USA Today Tech Columnist: Millennials Will Live To See a Cashless World (usatoday.com) 454
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."
His column is addressed to the mayor of Philadelphia, who this week signed a bill that bans cashless stores. Mr. Mayor. It's happening all over the world, and not just from Amazon. We are going cashless. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly for millennials. Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green. Selected merchants are into it now... USA Today's Charisse Jones discovered that cash purchases were down to 30 percent of all retail transactions as of last year compared to 40 percent in 2012. Millennials, she noted here this week, are saying no to cash, with 21 percent of those 23- to 34 years old saying that most of their transactions were in cash in 2016....
Mobile pay is still a sliver of overall retail sales, but it's definitely on the rise. Target, a long holdout, just added Apple Pay to one of its options, following in the footsteps of Best Buy, CVS, Costco and other retail giants who now accept payment via iPhone. The big, lone holdout right now is Walmart, the No. 1 retailer. It does have its own mobile pay app, that links bank payments to QR codes. And Mr. Mayor, good news for you. Walmart still accepts cash, too.
But for how long?
His column is addressed to the mayor of Philadelphia, who this week signed a bill that bans cashless stores. Mr. Mayor. It's happening all over the world, and not just from Amazon. We are going cashless. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly for millennials. Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green. Selected merchants are into it now... USA Today's Charisse Jones discovered that cash purchases were down to 30 percent of all retail transactions as of last year compared to 40 percent in 2012. Millennials, she noted here this week, are saying no to cash, with 21 percent of those 23- to 34 years old saying that most of their transactions were in cash in 2016....
Mobile pay is still a sliver of overall retail sales, but it's definitely on the rise. Target, a long holdout, just added Apple Pay to one of its options, following in the footsteps of Best Buy, CVS, Costco and other retail giants who now accept payment via iPhone. The big, lone holdout right now is Walmart, the No. 1 retailer. It does have its own mobile pay app, that links bank payments to QR codes. And Mr. Mayor, good news for you. Walmart still accepts cash, too.
But for how long?
prefer cash (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike this crappy columnist I am a millennial with a good paying job with no debt and money in my pocket.
I go out of my way to use cash and avoid credit cards.
The day we have a cashless society is the day the cloud atlas economy takes hold. (i.e you are required to spend a certain amount of money a week on consumption and probably negative interest rates and financial fees as punishment if you don't)
That or the world will migrate to Bitcoin I suppose...
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I also have a good paying job, no debt, but I haven't used cash in probably a year. Haven't used credit cards either. Instead I mostly use contactless payments. It's quick and easy and I don't need to carry a bulky wallet.
Re:prefer cash (Score:5, Insightful)
I also have a good paying job, no debt, but I haven't used cash in probably a year. Haven't used credit cards either. Instead I mostly use contactless payments. It's quick and easy and I don't need to carry a bulky wallet.
On behalf of big brother, thank you for your continuing donation of financial information that we sell to pay for our hookers and blow. That yummy financial info is worth so much more than your fb likes that seem to get you millennial types so worked up...
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That yummy financial info is worth so much more
Really ? What's so interesting about me buying some groceries, gasoline, or a new faucet for the bathroom ?
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That yummy financial info is worth so much more
Really ? What's so interesting about me buying some groceries, gasoline, or a new faucet for the bathroom ?
Seriously? Your FB posting history across all time is worth maybe $6 (according to FB). Your entire financial history is worth hundreds. Either you are a troll or a fool. What you post is mainly meaningless, being able to predict it is worth even less...being able to predict what you buy and why however, that's pure gold.
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being able to predict what you buy and why however, that's pure gold.
How ? Suppose you see me buying groceries 5 times a week, giving you the name of the store and the total amount that I spent. How do you propose to monetize that ? And how will that cause me harm ?
