Visa Considers Extending 'War on Cash' Business Incentives Outside US (cnbc.com) 303
Visa is hoping to extend its "war on cash" agenda to businesses in the U.K. after announcing new incentives for U.S. businesses to go cashless. From a report: The payment technology company revealed on Wednesday that it was launching a "cashless challenge" which would see 50 U.S. businesses receive $10,000 each to help them convert to a cashless payment model. It is now aiming to roll the model out to the U.K., though is yet to set a timeframe for the launch, a Visa spokesperson confirmed to CNBC Friday. Under the scheme, businesses in the U.S. are invited to submit plans outlining what going cashless might mean for them, their employees and their customers. Recipients of the award will then be required to use the lump sum to upgrade their point-of-sale systems so they are completely cashless. Any remaining money can be put towards marketing, the company said. "We're declaring a war on cash," Andy Gerlt, a spokesman for Visa, said in the announcement Wednesday.
or (Score:5, Insightful)
Making sure we get a cut of everything you spend, and know what you spent it on.
Lovely
Re:or (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:or (Score:5, Insightful)
Drug dealers and terrorists use cash, surely you're not one of them, right? Says the friendly Visa man.
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In some countries you can't get a credit card if you have payment problems or no job
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This includes the US. While it may seem super easy to get a credit card, especially if one shows up pre-approved in your dog's name, it's still somewhat difficult to get poorer people. If you get bad credit temporarily then that can disqualify you for years until the credit score goes back up. And the fees may be so high on some cards that they're unaffordable (and some cards are very predatory). Finally there are people who literally have no bank account, and every transaction they make is with cash, whic
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I have a couple that I use for online or large purchases...which I pay off in 30 days.
That being said, I prefer my daily and routine spending in cash...nicely untraceable, and private.
If local stores go cashless....they will also go customer-less as far as my patronization of said establishment goes....
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:or (Score:5, Interesting)
Retailers, so far, have been extremely reluctant to share what's actually sold and more importantly, for what price, whether it's with the CC company or vendors.
If they become totally dependent upon Visa, Visa may gain leverage that outweighs that reluctance.
Re: or (Score:5, Insightful)
And who the hell uses those other than hipsters? if they're not getting a cut of fees then they're selling your purchasing data. NO ONE does this as a charity!
Re:or (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better - holding businesses captive to it, so that the big boys in this realm can slowly raise the transaction fees (not too quickly, lest their business customers not renew contracts, etc.)
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Fuck Visa. Fuck Visa up the ass sideways with a rusty camping spork.
The war on freedom and privacy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously... I don't even try to fight it anymore. The enemy is infinitely more powerful and the so-called "resistance" pathetic, weak and disorganized. I haven't changed my mind or philosophy one bit, but I realize that nobody will ever listen to my "words of wisdom" and thus, it's no longer meaningful to try to win people over.
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The problem is that it's very hard to recruit people to a cause that doesn't affect them in a tangible way. Sure, companies are selling data about you and sure, they know everything you purchase and where and when you purchase it. But none of that has any impact on people's day-to-day lives where you can point to it and say, there, there is the problem.
Re:The war on freedom and privacy. (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, companies are selling data about you and sure, they know everything you purchase and where and when you purchase it.
Part of the problem with the debate is when people say things like that. Perhaps you don't realise it, but what you wrote there simply isn't true.
For example, I have businesses, and we receive payments from people via various banks or online services or whatever. None of those financial services has any information about what those people were paying us for, only the details of the payment itself.
In most cases, financial services we deal with wanted to know something about what line of business we were in before agreeing to work with us. That means there is some genuine risk if you're talking about people buying something from a vendor known for supplying potentially sensitive or controversial products or service.
However, there's no magic database that tells anyone, even the card companies, exactly what you buy. The most extensive analysis is probably done by the big stores with their loyalty card programmes, and they really are looking at everything you purchase and doing all kinds of predictions about what might incentivize you to spend more with them in the future. However, participation in those programmes is typically optional, and the benefits tend to be so small that most people wouldn't really lose out if they just said no when they were offered a chance to sign up.
