
Cash Might Be King, but They Don’t Care - walterbell
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/25/nyregion/no-cash-money-cashless-credit-debit-card.html
======
ohstopitu
I've experienced something similar at resturants in TO recently! Not only
didn't they straight up refuse cash, they asked me download their app to pay
for food.

Obviously I walked out and got lunch elsewhere, but later when I was told that
they sell their own currency in the app for CAD in denominations of 5. But
their food + tax, is never sold at that amount - meaning, if your lunch is
$10, tax makes it $11.3, you have to pay $15 in the app. If you have no
intention of coming back, you loose the rest. This is such a scam.

Also what's the problem with accepting cash? It's trackless and it's anonymous
- I love it. Why should everything I buy be tracked by Banks, Corps and
everyone in-between? Furthermore, unlike credit, there's are no fees
associated with it so it's slightly better for the seller too.

Btw if this does not give you a worry, think about this: all your expenses
always end up at companies like Equifax. If them already selling it does not
scare you, a leak should. Imagine if your transaction history can be used to
refuse employment, housing etc. (without letting you know that's the case).
Cash does not have any of those issues.

The biggest 2 main issues with cash is - what if I get pickpocketed? and the
solution is to never really walk around with more than $50-100. I've been
using cash since I was a kid, and I've never gotten pickpocketed. The 2nd one
is tracking your expenses - but I personally feel like using cash has made me
spend a lot less than when I used my credit card.

~~~
nchlswu
which restaurant? I've seen a few food court spots go cashless, but nothing
about downloading an app.

~~~
ohstopitu
I can't remember the name - it's near union station - Bremner / York. It's a
very hipsterish place.

------
sametmax
That is such a dangerous trend.

I perfectly understand the appeal though. Automatic book keeping, no more cash
to move around that can temp thieves, less mistakes and cons.

But for the society ?

This just get rid of another grey area, a safety valve, a space so you have
margin to maneuver.

Indeed, no systems are perfect, but they will try to enforce their own rules,
and have a big inertia and cost to be changed.

Having those greys area allows for people not to be crunched by the unperfect
system, or to experiment with alternatives that the system would not let
exist.

Without cash, kids can't mess around as much without adults knowing. But doing
so is very important to their development.

Without cash, you can't pay for a service that is illegal, even if it's not
immoral. Do you know that we have freaking tomatoes that are legal to grow,
but illegal to sell in France ? Yes, delicious, healthy tomatoes.

Without cash, you can't finance an activity deemed immoral, even if it's
legal. Because people will learn about it and make your life a leaving hell.

Without cash, you can't disappear. But what if you need to ? Do you really
trust the system to protect you if your life goes south ? We are not in the
movies, the cops won't post guards in front of your house because you dated a
drug dealer.

Without cash, you don't have the right to make mistakes. How many of us are
perfect ? I'm certainly not, and I paid for plenty of my sins. I have many
purchases I'm not proud of, but I would like them to be forgotten.

Without cash, there is no black market. Which mean if I'm looking for
something that is not allowed in my country (say, boric acid to kill cock
roaches), I can't.

Without cash, society is less resilient. Power outage, network trouble or your
card being unusable make you unable to pay for anything.

Without cash, we give way too much power to entities managing the payment
systems. Card companies don't like you ? You can't pay or take money anymore.
That happened with wikileak, remember ? It was not illegal in my country, but
VISA and paypal sure prevented me to make a donation to them. They stopped me
to use my money in a legal way because they didn't like it. This is such a
slippery slope.

So yeah, cash can be misused in plenty of ways. So can be a knife. But I
certainly not want my life to be limited to a spoon-only consumption.

Also, saying it will fight cash laundering is telling only half of the story.
The super-rich will still be able to do so.

~~~
ksec
I love cash, but I really dislike coins. What we need isn't a cash or
E-payment only, but a Hybrid. You should be able to pay with cash, and the
changes should automatically be refunded to a payment system, since the
retailer are highly unlikely to change their 98 or $99.99 pricing, those
pennies will continue to exist.

This system and tech is already in multiple places in South East Asia. The
problem is companies like to hype themselves as a replacement of cash, and
most people aren't aware of the privacy concern and implication with a
cashless society.