Re:prefer cash (Score:4, Interesting)
1) More detailed purchase histories are rare but do exist and you can bet many powerful corps would love to expand upon that. Your store-linked cards do this, tiing you to every single item you spend there.
2) Your subversive and effective fliers you handed out at a protest.. (or perhaps your kid). have your printer's UID hidden on them, it was done in the 90s to track down fake money but naturally it expanded so an FBI agent can just scan your print outs and figure out who you are. how? you bought it with a generic card! Well, the price of the item can be estimated and used to narrow down the search... aside from product registrations, store repair plans,... besides, it's not like some printers don't have a serial number in the barcode that could be scanned in... and your generic card has your name connected to it which a bigger store does get access to. This is just a tiny bit of what is involved on this one.
3) embarrassment... buy stuff at a sex shop? buy something innocent at a biz that was later caught sex trafficing? Plan on having a job with real power? Something of use to a government in some way? Inflential on social media? upset the wrong person who has the right connections? privatized spy services are just beginning to get going. your ex's private detective may gain access to such things in the future. accusations can get you fired.
4) private profiling. government is only 1 risk. you can't get a job and you just don't know why.... but 3rd party HR services keep telling places to not hire you. you won't know why; they won't disclose it, the employer will not even know-- that is part of the reason they hire a 3rd party. your purchase history will just be part of it.
Walmart got into trouble for running credit checks on people to decide if they should hire--- they wanted people with bad credit because they can abuse them more!
5) META DATA. you buy X every X at this kind of store. you likely have Y health condition. raise insurance! or don't hire them... lay them off. you might be cheating because why do you buy in these places at these times? The REAL money is in providing guesses from interpretation of the meta data. This information YOU DO NOT OWN and no privacy measures apply because their profile of you is not your property. again, potential for government abuse is HUGE -- your self-centered life might not matter-- but already with no tech--the FBI went after MLK spying on him and trying to even get him to kill himself. your influential leaders can be taken down; hell, you will help them do it by judging others so easily joining the MOB that social media is.
6) Stupid AI profiling. your vague pattern is the same as a pedophile 60%. anybody seeing the profile will act differently to you. We all see stupid Netflix and amazon suggestions based on our profile. Imagine those being actually used for stuff...
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4) private profiling. government is only 1 risk. you can't get a job and you just don't know why.... but 3rd party HR services keep telling places to not hire you. you won't know why; they won't disclose it, the employer will not even know-- that is part of the reason they hire a 3rd party. your purchase history will just be part of it. Walmart got into trouble for running credit checks on people to decide if they should hire--- they wanted people with bad credit because they can abuse them more!
5) META DATA. you buy X every X at this kind of store. you likely have Y health condition. raise insurance! or don't hire them... lay them off. you might be cheating because why do you buy in these places at these times? The REAL money is in providing guesses from interpretation of the meta data. This information YOU DO NOT OWN and no privacy measures apply because their profile of you is not your property. again, potential for government abuse is HUGE -- your self-centered life might not matter-- but already with no tech--the FBI went after MLK spying on him and trying to even get him to kill himself. your influential leaders can be taken down; hell, you will help them do it by judging others so easily joining the MOB that social media is.
6) Stupid AI profiling. your vague pattern is the same as a pedophile 60%. anybody seeing the profile will act differently to you. We all see stupid Netflix and amazon suggestions based on our profile. Imagine those being actually used for stuff...
We need to print this in bold and put it up in lots of places. People are usually afraid of the government doing something to them via data collection...the private sector can be just the same or even much worse.
Re:prefer cash (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but the store knows the individual items that you purchased, along with your credit card.
You do know there's an entire industry devoted to this data? Purchased & formatted neatly by data brokers and then sold for a handsome profit.
>> And how will that cause me harm ?
At the moment I suspect it won't. But I don't know what will happen in 10 years.
Will you be refused health insurance because you bought too many Twinkies, and not enough greens?
Drank too much Coke? Were making purchases at 11pm instead of being in bed?