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Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that, say, Visa knows the contents of your receipt - I left it vague at "companies". But in my case, I use the company credit to get the 5% discounts - so it's true that Target tracks me perfectly, Lowes tracks me perfectly, and as you point out any store with a loyalty card tracks me perfectly. Hell, even my local co-op tracks my purchases perfectly. Stores without loyalty cards can still get a rough idea of who is buying what by keeping track of which payment cards you use. Co
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It's true that we are far from an all-seeing eye kind of scenario - but it's also true that we are far from a cash-transaction, anonymous kind of scenario.
Agreed. I think it's important to be clear about where on the scale we're talking about, though, because there's definitely a problem with privacy issues, including those around payments, that campaigners overstate the risks in some cases and then the general public tunes out and ignores real risks elsewhere.
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You're stupid or naive or a liar or a shill or all of the above.
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but what's to stop visa from saying to businesses "hey, share the details of your transactions with us, and we'll cut our fee by X?
Google and FB have shown how profitable consumer data actually is (whether or not that's an incredibly inflated figure is another discussion.) VISA and MC are potentially sitting on a treasure trove of data that can be monetized to a degree that makes browsing/search look insignificant by comparison.
Also, FWIW, some grocery stores have done away with the loyalty programs, optin
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Then I didn't make my point very well.
How does that affect me?
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Richard Stahlman won't invite you to any of his parties.
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Price rise targeted at you.
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How? The prices are right on the shelves. If you mean online, what makes you think that Amazon is sharing their data with Walmart or Newegg? In either event, I use price shopping plugins, so it wouldn't really bother me if Amazon tried to jack the price on me - I just wouldn't buy it from them.
Re:The war on freedom and privacy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that all other problems don't flow from there, for most normal people. Most normal people see a trusted brand (with a few high profile stories about standing up to government surveillance not doing any harm to that reputation) and buy and use the product they want from that brand. Most normal people aren't particularly interested in hypothetical bogeymen, and privacy absolutists tend to rely on hypothetical bogeyman as the foundation of their argument.
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That's a real problem with almost any non-cash payment method, but it's different to the issue we were talking about before.
Re:The war on freedom and privacy. (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily I still have cash to eat this week...
Only eat the bills. The change is terrible for your teeth.
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If you dont have root on your device, you cannot trust it. Apple devices do not give you root, thus they give you no path to 'Trust, but verify'. All other problems flow from there.
And if you have root access on your device, you still can't trust it.
The whole stack - from software to firmware to hardware - has to be transparent and auditable. No modern hardware is truly trustworthy.
Re:The war on freedom and privacy. (Score:5, Insightful)
war on cash (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be all for an alternative to cash as long as it was managed without transaction fees by the local government backed issuer of the currency. Time to nationalize Visa/Mastercard?
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The cards dump it on the business 99% of the time. The business pays the % and pays the loses. The cardholder sometimes gets a % back.
I suggest business implement a 2% cash discount (after raising prices 2%).
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Not sure about your locale, but many smaller and independent businesses out here (in Oregon) do give discounts for cash (and sometimes for debit as well) - Alternately, others will readily charge a premium (usually a fixed amount, e.g. 40-50 cents or so) if you use plastic instead of cash.
This is especially true of gas stations (Arco comes to mind).
Some already did (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Tacking on added value products/services. e.g. getting somebody to buy a $20 hdmi cable with their new TV. Folks are more likely to buy these things when they're not handing over cash.
2. Leveraging the fact that you're essentially giving out a loan with little to no risk. Yeah, the customer can dispute the charge, but most don't. The majority of credit card losses happen when the whole economy craps the bed and folks go bankrupt. If you're a business it's nice not having to deal with that. Let Visa clean up that mess and try to collect the money.
Credit Cards are mostly a raw deal for necessities. It's why you can't usually pay for a Car Loan, Mortgage or Rent with a card. We've already got a 'cashless' alternative. It's called ACH. My Car Loan auto drafts every month.
Basically, if you're a retail or service business complaining about taking cards you're doing it wrong.
Re:war on cash (Score:5, Insightful)
I suggest business implement a 2% cash discount (after raising prices 2%).
