So I spend cash whenever possible simply to "vote" that I am willing to deal with a little more hassle in the name of freedom. I also don't like that some private party has effectively inserted themselves into the economy skimming 1.5% or whatever off the top of practically all consumer spending. It's only a cost savings if you literally do away with cash - and that's a dystopia I don't want to live in.
We live in a digital age and it’s only going to evolve faster. Money is nothing more than numbers in a system.
Heh, and someone would say that Facebook posts don't say much about you, but I bet really quickly how and where you spend money give a good profile of who you are.
This is one of the main reasons that governments are pushing for cashless systems, because there is less evetax evasion and increased revenue
The builders benefit because they then wont pay any income tax on the job
This also means that if you stiff your server and leave no tip, they are still getting taxed as though you left 10%. If you really want to be a jerk, be slightly less of a jerk by leaving a $0.01 tip on the receipt. This will also allow them to post it to outrage-fueled social media for a tiny bit of temporary fame.
Most people aren't that invested into stigginit to da Man, or at least not just via their restaurant tips. You'd be better off paying cash for everything, no-receipt requested, and not involving the electronic point-of-sale till at all.
I am deeply comfortable with the idea that I have the option to keep my spending habits private, and not subject to data mining. I also like the idea of not being tracked all the time, and I like the idea of general anonymity. I don't like the idea that my options are being removed form me, with no discernible benefit to me. You like paying by card? Excellent, go right ahead. I like to have the option, sometimes cash, sometimes electronic.
> “Most citizens would feel uncomfortable to surrender these social functions to private companies,” he said.
> “It should be obvious that Sweden’s preparedness would be weakened if, in a serious crisis or war, we had not decided in advance how households and companies would pay for fuel, supplies and other necessities.”
As for the preparedness of a nation to handle a cashless economy during a time of war, wouldn't a electronic ledger be must safer and reliable than if the government say just started printing more money leading to inflation problems. This has happens numerous times throughout times of history during war and could be avoided with a cashless economy.
No. Aside from the added vulnerability of the infrastructure needed to maintain and interact with an electronic ledger, such a system either still allows a government to issue new tokens (and thus has no effect on the issue you raise) or requires blunter, higher overhead means at serving the same national functions that wartime money printing serves, which means either (or both) more internal disruption or greater probability of losing the war.
During a war power plants will get bombed. Network and power cables will get bombed. Roads, railroads and bridges will get bombed, so power plants wouldn't even get fuel.
(The reason for paranoia is the history of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi)
It is why many parts of the modern/post-war German bureaucracy were intentionally set up inefficient and why we still dislike any "central databases" for anything, from law enforcement to tax collection. Slow, decoupled government systems slow down unwanted usage patterns much more than valid ones, are generally harder to game (try explaining your urgent need for some data to a rural bavarian city hall employee) and easier to monitor/verify for citizens.
Your meal and beer entering your mouth probably took 100x as long as the difference between counting change and swiping a card. So why not puree them together? And damn anyone who thinks it was important to keep them separate; incomprehensible.
I don't think anyone would argue that since cars are bigger than cell phones, that we should make our cell phones as big as cars (it's incomprehensible to think that cars and cell phones should be different sizes). So why should we use a slower and less efficient payment method just because food takes more time to cook and prepare?
I don't think anyone would argue that since humans can only walk ~3mph, that airplanes should be limited to the same speed (it's incomprehensible to think that airplanes and humans should travel at different speeds). So why should we use a slower and less efficient payment method just because humans walk slower than an airplane flies?
Do you see what I'm getting at here? The speed at which you eat your food does not impact the speed of the payment method you prefer to use. All the payment method impacts is how much stuff you have to carry in your pockets, and how much can be stolen from you at any given moment.
I think what the parent means is that there are several other reasons, and at the same time makes a case against the main argument in favor of card transactions.
Many people simply feel they don't want to give up control over their cash, over information how they spend it, and basically: how they live their lives. As history shown us, once you give up this control, it's gone forever, and here are many actors eager to take over this information, not necessarily to the benefit of the citizen.
