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25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

which.co.uk

81–90 of 136 posts

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#81

Britain is not Britain in this regard. London has a ton of places that don't accept cash already. Go to smaller towns in the North and you'll hit minimum charges to use a card or broken machines.

Admittedly I've not lived in London for 5 years or so, but I never went to single place that wouldn't accept cash. Name one.

I suppose parts of TfL might be an example - you can't pay cash on a bus. Other than than, I haven't encountered one either, though I'm worried that they're getting closer. Probably past time to be thinking about an escape plan anyway.

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#82

I would love to see a cashless society because carrying around dirty bills and heavy coins is just a nuisance, and adds real overhead for stores as well... ... BUT , for privacy and the unbanked, I suspect this necessarily needs to go along with credit-card-compatible "cash cards" that would have to be: 1) Anonymous (e.g. buy a card for $1 from any drugstore, swap them with friends, buy in bulk and give away, whateve…

> For whatever reason, I rarely see the idea of anonymous cash cards discussed in these types of conversations.

Because it's really really hard to prevent forgery. Maybe impossible.

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#83

Britain is not Britain in this regard. London has a ton of places that don't accept cash already. Go to smaller towns in the North and you'll hit minimum charges to use a card or broken machines.

I live in Newcastle, and this isn't the case anywhere around the North East.

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#84

Britain is not Britain in this regard. London has a ton of places that don't accept cash already. Go to smaller towns in the North and you'll hit minimum charges to use a card or broken machines.

Admittedly I've not lived in London for 5 years or so, but I never went to single place that wouldn't accept cash. Name one.

It's increasingly common in e.g. coffee shops/stands who don't want to have to deal with cash. Urban Baristas by Waterloo for example.

Even in small supermarkets you'll have to queue for a smaller number of automated checkouts that can do cash, rather than the big row of card-only checkouts.

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#85
Before talking about cashless society they should allow anonymous bank cards and anonymous cryptocurrencies. Otherwise it is an Orwellian surveillance state. The government doesn't want better and convenient payment system, they just want to be able to see all transactions between citizens and to be able arrest their money. Today you agree to the cashless society, tomorrow you are assigned a social rating.

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#86
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly agreed my friend. I have never ever been charged a single fee for anything by my credit union. I've been there for 10 years now. Aside from the money they make loaning out my deposits there, I don't think they've ever made a cent off me. They have a direct deposit from my employer, but they pay me 1% APY monthly and I am sure they're losing money on me in that regard,

If they're paying you 1% APY on deposits now, they're not losing money. The going rate rate on deposits these days is a little over 2%.

I agree, but what I think I mean is, whatever theyre making on my direct deposit (probably $10 a month in fees to my employer) is less than the 0.83% of xx,xxx in my checking :)

I would surely love 2% on my checking though! I thought 2% was on cash back, I will need to search for 2% checking with no restrictions somewhere

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#87

I would love to see a cashless society because carrying around dirty bills and heavy coins is just a nuisance, and adds real overhead for stores as well... ... BUT , for privacy and the unbanked, I suspect this necessarily needs to go along with credit-card-compatible "cash cards" that would have to be: 1) Anonymous (e.g. buy a card for $1 from any drugstore, swap them with friends, buy in bulk and give away, whateve…

Anonymous prepaid cards are a thing, very useful for e.g. people with debt problems.

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#88
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being a resident means you are the resident of a different country, so the assumption is that you have a bank account there. And being illegal or a suspected terror financer would already put you in an underclass anyway.

The problem is rarely the intention of a law, rather than the imperfections of its application. Governments are quite imperfect, and humans are a varied bunch. There are exceptions to everything , and exceptions to that. The Windrush generation is just a recent example that comes to mind: luckily, they were numerous enough to get their story heard. But people fall through such cracks every single day. Sometimes an im…

Aren't Windrush citizens still being deported? Have any of the deportees been allowed to return yet?

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#89
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes having principles and sticking to them puts me in unfavorable situations like that, but to be honest I still feel the same way about bitcoin. Because of missing out though I never really got back into the coin scene, but I do like monero/zcash for their privacy features, but I have a hard time buying the idea that any coin based off wasting compute cycles and energy on arbitrary math is going to be a real c…

What is your opinion of GNU Taler?

Not who you asked this from, but in my opinion it has a huge problem of any mistakes being unfixable - either you mistransact or get scammed - taler provides no way to fix that.

Re: 25M Brits would struggle in a cashless society

#90

Britain is not Britain in this regard. London has a ton of places that don't accept cash already. Go to smaller towns in the North and you'll hit minimum charges to use a card or broken machines.

Admittedly I've not lived in London for 5 years or so, but I never went to single place that wouldn't accept cash. Name one.

Easily, I haven't lived in London in a while but I can name three: Japanese Canteen, Browns, Shrimpy's.
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