Personally, it's for the potential abuses that I CAN'T think of that I prefer cash.
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Will you be refused health insurance because you bought too many Twinkies, and not enough greens?
The solution is not allowing insurance companies to refuse insurance based on purchases.
And if you don't think that the laws will save you, you will have to worry about cameras in the store and streets following your exact movements and actions. Using cash won't save you.
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For example, if they can forecast how much they can raise grocery prices before a significant number of customers will go elsewhere, that's pure gold for them, and minor harm to you. For stuff with individual pricing (hotel rooms, plane tickets...), forecasting how much you individually are willing to pay is a bit more gold for them, and much more harm to you.
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We could fix this. Stored value cards already exist, you can top them up with cash. They store the balance on the card and use crypto to authenticate transactions. The only flaws are that they include a unique ID that allows transactions to be linked to the card, and they keep a transaction history.
We can make a card that uses a random ID or none at all, and has no history. Then it's basically the same as cash, but more convenient.
Re:prefer cash (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a millennial with a good paying job with no debt and money in my pocket.
I go out of my way to use cash and avoid credit cards.
I'm a little older, but also debt-free and plenty of income, savings and investments. I use cash *and* credit cards, which aren't a problem if (a) they're no-fee and (b) you pay them off completely every month. Having and using them responsibly also helps your credit score -- which helps me as even my mortgage is paid off -- and you get a one-month float on your money... There's really no reason to avoid them unless you're irresponsible or stupid.
Re:prefer cash (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon Visa - 2% restaurants always (3% on Amazon)
Chase and Discover - Rotating 5% back on some categories
That is free money.
Personal note... cash is just too much of a hassle for me. I don't like always having to make sure I have enough in my wallet and dealing with change, so we usually just do credit card. I haven't run into any issues with companies knowing what I spend my money on. In some cases I get relevant coupons that actually help.
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Same boat as you, but we need to go one step further. For those of us who know the proper way to use credit cards, many only GIVE you "cash" back. Amazon Visa - 2% restaurants always (3% on Amazon) Chase and Discover - Rotating 5% back on some categories That is free money.
It is not exactly free money. The money that you get back came from the transaction fee that the credit card levied onto the merchants who sold you goods/services. Those merchants marked up the price of their goods/services to include the credit card transaction fee, and since so many people use credit cards these days, even for small transactions, the cost of everything has been increased so that we can enjoy this "convenience." Few merchants even bother giving a discount for cash any more, so we pay th
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It's all very well that many of us use a mixture of cash, credit and debit cards, and there are many good reasons to want to use cash, including surveillance, but one issue is that some people must pay a premium to not use cash. And often they are the people who can least afford to lose money to fees.
We've covered this before. In the U.S. banks are not required to do business with anyone. They can decide they don't want to do business with you. This includes Visa and Mastercharge (who by the way have been b
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I'll worry about that when we achieve a full digital office that has been predicted for a long time. As it is, I still see plenty of notebooks at meetings and documents printed out for reviews with a pen. Even in places that have almost eliminated paper, physical white boards are still a major thing that hasn't been replaced by a digital version.
I see physical money as the same. There are certain conveniences that digital versions cannot yet overcome without a notable expense (I would love tablet and dig
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Unlike this crappy AC I don't subscribe to the instant slippery slope fallacy where every technical innovate will bring about the End Of Days (TM).
Congratulations on sticking to cash and paper receipts. I don't bother, and no one is forcing me to spend anything.
That or the world will migrate to Bitcoin I suppose...
This is a tech forum. Please leave unrealistic fantasy for comments on stories about cold fusion.
cashless transactions == tax on stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction. I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
Re: cashless transactions == tax on stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: cashless transactions == tax on stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Foregone conclusion? Sleep walk? The millenials are born into a digital world where a cell phone gives them more reach than anything the previous generation had at their age. This isn't something they need to be convinced to accept -- it's reality from day one.