And the problem that would cause for the payment services is exactly why these days they often prohibit discriminatory pricing in their agreements with merchants.
In fact, you will rarely find a more one-sided set of legal agreements than those between the big financial services and the merchants. They get away with just about anything they want, because their customers are businesses so typically none of the normal consumer protection laws about contracts being fair and reasonable apply, and what are you going to do, not take the payment method all your customers expect you to accept?
Ultimately, you need them a lot more than they need you, unless you are literally operating on the scale of Amazon, Walmart, Tesco and the like. Your only viable "choice" is to play along and hope not to get accidentally squashed by the big players without them even noticing. Enjoy your no guarantee at all that the money you think you have won't be clawed back months later in response to an entirely false claim by a customer who forgot they paid you, and enjoy the fees the financial services will charge you for the privilege!
Re:war on cash (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, nobody except banks have ever defrauded me out of money. I feel they are the wrong people to trust with all the monies...
Re:war on cash (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here, which is why I stick to Credit Unions exclusively nowadays. The chances for error still exist (which can be corrected easily), but at least I don't get raped with a monthly fee, a convenience fee, a 'your balance went too low' fee, a 'you spent too much money in one go' fee, a 'you withdrew too much in spite of having more than enough money in the account' fee, or whatever the hell else they use to screw you over these days.
As a bonus, my CU actually reimburses me for any ATM fees that I get charged (I'm required to have Direct Deposit and use my card x times per month, but that's a given anyway.)
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Hmm I may have to look into that, I've been hearing good things about credit unions. I stopped using banks when a $3 overdraft turned into a $300 late fee with wells fargo when they supposedly had my account setup where I couldn't overdraft. So I refused to pay, They sent it to collections. I told the collection agency what happened, and that if they tried to pursue me anymore, I would sue them. Never even showed up on my credit.. I haven't trusted a bank since then. Which happened to be in 2008.. Go figure
Re:war on cash (Score:4, Interesting)
The one consideration is that the credit unions are not generally nationwide. You may pay a small fee to use an out-of-town ATM when you travel. So, if you travel a lot, this could be a consideration for you. Most credit unions are part of ATM networks anyway, and so it can still be a non-issue. If you don't travel much, then you don't need to worry about it.
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As someone who deals with these kinds of payments, the situation would be better for almost everyone if there weren't all these consumer protections (and therefore business risks) attached to non-cash payment methods, or even required by law in some cases.
You might think you're getting a good deal, but the reality is that they cause all kinds of problems with unreliable payments and false positives, which in turn waste absurd amounts of time for both businesses and customers, with the former obviously passi
The government let them do this in the first place (Score:5, Informative)
There would've been a lot more downward pressure on the 2% processing fee if merchants had been allowed to directly pass the fee on to customers. People would've preferred to pay with cash until credit card companies were able to lower the cost to something more reasonable, like a half or quarter percent. Card networks which had higher fees (e.g. Amex) would've had a tougher time than card networks with lower fees (e.g. Discover). But thanks to (corrupt) government regulation, competition to lower processing prices was eliminated, and we're all saddled with what's effectively a 2% sales tax to a private company. Even if you're paying with cash, you're paying the tax as the cash purchases basically subsidize the merchants fees for credit card purchases (since you pay the same amount for cash or credit in most stores).
And no the fee is not for protection against fraud. The merchant pays for fraud, not the credit card company. When you spot an unauthorized charge on you bill and request a chargeback, the card processing company issues a notice to the merchant asking for proof the purchase was valid. Usually this is the signature on the credit card receipt, but for online or automated transactions this can be things like the billing address or phone number (that's why gas station pumps ask you for your zip code). If the signature or other information the merchant submits doesn't match, the transaction is determined to be fraudulent, and the processing company simply deducts the amount of the charge from the merchant's payment. The merchant is out the money and the merchandise. The only expenses the card companies have to pay for are infrastructure, equipment, and staff. With the modern Internet and computers, this is probably on the order of pennies per transaction.
Re:The government let them do this in the first pl (Score:5, Interesting)
Surcharges are illegal, but cash discounts are not. Some merchant agreements try to ban them. But even then, make it a freebee after X dollars cash deal.
