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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

I haven't touched a physical dollar bill in multiple years.

Assuming you’re in the US, what do you do if you lose connectivity, like leaving an urban area? What’s your option if you break your phone?

what options would you suggest for the unbanked or those without smartphones?

Just because you haven’t handled actu al cash in a while doesn’t mean others haven’t. A large percentage of people still rely on cash transactions to get thru the day.

No offense, but have you heard of credit/debit/check cards? I rarely use my phone for payments unless I forget my wallet.

All I'm suggesting is that the "federal reserve note" is not as universal anymore. It's only practically useful if I have it.

So? ATMs are everywhere. If you need to access transit in a pinch, you can just take out some cash. It's the universal fallback payment.

Most transit systems do not provide any change. So if you go to an ATM and get $20, then break it for a $2.00 fare, you lose $18.00. That's not a solution.

I bought a train ticket the other day from a vending machine. You put in a $20 and it spits out a ticket and your change. Systems that are incapable of doing this are designed poorly. That is not a shortcoming of cash or technology, it is a shortcoming of the transit operator.

That's not the only issue. Cash also slows down the system. If I shove my crumpled dollar bill into the machine it will slow down the whole route, adding cost for the agency. The agency then has to have staff to count the cash, then hire an armored car to take it to a bank. It's not that simple.

This is why you have tickets or transit tokens. You can buy one on the bus/train, but then it costs 30% more and so nobody does that. Then you can buy a token using any payment method you like, whenever you like. Buy them from a vending machine at the train station with cash, order a month's worth on your credit card and have them shipped to your home, whatever you prefer.

Dropping an exact value coin into a machine is a solved problem, is reliable, instantaneous, has automatic redundancy in high volume locations because there will be multiple machines, protects privacy, etc.

> The agency then has to have staff to count the cash, then hire an armored car to take it to a bank. It's not that simple.

That is not a significant cost. The service is paid a small amount of money to collect a much larger amount of money, and if you do more frequent pickups then less security is required and the ratio stays low.

Meanwhile with cash you don't have to deal with chargebacks, computer intrusions, processing fees, etc.

Parent comment is referring to a ticket vending machine external to the coach, not an on-coach bill acceptor. It does not slow down the route.

Have you ever taken a bus? Every bus I've ever taken doesn't give change, so it's not a matter of just getting a $20 bill from an ATM and being good to go. You have to have exact change (and often it's not an even dollar amount which is that much more of a pain).

Plus, people paying cash slow down the bus as they fumble for their wallets and count out their coins and such. If enough people pay cash, it slows down the bus significantly. We should be trying to get to the point where nobody pays cash when boarding buses for this reason alone.

> Plus, people paying cash slow down the bus as they fumble for their wallets and count out their coins and such.

Around here, on board the busses, they have completely automated machines that can read all the notes and dispense change automatically, they even seem pretty robust at it (crumpled bills, etc work fine) - they essentially as good a job as it's possible to do with cash.

And it still takes agonizingly longer than tapping a transit card and everyone else on the bus hates you.

Yes, I too love paying exorbitant fees for the privilege of taking money out of an ATM.

I pay $0 for debit transactions, but anywhere from $1 to $4 for an ATM withdrawal.

Use your bank's ATM then.

This is so practical.

You should switch banks or join a credit union.

Why? So I can take filthy money I never use out of an ATM I don't want to use?

Not ever carrying cash is just as much a defense measure as it is a practical measure, though also almost everything supports some form of electronic payments, be it in the form of plastic or phone.

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