By the next generation, anyone who didn't have some digital dirt in their childhood may just be treated as a late bloomer or someone who lost their virginity later in life, not much beyond something of a curiosity.
I worked in Fast Food (Score:3)
What I'm saying is cash isn't free to a business. There are costs involved. The businesses dropping cash aren't doing it to be hip or beca
Re:cashless transactions == tax on stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction. I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
There is a cost to the merchant for handling cash - theft, counting, transportation, bank deposits/withdrawals, etc.
Do cash handling costs add up to what the merchant pays to accept credit cards? I suspect not (but I don't work in retail).
But I strongly suspect cash handling costs are much more than what the merchant pays to accept debit card payments.
Re: cashless transactions == tax on stupidity (Score:3)
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Sure, he's not 100% wrong, but he's far from right. Many merchants will charge you an additional fee to use your credit card, while cash and check run ~3% less.
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And that cost is - or should be - passed on to the customer - just like card transaction fees.
If consumers don't like "no-cash" businesses, then they'll choose to spend their money elsewhere.
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Businesses have costs for cash too. Paying a secure transport company to provide vans and guards to transport it to the banks. Losses from counterfeit currency. Losses from store employees who 'lose' some of the money from the till. Cashless payment fees are usually less than a percent - cheaper than handling cash.
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False.
Credit cards cost about 3%, not 1%, which is much more than the cost of handling cash.
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The world of cashless payments is much bigger than credit cards, at least in the part of the world with a modern banking system.
I have a choice between chip & PIN, or contactless payment.
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There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction. I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
Already happened in videogames, people sleepwalked into the theft of their own software to be run on their own computers in isolation from the rest of the internet. Now even windows has drm in it. Shit is disgusting. The average person on our planet is a moron.
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There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction.
The cut for electronic transaction is smaller than the cut for cash. Cash requires sorting, counting, transporting, and takes more time at the cash register.
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There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction.
The cut for electronic transaction is smaller than the cut for cash. Cash requires sorting, counting, transporting, and takes more time at the cash register.
Please explain why merchants will charge you 3% more for credit transactions then.
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No, the credit card companies charge them that much, and they pass it along. Many businesses have a very small profit margin, where even a percentage point makes the difference between a profitable exchange and one that isn't. Does this 3% disappear in places that have gone cashless? If so, how are the financial institutions making money on the transactions, because you know they're pushing for this.
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"Cash, barter or trade" has been the standard for business since time out of mind. It's part of the *cost of doing business.* Paraphrasing a movie quote, you never go full cashless.
Cash transactions == tax by another name (Score:3)
I don't understand why people think I want to stop by a bank/ATM every once in a while. With cashless, I go there twice a year and feel both trips are a waste of time.
15 years ago, I had to stop by the Elec office to pay my monthly bill. I though it was asasine then that I had to not only pay for my time but also the teller to... what basically amounted to paper shuffling and database entries.
Cashless saves me a TON of time and money; and not just at the check out counter. I got better things to do with my
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Because one doesn't follow the other. Cashless != Credit Card, and I don't fork over anything (both directly in fees, or indirectly in product costs) much less a "few percent of my income".
Cashless economies do not list Credit Cards as the alternatives. We use debit cards, direct debit transactions, custom bank based payment methods, and for some rare cases, crypto currencies.
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I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
The merchant pays that fee, not you. Either they pass it on to all their customers in pricing or eat it, so whether you use cash or card makes no difference to how much you pay.
I assume by "your income" you mean the income of the buyer, not the income of the merchant. Obviously there are good reasons to accept credit and debit cards as a merchant.
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I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
The merchant pays that fee, not you. Either they pass it on to all their customers in pricing or eat it, so whether you use cash or card makes no difference to how much you pay.
I assume by "your income" you mean the income of the buyer, not the income of the merchant. Obviously there are good reasons to accept credit and debit cards as a merchant.
