely use cash for any other reason, and it’s always tiny amounts when I do.

> paying service folks (home repair stuff, cleaners) who prefer payment in cash to evade taxes.

And good on them!

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

#55

Post by radicality »

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.

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

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

#57

Post by ryandrake »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #30
blfr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom is usually the opposite of cumbersome and annoying. And current payment tech does not rob us of freedom. I can wire money to virtually anyone in the EU at no cost. I can pay any merchant in the world with a credit card, in any currency, with minimal spread. It's both convenient and greatly expands my options for engaging in commerce. Cashless system operated by regulated banks certainly comes with a risk of b…

You will find out how easily you can wire money to someone in the EU if you decide to hold political opinions that are not in line with the ruling elite. The truckers in Canada for sure found out how "free" the digits of their bank accounts were. Russian oligarchs for sure found it out in 2022.

The truckers did had their bank accounts frozen due to their actions, not due to their political opinions.

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

#58

Post by singpolyma3 »

arresin wrote: post #49
singpolyma3 wrote: post #36

Sleepwalking is hardly fast enough. It's embarrassing that people are still forced to use cash in current year.

Why is cash embarrassing for you?

Clunky, annoying, inconvenient, borderline useless. Cash only place is a good way to lose my business, especially since the odds I have cash on me are close to zero.

Also one of the most expensive options for me as a consumer since I have to use my time to find an ABM, pay the ABM fee, etc.

Also one of the most expensive options for me as a merchant, since I have to physically go to a bank and jump through hoops to deposit it.

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

#59

Post by throw0101b »

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.

> […] seeing as any given bank can only have one credit card affiliated with it.

CIBC has both Visa and MasterCard:

* https://www.cibc.com/en/personal-banking/credit-cards/costco...

As does RBC:

* https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/credit-cards/travel/rbc-avion-v...

* https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/credit-cards/travel/westjet-rbc...

BMO:

* https://www.bmo.com/main/personal/credit-cards/bmo-cashback-...

* https://www.bmo.com/en-ca/main/personal/credit-cards/bmo-ecl...

Not sure where you got the idea, as simply visiting the websites would have show otherwise.

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

#60

Post by livueta »

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.

An interesting facet of this that makes me feel somewhat more charitable to cashless payments in that context is that it's very easy to perform cashless payments in Japan pseudoanonymously, in that you can buy an IC card from a vending machine, load it with cash, and use it for payments all without explicit links to your KYC'd banking identity. Sure, if you attracted individualized security state attention they could probably pull security camera footage and figure it out, but that approach doesn't scale into turnkey tyrrany; sort of how like $5 wrench cryptanalysis doesn't prevent widespread strong cryptography fundamentally altering the envelope of what kinds of automated, at-scale privacy abuses are possible.

This is a fairly stark contrast with the West, where pseudoanonymous cashless payments basically don't exist. The closest thing (stuff like xmr aside, where the chance you can use it to buy a coffee is very low) are prepaid visa gift cards, but the UX on these is terrible for a lot of reasons and so aren't anywhere close to the practical usability of cash-charged IC cards in Japan.

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