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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I was getting funny looks from taxi drivers and waitresses, all of whom were disappointed that another primitive foreigner was forcing them to use cash.

I simply don't like the thought that if I forget my phone, get my phone taken from me, drop my phone and it breaks, or run out of battery that I'll be stranded somewhere and unable to buy food, check in to a hotel, or even get home.

Societies should move toward more payment methods, not fewer. Redundancy is important, especially with something as essential as currency. Look at the recent CenturyLink outage which reduced non-cash sales at stores that relied on it for credit card transactions to zero.

Too much risk in too small a basket.

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A good point. I made sure to have a power pack (i.e., big, external charging battery) with me — not so that I could talk on the phone, but so that I could pay for things and/or call a taxi with DiDi. Without a charge on my phone, I'd effectively be penniless and stranded.

At least in China, they might be moving toward multiple and parallel services (i.e., WeChat and AliPay), but they're all based on phones. Which means that if you lose your phone, or if it breaks, you're really in trouble.

What would it take to establish a competitor to PayPal in the US?

Isn’t there a bunch of them now? Apple Pay Cash, Venmo, etc

Venmo is owned by PayPal.

Skype, Facebook Messenger, GMail etc.

Eventually, you'll be able to pay with your face and won't even need your phone in some places [1]. I wonder if they're taking and storing stereoscopic photos of my face when I go thru customs...

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/biometrics-payment-china-s...

I wonder if they're taking and storing stereoscopic photos of my face when I go thru customs.

At Customs, probably not. At Immigration, absolutely.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/hart-homeland-security...

Happened to me. Lost my phone. Bought a cheap Huawei for temporary usage and got a replacement SIM card same day, was up and running really fast. Eventually replaced with a second hand iPhone 5C. I don't think the risk exposure from phone loss or breakage is high.

Lost my phone. Bought a cheap Huawei

But the problem in a phone-only payment world is when you lose your phone, how do you buy the cheap temporary replacement? You literally have nothing to pay for it with.

Well, first, it'd probably be a phone-primary payment world, not a phone-only payment world. The traditional bank infrastructure would probably still exist.

But even if not, and it was truly a phone-only payment world, I can't believe that they wouldn't have some kind of backup process available.

And even if no backup process were available, the first friend I could bump into or email could help me buy a cheap phone, and then I'd pay them back after I'm up and running again.

I see no scenarios where my risk exposure is significant in a phone loss or breakage scenario.

Well, first, it'd probably be a phone-primary payment world, not a phone-only payment world

That's just moving the goalposts. The whole point of the original post was that moving to a phone-only payment world is a bad thing, and that's what is happening in some places (China is only one).

I see no scenarios where my risk exposure is significant in a phone loss or breakage scenario.

Then I submit that you lack imagination.

Here's a scenario: You're in a country you've never been before. You took an Uber to a restaurant recommended by the hotel concierge. Food was great. You pay with your phone, then leave.

In the street as you try to text your wife a picture of the awesome food, a passerby bumps into you and your phone goes through a sewer grate.

You now have no phone. You can't summon another Uber because you don't have access to the app. You can't call a cab because you can't pay for it. You can't take transit because your transit pass was on the phone. You can't walk back to the hotel, because your map is an app. You can't talk to the locals because your translation dictionary is an app. You're screwed.

You hail the cab and ask them to take you to a phone store, then keep the meter running until you get a new phone.

If you're that totally helpless in a foreign country without your phone, you probably should go with a friend or local.

they will not do that for you

You're ignoring the question. It's not about ability, it's about failure mode.

I like keys / phone / wallet because you can lose 2/3 of those things and still be fine in you home city.

Lose your phone/wallet? Call a cab, go home, get a backup CC or cash. Lose your keys/phone? You can buy/borrow a phone / call a locksmith. Worst case you can book a hotel with your wallet.

Etc.

Phone only..... you lose it, what do you do? Keyless locks with codes do offer part of a solution here.

Maybe the right answer in the future will just be to have two phones. Probably a fancy primary and a cheap backup.

You hail the cab and ask them

As noted above, you don't speak the language and both your foreign translation app and dictionary are in your now gone phone.

then keep the meter running until you get a new phone

That was funny. Thanks for that one.

If you're that totally helpless in a foreign country without your phone, you probably should go with a friend or local.

It's not the person who is helpless. It's being forced to rely on a single point of failure (the phone) that makes people helpless.

Also, there are literally millions solo travelers in the world. Telling someone they cannot travel unaccompanied makes no sense. The whole point of the map apps, the translation apps, the recommendation apps, etc... is to allow people to accomplish things without others.