The argument is Amdahl's Law. Making something twice as fast which itself constitutes only 4% of the total latency doesn't make the whole task twice as fast, it only makes it 2% faster. Which absolutely does change how much you're willing to compromise in order to make that happen.
> I don't think anyone would argue that since humans can only walk ~3mph, that airplanes should be limited to the same speed (it's incomprehensible to think that airplanes and humans should travel at different speeds). So why should we use a slower and less efficient payment method just because humans walk slower than an airplane flies?
Because walking and flying are alternatives to each other rather than two components of the same task.
Consider why most people don't commute by air travel. Even if a plane would actually get you to work sooner, it isn't enough of an improvement to be worth the cost. You would still have to get to and from the airport, which creates a minimum latency no matter how fast the plane flies, and air travel is simply more expensive than driving.
Which is why high frequency traders pay electronically and not with cash, and why people traveling long distances fly. But people buying hamburgers may prefer to pay cash in a store they walked to because it's two blocks from where they live.
It does not, in fact. My insinuation is that perhaps some people have a preference against going cashless which has nothing to do with speed.
And sometimes it's even faster, when the card or the card reader don't work, the customer is old etc.
I understand I need to become more accustomed to the culture that I immigrate too, but that does not mean that there are not more efficient solutions compared to "the way its always been".
As for the card reader not working, this is usually only a problem with older machines or places without a strong internet connection.
You have to wait for the transaction to verify. That usually takes more than three seconds (at least here), which is roughly the amount of time it takes to get change.
Even with contactless, I always feel kind of bad to be paying by card at the super market because I'm slowing the queue down. If the amount goes over 20 euros or so and I have to enter my PIN, it's even slower. It's not even a contest compared to cash.
Where are you buying that has payment queues but doesn't scan the products? I only see people inputting the amount manually in restaurants/bars.
You can't consider the time it takes to enter the amount only in the case that suits you. If you have to enter the amount for cash, you have to enter it for the card as well.
Now that I think of it, I guess not all POSs require that (the cashier does the calculation for the change in their head), but in my experience they aren't common.
But yes, when the PIN comes into play it's slower than cash.
What it works out to be is that sometimes it's better to use card and sometimes it is better to use cash if speed is a factor. Someone that takes too long because they are fumbling for cash are just as likely to be the type of person that would have to fumble around for their card or have other issues operating the terminal.
Cash is quick and painless with only the most minimal amount of mental arithmetic necessary to give someone their change, not that your typical register won't spit it back out at you anyway.
If it is a sit down restaurant with table service though, there's no real positives or negatives to using either besides whatever is most convenient for you.
So all in all, all I see in any push to go cashless is the illusion of progress. It's all theater and it is strictly speaking, completely unnecessary to go cashless with considerable downsides if society is forced to.
OK maybe not inevitable but it's made a lot easier with wireless cards etc. And I do expect 'thugs' to catch on.
Plus, you can only do that on lower sums. If I pay a higher sum than allowed for wireless pay where I live (Sweden) I'd still need chip and pin, and often in restaurants I am told to enter the total sum plus whatever tip I want to give, then confirm, then enter pin.
So I'd say cash can be quicker in some cases, slower in other, but my main concern is in the area of privacy and security both of my cash, and my ability to pay in force majura-cases.
Have you seen the automated checkouts a lot of stores are installing? There is no cashier. You scan your items and insert bills in the slot. The change is calculated by a computer and returned immediately.
The coins needed to make any amount of change only weigh about an ounce.
How? The machines will literally take an entire stack of bills at once, read them and make change in the same time it takes to verify an electronic transaction.
You would need a stopwatch with sub-second precision to even tell the difference. Which one is faster is down more to the specific model of payment processing machine than the payment method.
And even if the card was theoretically faster, we're no longer talking about waiting for some high school kid to fumble around for 30 seconds. A difference of 300 milliseconds one way or the other is just pedantry.