~~~
pc86
Combining cash and card payments gives you the worst of all of them. Buying
things takes even longer (giving them cash, them counting it, calculating your
change, giving them your payment system card or whatever, them applying your
change to that) and you still have all the privacy concerns in the paper trail
of what places have been issuing you change and when.

~~~
sametmax
When everything works, electronic payment system are way more convenient.

But that's a big problem with our current societies: we keep trading "good for
democracy" to "convenient for best case".

People use electronic voting machines, centralize all their data in the GAFAs
databases, buy everything from amazon, get all entertainments from DRMized ad
saturated controlled medias...

And then, when you discuss at diner about the big world issues, everybody say
that "we can't do anything about it".

Well, for a start, we could live our live thinking about the society we are
building instead of just what's comfortable right now.

We are enjoying a lof of peace right now in rich countries. It's not going to
last forever, since nothing does (and history calls). In 10 years or 200
years, our countries will drift to a dictatorship phase. But it's not an
immediate state you get to. It's a slow decent into madness.

You really, really want to have cash to have a healthy society. You need
something malevolent players can't control. You need something less
centralized so you can't be stopped from using it, or by spied on if you use
it. At least for a reasonable small amount.

I get you need control for big sums. There is not good reason for a company or
an entity to hide money transactions. But for humans ? There are a ton of good
ones, and it's just being a good citizen to stand for keeping it around.

------
koolba
When the service provider goes down, do the POS systems have a way of batching
transactions locally and sending them later? Or are you effectively shut down
in the meantime?

And are they wired or wireless? If they're running on Wi-Fi or even cellular
it'd be relatively easy[1] to jam. Doesn't even have to be for too long
either. Hitting a rival during the lunch rush is more then enough.

> Not surprisingly, the credit card companies, who make a commission on every
> credit card purchase, applaud the trend. Visa recently offered select
> merchants a $10,000 reward for depriving customers of their right to pay by
> the method of their choice. A Visa executive described this practice to CNN
> as offering shoppers “ _freedom from carrying cash._ ”

Yeesh. This reminds me of the PR messages from cable companies trying to
prevent the deployment of municipal broadband.

[1]: _And highly illegal..._

~~~
skywhopper
No way to batch the transactions, because they need to be online to validate
the card. While you could potentially batch card-stripe data for later use,
(1) you shouldn't even build that capability into your POS system because it
would be a major hacking vector, and (2) you can't do so with chip data since
the chip needs to be there to perform a calculation with its embedded key.

You're right that disrupting wifi is easy enough, if such an attack actually
became common, it's also easy to detect what/who is causing the disruption if
you have reason to look for such. Or even easier to just hard-wire your POS
terminal.

~~~
gst
Offline chip and pin transactions are possible and are also used (at least in
Europe). Due to security reasons they are usually only used for lower amounts
and IIRC there's a maximum total amount that the chip is willing to sign
without an online transaction in between. See
[https://www.aciworldwide.com/-/media/files/collateral/trends...](https://www.aciworldwide.com/-/media/files/collateral/trends/emv_online_versus_offline_pin_validation_and_transaction_authorization_tl_us_1112_5058.pdf)
for some additional information.

------
mamon
Is that legal in US? Poland for example has a law saying that cash must be
accepted, refusing cash payments results in immediate fine of about $135

~~~
notl4wy3r
In the US, cash must be accepted as payment for (edit: _public_ ) debt.
However, there is no requirement that all transactions must accept all legal
tender. A business owner can refuse to enter into a commercial relationship
with you on the basis of your method of payment.