Plus I doubt many merchants "eat it", I'm pretty sure they all set prices to account for credit card fees, including prices paid by cash customers (though one of our family run businesses started passing the fee on to CC users, which is fine with me as I pay them cash to help them out). So I suspect everyone gets to deal with the CC fees, except those getting cash back get a small portion of the fees back...
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You don't understand why people don't like making daily/weekly trips to their bank?
Maybe we need something like Doordash except for cash. Or perhaps little boxes sprinkled all over the city that let you withdraw from your bank account, like some kind of automatic bank teller but as a machine?
Do you not travel?
Not everyday, no. I usually only travel for business or pleasure.
On the phone with a client that owes you money and expect them to show up at your office with cash?
I've mailed out about 60 checks this year. I've been getting a lot of construction done on my house and that's how the contractors get paid.
Never had to deal with a shortage in a register?
Or chargebacks. Or a down processing network.
I mean you can't understand why people don't like knocking on doors asking for payment>
I had no idea that the state of the U.S. Postal Serv
Re: Cash is king (Score:2, Interesting)
Was chatting to a hotel manager the other day about Expedia. She told me they often wait up to 3 months after the customer has been and gone to get paid for the stay.
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The end of private spending (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also important to note that governments want this, too. They used to just have visibility on big number transactions but once all cash is gone, they'll be able to monitor every transaction, no matter how small. The concept of anonymous transactions and spending privacy will be soon be over.
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Yes, and they will tax EVERYTHING. The reason that private sales of used vehicles are taxed is because.... they know when the purchases happen because you have to title the vehicle with the government. So they ask you what you paid for it, and if the number you give them is too low then they use some market value for the vehicle year and mileage instead. I've always felt this is fundamentally against our rights as citizens as the vehicle was already taxed when it was sold new. A given vehicle could be tax
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Lucky you don't live here in Virginia where they tax your vehicle every damn year based upon the NADA value at 4.13%. This causes a large portion of the population to cheat with out of state tags. It also causes another large percentage to keep really old, highly polluting vehicles because they've been around long enough to no longer get taxed.
Re: The end to bankruns (Score:2)
Yes and now. Whilst it would end the bankruns of popular memory, the 2008 crisis saw more subtle versions where banks were refused access to the interbank market with equally disastrous consequences.
When you make the transaction frictionless.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of the following Ted talk - when you make the transaction frictionless, they've found you spend more
When money isn’t real: the $10,000 experiment | Adam Carroll | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VB39Jo8mAQ
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The cashless society is a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
The cashless society is only of interest to that portion of the population with absolutely nothing to hide. And I donâ(TM)t trust those people even a little bit.
No way to buy some mushrooms or hash... no hiding your hotel tryst from your spouse... no way to hide your alcohol abuse from your insurance company... if there isnâ(TM)t something you want to hide from prying eyes youâ(TM)re living life wrong.
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Or the ones that do have something to hide -- but where the inconvenience of hiding purchases outweighs its benefit.
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The cashless society is only of interest to that portion of the population with absolutely nothing to hide. And I donâ(TM)t trust those people even a little bit.
No way to buy some mushrooms or hash... no hiding your hotel tryst from your spouse... no way to hide your alcohol abuse from your insurance company... if there isnâ(TM)t something you want to hide from prying eyes youâ(TM)re living life wrong.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal Richelieu
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And I donâ(TM)t trust those people even a little bit.
Funny, that's precisely what they say about people paying cash. What are you hiding? "I don't trust you since you're clearly doing drugs and dodging taxes, otherwise you wouldn't be paying cash."
Side note: The only time these days I actually use cash is to pay a labourer who doesn't want to do the job on the books ...
World View (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone only sees the world they want to see. I became a landlord a few years ago. It opened my eyes to the amount and types of people who don't or can't get debit or credit cards and that's ignoring all of the people who can't handling having a credit line. I would have otherwise never learned this type of information about people and would have continually falsely believed people had access to the same resources I had. How many random people do you go around asking about their financial history?