Sorry, do you travel? At the end of the day, the phone isn't a single point of failure because the fail safe is just talking to people (I.e, the single point of failure is you, the traveler)

Your scenario is contrived. Imagine a mystical time before phones - maybe it was your pocket translation dictionary that fell down the grate? You're out of luck in much the same way - unless you just go back inside and talk to the restaurant and have them send a cab, or call the hotel, or find someone on the street to help you out.

Sorry, do you travel?

Yes. 27 countries so far. And I traveled to the ends of the earth in a time before cell phones even existed.

Imagine a mystical time before phones - maybe it was your pocket translation dictionary that fell down the grate? You're out of luck in much the same way - unless you just go back inside and talk to the restaurant and have them send a cab, or call the hotel, or find someone on the street to help you out.

If my pocket translator fell down the grate, I'd still be able to hail a cab, point to a location on my paper map, and pay with cash. I've done it in Thailand, Japan, and Turkey. Probably other places I don't remember.

The point made repeatedly upstream is that the phone is a single point of failure, and eliminating the cash option in favor of a smartphone is a seriously bad idea.

What use is going to a phone store when you don't have any means of paying for a phone? Further, in many countries you can't buy a sim card without ID so if your ID was stored on your phone, you're screwed there too.

I made this point separately, but you can use the phone you're buying to pay for itself, just log into WeChat on it while in the shop.

I hope you're carrying your passport in a foreign country.

I hope you're carrying your passport in a foreign country.

Not possible everywhere. In some places, the hotel holds on to your passport.

logging into your wechat account on a new phone is not that easy. it asks you for verification by sending an sms to your old number, and there was also something about needing to contact old wechat friends to have them verify you. (i don't remember the details of how that worked and why it was necessary)

> I hope you're carrying your passport in a foreign country.

One should absolutely not do this. You'll be royally screwed if you lose your passport. Leave it in your hotel room, with just a photo of it on your phone.

How do you pay for a new phone?

Well at that point I'm guessing you buy a few $25 backup phones that you leave turned off in your bag. Also in that cash free society, which will probably not have phone numbers anymore, adding a few more phones that you never use will probably be free or $1/month.

Or maybe cell phone networks will turn into something equivalent to wifi, that you could pick and choose from a software menu.

Or, in the OPs scenario, you could just carry $50 in your wallet?

That sounds a lot like losing your wallet or dropping it in the sewer. Except that losing your wallet is a lot worse. In the situation you described, I'd just borrow the driver's phone to login on WeChat and pay.

>That sounds a lot like losing your wallet or dropping it in the sewer

You have your phone out all the time. The risk of losing/breaking it is significantly higher than your wallet which sits your pocket 99.9% of the time.

Funny aside: I've seen a lot of anecdotes on HN and from friends that having a smartwatch negates the need for your phone to be out all the time. New technologies create new problems that create new technological solutions all the time, I guess.

I suppose at some point all this might be moot in the long term because people will have succumbed to having chips implanted in their skin or brain, and we won't even really need phones anymore. /a little bit of s

> That sounds a lot like losing your wallet

Many tourists keep backup cash and travel documents in a waist-pack just for that contingency.

To expand on the original scenario, last year my primary phone was soaked in freak torrential rain and shut-off. Thankfully I had loaded all my travel docs, password safe and maps to a backup tablet and I was able to call into a service station and arrange my affairs over their wifi. It took two days for my phone to dry out.

Always, always take a backup when away from home.

> I'd just borrow the driver's phone to login on WeChat and pay

You'd know your password from memory? You'd trust his phone? Would you use banking apps on his phone too?

What happens if you lost your debit card in an older, cash only society?

What happens if you lost your debit card in an older, cash only society?

If it's a cash-only society, then the debit card wouldn't be useful anyway. Only cash would be useful in a cash-only society.

You can use the phone you're buying to pay for itself, just log into WeChat on it while in the shop.

Luckily, you can rent battery backs for your cell phone everywhere in major cities in China (my experience was in Shanghai). I loved using my phone for everything and it was a little unsettling leaving the apartment only with my papers and a phone.

yes i’m sure your battery will work great when you lose your phone

What's the difference between losing your wallet and being unable to purchase anything?

it has been recently asserted that not accepting cash in china is a violation of the law. so for the time being, you can't be forced to use online payments.

i use it only for buying things off the internet or for the rare occasions where i don't have enough cash on me.

i also have a separate bank account only for online payments to limit the damage should the online payment system be somehow exploited.

I simply don't like the thought that if I forget my cash, get my cash taken from me, drop my cash by mistake, or run out of cash that I'll be stranded somewhere and unable to buy food, check in to a hotel, or even get home.

Sounds similar?

> Societies should move toward more payment methods, not fewer. Redundancy is important

Totally agree. In some stores in China, you can spend money by face recognition.

It will take a persistent wartime DoS attack to fix that behavior.

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