Business just has to have the balls to raise their middle fingers to VISA. I've seen more than a few that are ATM and cash only. I bet that costs them less than 2% in sales.
The elephant in the room is Apple/Google pay. VISA _should_ be worried. After 40+ years of VISA/MC's 'we're the only game in town' attitude, everybody should be looking for alternatives.
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Business just has to have the balls to raise their middle fingers to VISA. I've seen more than a few that are ATM and cash only.
That strategy doesn't hold up well with purchases increasingly taking place online rather than in bricks and mortar stores, though.
It's good that there are other options online -- PayPal being the 800lb gorilla, of course -- but often the same laws and regulations about consumer protections and fraud checks and so on wind up catching the alternative payment schemes anyway, and the same old problems rear their ugly heads again.
Re:The government let them do this in the first pl (Score:4, Interesting)
Who told you surcharges are illegal (assuming in the US)? I certainly know of no federal law about that. Perhaps your state has a law concerning it?
In Canada, a law was passed expressly allowing retailers to charge extra for credit card transaction. A lot of people don't realize that those premium credit cards with high rewards charge the retailers a lot more, upwards of 3%, nearly double the rate for "normal" credit cards. If retailers are unable to add a surcharge, then those premium card holders' rewards are really being paid for by everyone else through overall higher prices. It's quite a racket.
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Re:The government let them do this in the first pl (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that you are absolutely incorrect about there being a _law_ about not surcharging CC usage.
This issue was very much on my radar a couple of decades ago. There was a class action lawsuit against the biggest CC player about this. There was a blog that followed it, and while they dumped the custom domain, it appears that the content from the blog is here: https://waytoohigh.wordpress.c... [wordpress.com]
What it actually was... there was a _contract_term_ from your credit card processing bank that stipulated that you could not surcharge for CC. Some got around it by the cash discount, but eventually enough did that that they caught on to it, and forbid it by contract. And this was essentially a contract of adhesion, and every processor carried through the same restrictive terms. Didn't like the terms? Don't accept any of the big [four] CCs.
I was working at a very small retail merchant during that period, not even 'mom and pop', just 'pop'; and was very attuned to what it cost us. I remember seeing cease and desist letters from the CC company over our policy of not allowing CC payments for transactions Since the conclusion of the law suit, I've observed many more merchants declaring either a minimum transaction for a CC, or a processing fee on transactions under a threshold amount.
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And on top of that if the charge is ruled good the business is charged a $25.00 Fee to cover the paper work.
Re:The government let them do this in the first pl (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the problem with /.'s moderation system - you write a long screed based on a bullshit premise and get modded to 5.
There is not law such as you've described. They don't need a law. It's part of the merchant agreement. But it gets better. In the US merchants may specifically add a surcharge to card transactions due to a settlement with the card industry:
https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/... [visa.com]
So, basically, you're not only wrong, you are the exact opposite of true.
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I agree with this if the gov't wants us to go cashless they need to be footing the cost as they currently do with cash.
It costs many many times less to maintain the digital systems for transactions than it does to monitor maintain secure and replace the paper currency in circulation so they shouldn't have a problem with this.
However from what i've seen with countries actually trying to go cashless this is not being done it's being given over to private companies although at a much lower allowed transaction
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cashless is a bad deal for small business (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you like sending a cut of every sale to credit card processing firms.
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Yeah no kidding. I few months ago I received an updated credit agreement in the mail, over 20% APR. I have a very good credit rating, but really I no longer can reasonably justify holding a balance on my card. If I were to max out a card at that interest rate I would be screwed as they also increased my limits every year for the last 15 years. Also shark is a good metaphor as it is a cold blooded predator. At least a traditional loan shark is a human being that might have difficulty sleeping after breaking
Re:cashless is a bad deal for small business (Score:5, Insightful)
There are real costs to cash too, though. Just off the top of my head:
- Having to physically gather it up and take it to the bank
- Potential for theft, either during the transfer or just in the shop
- Higher insurance premiums to cover the potential cost of robberies
Really, for a small business, it probably comes down to who your customers are. If they are younger and/or more affluent, getting rid of cash may make sense.