The metric they're measuring is total cash transactions. That's doesn't include enough information to be useful. Is that 30% of the population only using cash or 1% only using cash and 29% sometimes using it? Perhaps that 70% are only buying a couple things at a time over and over where as the 30% cash purchases are buying two weeks worth of items at a time. Perhaps the majority of the cashless transaction are in cities. Etc... People will fill in the missing details with whatever they prefer to assume which makes all further claims dangerous to make decisions on.
Personally I use cash at toll booths, bi-weekly on Craigslist, paying a friend / splitting costs, when the card readers aren't working, and when any total ends up matching an exact bill such as a $20. And sometimes I randomly pay in two dollar bills to screw with people.
Not all millennials (Score:2)
What about all the same aged millennials who will still be under the poverty line, and will still be underserved by banks and credit card companies?
Can't believe I'm saying this, but: check your privilege.
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Can't believe I'm saying this, but: check your privilege.
Cash might be approaching an inflection point, but even the Boomers haven't paid with a check at retail since the Clinton administration.
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There are plenty of merchants out there that charge 3% additional for credit. Off the top of my head, I have a storage unit, property taxes, and a lawn service that I pay through checks in order not to pay the extra charge. I had a plumber at my home just last week tell me it would be 3% extra for credit...check it was. Up through 2013, when my daughter was still in college, they wouldn't take VISA because of the extra fee. Does anyone pay a babysitter electronically?
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check your privilege
Well, you won't be able to cash it anyway, so...
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Cashless comes with an additional 5% Bank TAX (Score:4, Interesting)
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If a merchant is paying 5%, then they should change payment processor.
I help some small association from time to time, we have a card reader and the entry level fee is only 1.85%. It's probably lowered if you have high volumes of payments too.
And that's 1.85% to get all the services, including getting a certified "cash" register for the tax agencies in the country. No real cash in there, but that's the terminology of payment devices, even if it's just a small add-on to a phone.
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Use of Credit and Debit cards adds an enormous additional cost to the merchant and, ultimately, to the consumer -- usually just shy of 5%.
No. Use of credit cards add 5%. Use of debit cards add almost nothing. Abolishing cash on the other hand saves a shitton. You don't think handling, counting, trips to the bank, float management, safety, and security come for free do you?
There's a reason that *businesses* are the ones pushing to go cashless and it's not because they like paying fees.
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Well, that 20 cents can come out to more than 5% for a $4 purchase.
"But for how long?" (Score:2)
As long as drug dealers want to avoid having to explain all those five hundred dollar transactions done between 2:00 am and 5:00 am.
Smug (Score:2)
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Probably a shill for the financial industry.
Prediction fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's how you predict things correctly:
1. Start with things as they are
2. Predict they will change only a little.
That's how you get correct predictions. Nobody wants to publish them though.
The big changes that would be interesting enough to publish in an article are too few. You won't guess them.
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I'll bite:
1. Start with things as they are
A portion of stores I do business with are cashless.
I haven't carried cash on me in years.
All supermarkets I go to have cash free lanes with the option of a few select slow lines where I pay cash.
I transfer money and split bills between my friends with my phone.
I am a millennial.
2. Predict they will change only a little.
Abolishing the few remaining cash lanes changes things a little.
The remaining businesses not already cashless going cashless changes things a little.
I will remain a millennial so that doesn't change.
Sounds like a pretty so
Crashless society (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see you buy an 8-ball of crystal meth with a credit card or Apple Pay. You think Robert Kraft is slapping down his Discover Card when he goes to the Chinese rub'n'tug to get his egg roll dipped in sweet and sour?
Do you think that when the human trafficking owner of that Chinese rub'n'tug sells access to Donald Trump that they're taking credit card payments?