And you can't count processing failures on one side but not the other. The machine can't read your card. The network is down. Some jerk at the bank fat fingered something and now you have to spend six hours on the phone sorting it out.
That isn't that impressive when you consider the equivalent traffic was handled in cash before electronic payment systems even existed.
> Even the time taken to empty the contents of your wallet into the appropriate slot of a cash system takes longer than those machines, never mind time taken to process the notes and coins, dispense change and allow you to put that change back in the appropriate compartments of your wallet.
Describing all the steps in detail doesn't make the total any longer. And half of that stuff can be done in parallel with other stuff. You can get out your money while you're waiting in line. You can put it away while you're walking out of the store. It doesn't add any real latency.
> And change-dispensing machines with their scanning software, moving parts and need to be fully stocked with change break down at least as often as networks for card based payments.
Stores typically have more than one checkout machine to handle the volume during peak traffic times, so one can be down and there is not even any consequence outside of peak hours, and only a minor delay even then.
If a network is down, it's down. Retail stores typically don't have redundant internet connections.
The obvious solution for extremely high volume systems is to have the fares come out to even numbers so there is no need to make change. How long are you imagining it takes to drop a coin or two into a turnstile?
Even if London Underground decided to upset millions of commuters by raising the price to a round £5 in the most expensive attempt to rescue an incorrect HN claim yet, the contactless system would still be quicker than the machine that scans a fiver. Trust us, we've actually used both...
> Even if London Underground decided to upset millions of commuters by raising the price to a round £5
If people would really be so upset with a 2% fare increase then imagine how happy they would be to round it down rather than up. It's even good policy -- encourage mass transit over driving.
For that matter you could issue single ride transit tokens for whatever exact price you like. The point of cash isn't to use a specific currency, it's to allow people to travel and make small purchases anonymously.
Even what NYC does now is better than using contactless payments, because you can buy a Metro Card for cash without providing a name. It's not quite as good because they still track the cards, but it's still better than having all of everyone's movements perfectly tracked by an Orwellian state computer.
> the contactless system would still be quicker than the machine that scans a fiver. Trust us, we've actually used both...
Comparing the fastest available electronic system to some kind of anachronism with paper tickets and slow readers is obviously going to favor the newer system -- although even then it's still a matter of seconds. But how is that the fair comparison? The comparison has to be between the best available electronic system and the best available cash-equivalent system that preserves privacy.
And dropping a dollar coin or a transit token into a slot in a turnstile is as close to instantaneous as makes no difference. Certainly not enough to justify tracking everyone's movements.
And in stores that don't accept credit cards you have to pay cash. What does that have to do with anything? Machines that can rapidly make change for cash purchases are still a thing that exist. Stores whose customers prefer them can install them -- and then not have to pay a percentage to the credit card companies.
Unfortunately, that’s already a trend we’ve been seeing in the US youth for the past 20 years.
And I know it doesn't matter but when you pay with a credit card or third party payment service you are not paying. Some other entity is.
Most recently, I have a repeatable bug in Walgreens where my newly issued credit card (old expired) will not run chip transactions. Their system requires me to attempt a chip transaction first (of which I must do three times) before it will allow me to finally swipe (and work). If I attempt to swipe at first it will require a chip transaction (and on, and on, and on...)
However I can't completely blame Walgreens on it; they're the only one that's reproducable 100% of the time (3-5x now since card was issued). I've also had to re-do transactions with that card at Target but that's hit-and-miss.
I doubt that's the case, especially since fees are usually percent based. Someone accepting, making change for, and depositing $1000 vs. $1 takes about the same amount of effort, but $1000 charged will cost them much more than $1 charge. Maybe if the fees were flat or something like 0.001%, but they're always much higher.
From what I can tell these people simply prefer cash. I just asked and my gf said it's just a lot faster to do it by hand.
We must be living in very different Germanys.
I suspect it is to some extent because it is easier to cook the books when you are receiving a large chunk of your income in cash, much less easy if it flows into your company through your bank account.