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Couple more.
- Increased training for cashiers. If you go to a store like Best Buy, note h
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Well, there are a lot of companies which have always accepted cash, have cash drawers etc, yet may actually find they do very little cash business. This seems pretty much like a gimmick/contest, since they are only going to pay $10,000 to 50 businesses. It's basically a half million dollar ad buy, which for all the publicity they've had seems to have been effective.
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Actually, the costs of handling cash are typically significantly higher than the costs of processing electronic transactions, even for small businesses. We pay almost no fees for electronic transactions on our main bank accounts, but probably almost as much as the card fees would have been just to deposit the cash at the bank, for example, and that's before you even consider the costs of handling it and transporting physical money to and from a bank securely. There are good arguments for not going to an ent
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For a huge department store, absolutely the overhead for handling cash is significant.
For the small shops I've worked in, where the entire day can fit into a locked purse, the overhead is no more significant than sweeping up the shop at the end of the day. Certainly scale matters, and it's why I pointed out small businesses. (also because I have experience in small business, but I do not have experiences in running a large retail chain or anything of that scale)
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May I ask where you are? Certainly with the business banking terms we typically see here in the UK, the fees heavily favour electronic transactions to the point that just putting cash into the bank or taking it out would be in the same range as typical card payment fees and the like. There are other accounts with lower fees for cash-based businesses, but they charge much higher fees for the electronic stuff.
Hm. (Score:5, Interesting)
THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
Never understood how apartment and rent can be required to be non-cash payment.
Another issue is how do I pay my neighbor kid to mow my lawn with a credit card?
Another issue is that I simply may not want Visa, and via third party records, the government, know exactly what I'm spending on and how frequently. The phrase "None of your business" comes to mind if for no other reason that it is, after all, none of their damned business.
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Personally I like cash and still use it. Also the look on a kid's face when they get a bill that is bigger than they every have b
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PayPal, Apple Pay, etc all have person to person "wire" transfers
So you can pay your lawn boy (if you can find one).
As for apartments they are the landlord and can dictate apartment terms in your lease. Find a cash apartment and pay cash. Except any place that takes cash tends to be run down shitty places.
My company is a distributor. We have a couple of cash only customers. Every single one is cash only because they can't get credit cards, they routinely bounced checks, etc bad banking practices. Each of
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PayPal, Apple Pay, etc all have person to person "wire" transfers
For adults, not for children. Read their terms of service.
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Send it to their parents. The children aren't legally allowed to enter in these kinds of business transactions anyway.
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Another issue is how do I pay my neighbor kid to mow my lawn with a credit card?
Well, is the neighborhood kid a cashless business?
But the answer is Paypal, or another small transaction company for b2b.
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They get around it by making you pay the rent in advance. The 'Legal tender' stipulation only applies to DEBTS. The example i give is this: If you go to a sit down restaurant, and order food and then after the meal is over, you are presented with a bill, they HAVE to accept cash. If they refuse your cash payment, you can consider the debt null and void, as you tendered a legal payment and they refused it. If its a walk-up co
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Another issue is how do I pay my neighbor kid to mow my lawn with a credit card?
You just venmo the cash. Yes venmo is a verb now. Add to the list of new verbs: google friend
Have to get the Debt First (Score:3)
Never understood how apartment and rent can be required to be non-cash payment.
Legal tender only applies when you have a debt. A shop is perfectly free to decide not to sell something to you unless you pay in a form that they are willing to accept. However, a restaurant where you typically eat first and pay at the end, probably can't refuse (IANAL) to accept cash because at that point you have acquired a debt with them and they are required to accept legal tender in payment of debts.
Usually, rents are paid in advance so you are not paying off a debt but purchasing the right to liv
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Another issue is how do I pay my neighbor kid to mow my lawn with a credit card?