Fuck no. There somebody, somewhere, with a wad of currency. As it will ever be.
And no, I'm not making any of the above up:
https://nymag.com/inte [nymag.com]
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Obviously not. They don't take Discover -- Mastercard and Visa only. But you get a couple egg rolls free from the attached restaurant, because you're such a good customer.
No way (Score:2)
Millennials can't buy everything they want without cash and I doubt that the intolerance precludes those purchases will leave as quickly as the availability to be 100% cashless arrives.
Well, they'll be comfortable with it. (Score:2)
Gen X is the last generation that remembers what it was to live disconnected, and when we die out, nobody will know better.
The fun of a cashless world (Score:4, Insightful)
Any gov assistance program gets a new long no buy list.
No gambling, no drugs, no alcohol, no smoking.
A bank account will be needed.
Detection of illegal migrants and other criminals trying to use a fake ID.
Social media use gets linked back to a cashless account and all spending is tracked.
Cash gave a person the spending power to enjoy freedoms away from big gov and the politics of a bank, CC. A cashless world returns all spending to a bank, CC.
Buy the wrong book? The wrong comment on an ISP account linked to your a cashless account?
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Cardless society (Score:2)
My prediction in the not too distant future the use of credit cards for transactions will be greatly diminished. Instead people will use bank tied "push" payment systems for electronic payment without transaction fees.
Cash will still be widely used and smartphone based payment systems (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, ad nausea) will be phased out entirely.
Makes it easy to tax everything. (Score:2)
Finally, Uncle Sam will be getting in on all that unreported allowance action.
Navie at Best, so Just Say No! (Score:2)
I will give this guy the benefit of doubt and just label him naive.
There are so many reasons for having cash, from simple convenience to privacy. I like the fact that I can literally throw money on the counter/table if I am in a hurry (has happened a few times in my life).
Also, it will be the end of most beggars, I believe, as I cannot see them accepting card payments soon (Thank you kind Ma'am, would you like a receipt?). Similarly for sellers of The Big Issue (a UK magazine sold by homeless people). A lot
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He's not "just" naive. He wrote an article about it for USA Today and received money for doing it. That makes him a paid shill.
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He could be naive, but I'm betting the financial industry is pushing for cashless, and would love their minions to do so as well. They'll make a percentage of the cut, along with another percentage selling off your personal data.
Back to the Future (Score:2)
Dear United States. New Zealand has had EFTPOS for years and years. Stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale. It is not a credit card, in that it is attached to your bank account. Getting out cash is now quite rare. It isn't strictly cashless; we still have cash, but the overwhelming majority of point of sale transactions are performed by EFTPOS. There is a small fee to the merchant for each transaction, but not the silly percentage based approach used by the credit card people. So entrenched i
Police will have an easy job (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as "cashless" becomes a reality, police won't have to lift a finger to arrest anyone accused of a crime. They'll just turn off his phone. The suspect will turn himself in to avoid starvation.
That's the good part of police states. Petty crime virtually disappears. The bad part is that the definition of "crime" expands so far as to encompass anyone who does something the rulers don't like. We're already seeing people being denied financial services like Paypal, Patreon, and even bank accounts simply because they speak their opinions in public. It's a new, terrifying level of control and since corporations control it instead of government, it's doing a nice job of boiling the frog.
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We're already seeing people being denied financial services like Paypal, Patreon, and even bank accounts simply because they speak their opinions in public.
Meaning specific companies have decided not to do business with a specific customer, or the government has decided that a person is not allowed to have a bank account? Because those are very different things.
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If the government and businesses are working together, not that much different.
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We're already seeing people being denied financial services like Paypal, Patreon, and even bank accounts simply because they speak their opinions in public.
Meaning specific companies have decided not to do business with a specific customer, or the government has decided that a person is not allowed to have a bank account? Because those are very different things.
"Citizen committees" with baseball bats and armed government agents are very different things too, in theory ... just not always in practice.