[https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/faqs/Currency/Pages...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx)

~~~
tombrossman
It's legal but I believe it requires collecting payment upfront to make
enforcement practical. The bus company example is pretty good - you get on the
bus and pay how they prefer or you don't ride.

If you ate at a restaurant which had a 'no cash' policy, I'm not sure how you
would resolve a situation with a client who was willing to pay in cash only.
Would the restaurant be able to refuse your cash and say you ate without
paying?

~~~
friedButter
>If you ate at a restaurant which had a 'no cash' policy, I'm not sure how you
would resolve a situation with a client who was willing to pay in cash only.
Would the restaurant be able to refuse your cash and say you ate without
paying?

I doubt it would be too difficult to find another customer who would swipe
their own card in exchange for cash from the cash paying customer... free
reward points after all. (Infact many people do something similar in India, we
receive a fixed allowance which is tax exempt but can only be spent on food,
this is given via a special debit card or vouchers. You pay for someone else's
food using the voucher and take cash from them)

------
Finnucane
A clean, legal way to refuse service to anyone without a credit card.

~~~
hkmurakami
fwiw they take debit cards, and there are services like bluebird [1] that
provide a bank account + debit card (iirc) without a credit check.

but I agree with the spirit of your post.

[1] [https://www.bluebird.com/](https://www.bluebird.com/)

~~~
cesarb
Even these services have restrictions. For instance, the service you linked to
says in its FAQ that it's only available to non-minor US residents with a
valid SSN and a working email account. Cash has none of these restrictions,
and it's not hard to imagine scenarios where they are relevant.

------
omgtehlion
Qui prodest?

It is quite apparent why CC companies offer $10k in rewards: they will keep
commissions on all transactions.

Anecdote: recently I bought a used car. Initially we agreed on bank
transaction, tried several banks, some have low limits so low it would take
months to move money. Others wanted transaction fee as high as $200 on 20k
transaction.

Gov wants to get rid of cash because of surveillance. Banks and CC companies
want to be gatekeepers and tell you what you can and can not do with your
money. And to pocket as much fees as possible...

~~~
briffle
Not only do they get commissions, but for the merchants, people historically
pay more with Cards than with cash

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-behind-
beha...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-behind-
behavior/201607/does-it-matter-whether-you-pay-cash-or-credit-card)

------
ricardobeat
It is worrying that the US would move to a cashless society with _credit_
cards. This is already a reality in the Netherlands and other countries in the
EU, but with debit payments being the vast majority, which also have much,
much lower fees. Handing off 2-3% of all transactions to Visa/MasterCard is
just insane.

------
mrisoli
Growing up in Brazil I got used to preferring card payments over cash, I never
carried more than the equivalent of 30 USD(usually around 10-15 USD) on me
because of the constant danger of being robbed.

Most places accept credit cards and most of the time I carried cash for cab
fare only. When Uber got started I could finally carry close to no cash on me,
after a few months Uber ordered its drivers in Brazil to accept cash and was
welcomed with a lot of protest from their drivers because doing so would
threaten their safety.

------
Thriptic
The annoying thing about cash isn't the cash, it's change. Coins are awful.
They're heavy, they take too long to count, and they have no buying power. I
will frequently abandon change because I would rather lose money than deal
with it / not purchase things at places that have minimums or are cash only.

I understand why users are concerned about this trend, but if you're going to
be working with cash you need to round your prices to the nearest dollar and
take tax into consideration when doing it.

~~~
0x445442
We pay cash for most non-fixed costs in our house so we collect a lot of
change. We put the quarters and dimes it in one big milk jug and the nickels
and pennies in another. Once every few months we take the quarters and dimes
out and roll them up and that doesn't take too long. With the pennies and
nickels we just pay the ~10% counting fee to Coin Star.

~~~
redblacktree
You might check with your bank on counting the coins. My credit union provides
counting machines as a free service.

~~~
0x445442
Thanks, I'll check that out.

------
al_chemist
> Visa recently offered select merchants a $10,000 reward for depriving
> customers of their right to pay by the method of their choice. A Visa
> executive described this practice to CNN as offering shoppers “freedom from
> carrying cash.”