I pay our babysitter with Facebook Messenger payments. (I read that iOS 11 will let you pay over iMessage too). It's really handy. No need to look around for the exact right value in cash. It's also nice to have an authoritative log of exactly when and how much she was paid, clear to her and us, so there's no ambiguity or forgetting whether we paid her or how much. I don't see any "skimming" happening -- the amount our babysitter receives is exactly equal to the amount we pay, exactly equal to the amount de
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To be honest, there's probably more chance of your kid neighbor figuring out how to take a credit card than one of the landscape firms around here taking anything other than a check.
While I see a role for cash, why are some many Americans still using checks? And why are your consumer rights groups unable to force the banks there to offer an equivalent of the Direct Debit Guarantee [directdebit.co.uk]?
Why do interbank transfers in the US still take days? Why is exchanging your account number and routing code enough for a strang
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Square card reader is rated 18+ (Score:2)
[Neighbor kid] gets one of those Square card readers and plugs ut into his iPhone.
That won't work. Square's TOS [squareup.com] states: "You represent and warrant to us that: (a) you are at least eighteen (18) years of age". This means the only Square thing a child can buy for an iPhone is a Final Fantasy game.
PayPal is rated 18+ (Score:2)
Another issue is how do I pay my neighbor kid to mow my lawn with a credit card?
Paypal?
That won't work. From the PayPal TOS [paypal.com]: "For an individual to open a U.S. PayPal account and use the PayPal services, you must be a resident of the United States or one of its territories and at least 18 years old, or the age of majority in your state of residence."
Gift cards?
But how would a child make change for an unopened $50 gift card, or even quickly verify that a particular gift card contains the balance the buyer claims it to contain?
How about a war on rent seeking? (Score:2)
Good for the Corp and bad for the peasant (Score:3)
Of course the corp and government are all in for cashless
For them it is:
- Constant stream of revenue
- Easy to destroy whatever opponent life they wish (try buy food / travel in a cashless society without cash...)
- Easy to trace you, peasant, wherever you go
For us, peasants, we trade all the above with...
- Not to have a few hundered euros in our wallet (quite useful if you get mugged, to simply let the robber get away without hitting you in anger)
What a rip off
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
...Visa extends war on the poor.
In my opinion, not accepting legal tender in favor of utilizing non-government tender, in this case a Visa card, should be illegal. I have relatives who don't have a credit card or even a checking account because their credit is crap. It's their fault but shutting them out by not accepting cash is ridiculous.
VisaLess Challenge. War on Visa. (Score:3)
I pay everything I can in cash. Almost all transactions on my bank account is cash withdrawal from an ATM machine. Except morgage, car, insurance... payments. And sometimes maybe a couple of rare online transactions. Now I spent a LOT less on stupid things like I did in the past. The less companies (credit cards, fidelity cards, banks, ...) knows about me, the better I feel. My cash. My Privacy.
Cash sterling is legal tender. (Score:2)
This restricts cashless to businesses where money is taken first, or where card preauth is used.
I've recently adopted a policy of using my CC... (Score:2)
I've heard some people try to adopt a policy of just paying the balance off when it becomes due to avoid excess payments, but I tried this and found that this was not generall
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Fuck You Visa (Score:2)
Keep the world weird (Score:3, Informative)
Can you use an CC at a casino with out the cash av (Score:2)
Can you use an CC at a casino with out the cash advance fee and with out paying 3% or more in fees?
Canada is a different fish (Score:2)
Canadians use cash for only 10% of consumer payments and that figure is falling [canadianbusiness.com] — August 2014
Yeah, and 45% of all purchases were made using debit cards, for which the consumer receives no spiff (other than stiffing those shits over at VISA et al.). Only 25% by dollar value for the rapacious credit card industry at this happy moment in time.
More [theglobeandmail.com]
Misguided solution to a very legitimate problem (Score:2)
We desperately need a modern cashless currency system that is non-centralized and does not require merchants to hand over a significant percentage of their revenue for practically no benefit simply in order to compete. That is extortion. Is Bitcoin the answer? Maybe. Or something like it, backed by a traditional currency. But what we're doing now simply cannot go on. Cash is wasteful. Printing money is expensive, bad for the environment, and just a pain for everyone involved. Using it—lugging it aroun
Nowhere near enough money (Score:2)
$10,000, and you can't take cash in the future? Less than $30 a day of cash sales gives more than their "award". Plus, you're going to be giving them that $10,000 in transaction fees and then some - especially with cards that will ding merchants for credit card "cash back" programs.