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As soon as "cashless" becomes a reality, police won't have to lift a finger to arrest anyone accused of a crime. They'll just turn off his phone. The suspect will turn himself in to avoid starvation.
Yes because "cashless" is an all encompassing word that not only hands police powers they don't have,
They don't? They already freeze bank accounts.
but also implies the specific solution to replace cash is to use a phone,
The pocket computer than approximately everyone carries, and that people are already using for digital cash? Yeah, that's just crazy talk (and also not super relevant to his point, but whatever)
and naturally why would you stop there when you could just add a slippery slope fallacy to properly round out your post.
The slope we are already tobogganing down ... hitting the odd "deplatforming" tree on the way ...
We're already there in some parts of the world. (Score:2)
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This is because you are not going to poor areas to eat. Half my favorite restaurants are cash only. The clientele is almost entirely non-white. Credit cards cost the business ~2% (lower % with higher monthly and other fees, or higher percent with no startup/monthly fees -- When you see these little businesses with the square card readers on a tablet -- those guys are paying 2.75% of everything they make to a company named "Square"). You don't notice this 2% tax on everything you do. People who are just
Barter (Score:2)
What about the disenfranchised? (Score:2)
I frequently give some spare change to the homeless or the sub-saharans that are selling tissues at the traffic circles. They likely don't even have a presence in the digital world and probably can't get one...
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Yes - to go fully cashless, society would have to first put in place the infrastructure necessary to guarantee everyone can have a bankable account and the tools to access it, regardless of address or education level or whatever, and deal with age (are we going to issue infants accounts at birth so Grandma can deposit gifts?).
I am cynical that this is possible - we have enough trouble providing universal <service> as it is, let alone guaranteeing universal banking.
old "news" (Score:2)
The end of cash has been announced for decades, basically every time some cashless payment system becomes popular. Credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, you name it.
Won't happen. Cash is still the easiest, most convenient payment for both small everyday transactions and private-to-private exchanges. It already has disappeared from most large purchases - people buying a house or a car on cash have become so rare that they're newsworthy. But in all other areas, change is much more slow than all the news articles c
Lunch.. (Score:2)
sure, why not (Score:2)
sure, i like how easy it is to pay with my card, it's my prefered way of paying for stuff.
i don't want to pay with my phone, anything involving money has no place on my phone.
They're already cashless (Score:2)
Being broke and unemployed sucks, but it is a cashless lifestyle.
Cashless == paperless. (Score:3)
At best we'll reach a "cashless" society in the same way we've reached a "paperless" office.
Cash will diminish, sure. But end?
What about kids? Are they going to start getting debit cards? Or will they just not be allowed to buy anything in this brave new world?
Lot's of people don't have bank accounts. What about them?
You don't replace one technology with another unless it's better in every way.
If the new is only better in most ways, then it's only going to mostly replace the old.
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Sad story.
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Cash is still useful in Sweden!
Have you ever lost or had your wallet stolen? You need to save a little bit of cash for expenses just in case.
Happened to me a couple years ago, I had my card skimmed just before Midsommar. The new one obviously didn't arrive in 2 working days and I needed to buy all the celebration necessities.
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Even in urban areas you need cash. Only in hipster areas do they accept phone payments. Other places certainly take credit or debit cards but cash is more convenient and easier to budget with.
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What do you need cash for in urban areas other than paying your dealer and buying something from someone you found on craigslist?
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When I grew up the rule of thumb (and sometimes store policy) was no credit cards for anything under $20. So fast food restaurants, ice cream stores, a quick run to the drug store. If you balance your accounts, or try to keep a budget, getting paperwork for each and every misc purchase is a lot of work.
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You will be forced.
But not because those people are forcing you.
Because you will soon find that there is no alternative for you, not because people have been vying to get rid of it, but because it's simply not practical to operate anymore.
For an example, see cheques.