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EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

consilium.europa.eu

531–540 of 915 posts

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#531
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cash is king. If you are buying a non running classic car and have a tow vehicle and trailer ready you can drive a hard bargain in the moment." If I send a 10k payment to someone via bank transfer it's in their bank account in 10 seconds. Maybe you live in a country where there are much harsher restrictions?

It is about speed. If someone offers 10k in cash and someone talk about wire transfer blahblah, sellers will always prefer the buyer just paying in cash.

We are talking 10s bank transfers here in EU, how much faster do you want it?

I would not feel at ease walking around with 10k€

In fact I would find it extremely suspicious if someone told me it's their preferred method to get paid. I would totally expect a mugging.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#532
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if no one is affected today it does not mean many won’t be affected tomorrow. What if your government decides to take all your money from you for no good reason?

> What if your government decides to take all your money from you for no good reason? They will succeed? With or without this limit, you're fucked.

Imagine you’re a dissident and you’re running from your government. You’re are more likely to succeed if you have cash.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bizarre how the EU is penalizing everyone in order to 'make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money'. It doesn't affect anyone. No one in Europe uses cash for anything more expensive than maybe 200 euros. Of course in some countries like Sweden and the Netherlands no one uses cash any more at all, and almost all ATM machines have been removed. I believe cash-only places are now outlawed. The reason for this…

> It doesn't affect anyone. No one in Europe uses cash for anything more expensive than maybe 200 euros. Sold a used car just last year, got 2700€ in cash for it. Much easier than doing a bank transfer (which takes 1 day to arrive, if you're unlucky, and can be rolled back), or a paypal transfer (which can be undone) or anything else between to individuals. For b2c or b2b I agree, nobody pays that much in cash, but f…

Domestic bank transfers in many EU countries are already "instant" and EU wants to make it mandatory for every member without extra fees:

https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/26/eu-pushes-for-banks...

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#534
A lot of people here say that it's very rare to spend this much money in cash for legitimate purposes as though that is some universal rule and not a cultural happenstance. I'm currently holidaying in Japan and here it is quite common to make large cash transactions and settle things in person with paper money that couldn't be settled easily that way in my home country of the Netherlands. I actually prefer the Japanese system, since digital transactions often fail; it was only a few days ago that I had to try two different credit cards and two different paypal accounts to make a payment for a flight go through, for instance. I really don't understand people who harp on about the reliability of the traditional finance system (also comes up a lot in discussions re: cryptocurrencies), since that is absolutely not my experience nor the experience of people I have personally spoken to.

This is just a side show to the real issue however, the issue of rights. Our rights are something that limits the power of the government, that protects us from the government. It is not immediately obvious that we should need rights - in well-functioning societies like the EU, the government is overall a benevolent entity, using its power to aid citizens and protect them from bad actors. We give power to the government because it is good to us, so from a first-order evaluation, limiting the government's power seems counterproductive. Yet we know from thousands of years of experience in statecraft that things do not pan out this way. Governments make mistakes. The whole of the government can be good while parts of it are bad. The government can be good at one time, and then turn bad at a later time. The government is often good to most people while being bad to some, and these people are often the marginalized and invisible.

Digital transaction afford the government (and other powerful actors in the system) two important powers: surveillance and the ability to freeze or confiscate assets. Especially the freezing of assets is devastating when done to individuals. And these things can and do happen illegitimately. Unethical mass surveillance and the freezing of assets of protestors, journalists and other political undesireables is not a theoretical possibility but a real reality. We are lucky that in the west this is mostly limited to canary-in-the-coalmine people on the margins, people whose speech is so extreme that few of us can find it in themselves to feel sympathy for them. But it doesn't take much democratic backsliding for things to get much worse. I think it's important for us all to really internalize the fact that politics does not always move in the direction of freedom and progress; things do regress, as recent history should have made more than clear to us all. We need backstops, ways for people to live lives at odds with the government. You can't live in modern society without being able to transact.

Make no mistake, by the way; these kinds of laws very much do lead to the end of cash. These kinds of laws (and laws in general, actually) tend to only get stronger, seldom weaker. Even just leaving this law on the books without doing anything else slowly squeezes the noose tighter. Ten thousand euros today are worth only about half as much as ten thousand euros thirty years ago. I am personally of the opinion that all laws should have an expiry date and all sums of currency in law should have automatic inflation adjustment, but that is a story for another time.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the alternative? Venmo or it’s equivalent, or a [certified] check? I’d prefer to still have the option of a cash payment, even if it’s one I’d rarely if ever utilize.

> What’s the alternative? Just a bank transfer.

> Just a bank transfer.

Which is not free, anonymous, and require a third party.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#537
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are buying a used car from a private party, what else is there except cash?

Instant bank transfer using your phone or laptop, smartcard + token.

If I were to wager then I would bet that at least half the population would be unable to make that work.

I don't know anybody in real life who accesses their money via a phone. They can do it via a computer, but most people I know don't have laptops.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#538
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This likely affects a number of people that is so small, that it's irrelevant. Citation required.

No citation needed. It doesn't take much brain power to know that certain things are or aren't likely. It would be like asking me to prove that not many people have done the calculation of 15435 divided by 12.5 in their life. I can just tell you from basic logical thinking, that it's not likely that many people have.

It is fairly common to buy a used car in cash here in Germany.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#539
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt there are money people that walk into an apple store with 10k in their back pocket to pay for some computers. Same with farmers. How many farmers living in this modern age are walking around with 10k in their back pockets? In the vast majority of cases, I would argue that people just use their bank account for such large payments these days.

I did exactly this at the Apple store for a 5k+ purchase. I do these things out of principle to make it harder to create profiles and support cash. It is the same why I prefer https over http.

No matter how hard you try, cash is dying. If it's a good thing or not is another debate but you're not supporting anything by paying in cash.

You're simply prolonging the death with no benefit of doing so other than to pat yourself on the back.

Re: EU-wide maximum limit of €10K for cash payments

#540
post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank transfers in the uk are pretty much instantaneous during working hours, and often outside too

Largely depends on which banks are talking between each other. For many banks and large transfers you need to wait an hour or so for it to go through. You notice it most when buying a house and you sit awkwardly in a room with the seller waiting for the money to be transferred so you can leave with the keys.

What awful bank have you got where it takes 1h to do a Faster Payment?
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