Most merchants aren't that stupid. They know the cost of doing business. Many also like giving discounts for cash.
Re:war on cash = private sales tax (Score:5, Interesting)
Whats funny is they mention how fast it is to pay with your card, when in reality, especially since the chip readers... It takes almost twice as long for a transaction. and about 3-4x as long as a cash transaction.. At least from what I've seen at local stores and gas stations here in Las Vegas.
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Whats funny is they mention how fast it is to pay with your card, when in reality, especially since the chip readers... It takes almost twice as long for a transaction. and about 3-4x as long as a cash transaction.
It depends on the chip reader. My local Costco refused the chip reader push until they could get readers that were fast, and it's only about five seconds from card insert to done.
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Here's how it is at every single chip-enabled reader (many recently installed) I've seen in the US:
Items are scanned.
Total it displayed and told to me verbally by cashier.
Wait for the credit card reader to be ready to accept my card / display the same total.
Insert credit card (which isn't as fast as a swipe).
Wait with my hand still on the card to make sure the reader recognizes the card is in.
Wait while the reader says "do not remove card".
The reader may ask if I want to charge it as credit or debit, may as
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Don't forget, while the card is in the reader and you're waiting for the signal to remove it, it blinks repeatedly, flashing multiple different messages that you have to keep watching and reading until the "done" one comes up.
Also, the "okay to remove card" message tends to be formatted and look almost like the "do not remove card" message.
I'll admit I've jumped the gun a couple of times, seeing a bunch of blinks and then a message with "remove card" in it, I thought I was done, only to realize as I yanked
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1. Insert card
2. See amount on screen
3. Select account
4. Enter PIN
5. Press OK
6. Remove card.
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A couple of places I've shopped at have the chip readers make a sound when you can remove your card. Sometimes, I notice the sound before the text change.
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My cable box is slow too (I don't actually have cable), but that doesn't mean embedded computers are slow. Businesses go with the cheapest option possible and slow is the result.
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Agreed, especially the shit like set top boxes.
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It's always surprising how backward the US is when it comes to financial services and payment technology. For example, here in the UK, contactless payments for low value transactions have become ubiquitous within the past few years. You literally just tap your card on the machine and most of the time it just beeps to confirm the payment within a second or so and you're done. It's about the same with the alternatives that pay via your phone instead of an actual plastic card. Either way, it's faster and far l
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Problem is here someone would figure out how to copy that and transfer it onto another card, kind of like how defcon did to vegas about 10 years ago.. I thought it was hilarious. RFID is a joke.
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I must admit I'm a contributor to the problem. I don't carry any balances on cards, and I will periodically get a new card that offers mile bonuses. Between me and my wife we've earned/been given over 700K airline miles. We can booking flights for 20K or less miles/each way, so we've had over 35 free flights around the US. We frequently get flights for 12.5K miles, so it's probably a lot more than that (I don't actually keep track).
Thanks to all you people that carry a bal
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Why stop at Visa, Why not war on banks. Have they done us any good? I would say not, unless you count giving people they knew couldn't afford ARM's a loan for a house that during an artificially inflated housing market. Apparently the government thought they did some good, as they all got nice fat bonuses..
Think of the unbanked children (Score:2)
Discriminates against the poor!
Too poor to put $1 in a credit union account to get a debit card? What cash?
How about "too young"?
Children are excluded by definition from official definitions of the unbanked [wikipedia.org] because they often are prohibited from holding a bank or credit union account in their own name. But children feel the same practical problems as the unbanked. Even 18-year-olds may not yet have a utility bill in their own name to establish their identity for purposes of "Know Your Customer" regulations that banks and credit unions are obligated to follow. This means a child would end up spending 10 percent e
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I want to see restaurants and retail stores that take bitcoin!!!!
- if some store or restaurant won't take cash - I wouldn't go there anymore even if I usually pay with plastic.
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You think that the cash with serial numbers on it and a camera pointed at nearly every register is untraceable?