This is and should be treated as an attack on US currency. It's not treated as
such, because Visa sells its product to US gov as trackable and easy to
control alternative to cash.

Visa gets duopoly for payments. Government gets citizen spending profile.
Citizen gets "freedom from carrying cash".

~~~
misingnoglic
I was floored by the doublespeak in their statement. Freedom from cash?? I
already have that. This is freedom to collect fees for visa.

------
djhworld
I rarely use cash these days, mainly due to laziness, and I like the fact that
I can use some software to track all of my transactions across accounts so can
rationalise my spending habits and commitments.

Cash has that feature too but much more cumbersome to track, and comes with
the additional burden of coins.

Reading the comments in this post, I can understand the reasons why people
would find this trend concerning, but I'm not really sure what you can do to
stem the tide. For example in the UK the use of contactless credit/debit cards
used for transactions went up by 147% between April 2016 to 17 [1]

I suspect the trend will keep rising, contactless will probably soon overtake
the smaller transactions (< £30) paid in cash.

[1]
[http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/contactless_contactl...](http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/contactless_contactless_statistics/)

------
ploden
After living in Germany, I can't go anywhere without cash. It's like walking
out the door without my keys.

~~~
pimeys
And when you're in Berlin, whenever you see your bank's ATM, you know you must
get some cash. Soon you'll need it and the nearest ATM is broken, so you must
spend a considerable time to find another one.

------
mieseratte
As someone not in $BIG_TECH_CITY is this something folks are seeing elsewhere
or this just another one of those problems only "coastal elites" have? Since I
not only use cash for all purchases, but actively refuse to use a card this is
a concerning trend.

~~~
evgen
I have only seen it in major cities for now, but the trend will accelerate for
all of the reasons given in the article. With chains like McDonalds replacing
a large portion of the cashiers with automated ordering kiosks the next big
push will be in marginalizing cash purchases and increasing the inconvenience
(e.g. ten kiosks available or you can wait in a line five deep to order and
pay with cash), but within a decade I can see the option for cash purchases
being the exception and not the rule. It will happen much like the ongoing
transition to the expectation that you will be carrying some sort of mobile
device.

~~~
geggam
Once it hits the economic repressed areas, where the majority of folks don't
have debit cards or bank accounts this will run into an issue.

There is a very large and growing set of folks in this nation who use cash and
barter only.

------
thisisit
One of the problems I have noticed while using cash is the dearth of "change".
In case of a digital transaction, restaurants can simply swipe and charge the
exact amount. But, when it comes to cash they ask for "exact" change.

Which makes me wonder, are we running out of coins or something? Or is it some
marketing tick that pricing has to be non-zero, odd numbers to increase sales
and that makes tendering change difficult?

~~~
joncrane
I think it's a throughput thing. Lines are long at places in midtown
Manhattan. Counting out change takes longer than waiting for the transaction
to clear and offering a receipt.

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qaq
horrible trend it is pretty realistic to imagine an attack that cripples major
payment processing networks

------
briandear
In France, it’s technically illegal to pay more than €1000 cash for anything.
Because terrorism. Though I suspect it’s really because of extremely high
rates of tax evasion. Anytime a worker does anything at my house, there is
always the quiet option of “sans facture” which means taxes are avoided for
the purchase, but also it allows the worker to pretend he never received that
income for income tax purposes. There is seemingly a dual economy — an
unintended consequence (though completely foreseeable) of confiscacatory tax
policy. If the tax rate were 10%, fewer people would bother evading and tax
revenues would logically increase (per the Laffer Curve.)

~~~
sundaeofshock
> If the tax rate were 10%, fewer people would bother evading and tax revenues
> would logically increase (per the Laffer Curve.)

No, they don’t logically increase. We just tried that experiment in Kansas,
and it failed badly. They ended up reversing tax cuts since revenue took a
beating.

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hrasyid
Don't credit card companies charge a fee, which you can avoid by accepting
cash? Is that charge usually worth avoiding the hassle of handling cash?

