Hacker News Reader

Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

Dude where do you live or what kind of bubble do you surround yourself with? I can tell you that cash is still the king in Europe in many places. I don't mean the usual boring cycle of commute-work-lunch-work-bar/restaurant/cinema/shopping/etc., that obviously can be covered by card. But stepping outside of this, many places are cash-only. Small entrance fees, food stalls on the side of the road, ice cream shop etc. My car garage not doing credit-card payment for god knows why reason. Yes you can somehow get by and exist, but depriving yourself of many small and often wonderful experiences. Few banknotes don't take any space/weight anyway.

Just to be clear - we talk about 2nd biggest city in Switzerland and life in and around it.

View on HN

>My car garage not doing credit-card payment for god knows why reason.

Tax evasion, avoiding deal with chargebacks, and not having to pay merchant account fees. However, those fees are nearly zero for debit card accounts, and chargebacks are pretty much non existent with Chip + Pin (or Apple Pay or EMV), so I would most likely guess tax evasion. I've been to many restaurants that offer 10% discounts for cash payments, versus card, which works perfectly as they get a portion of the sale on the record for plausible deniability, and a portion off the record.

I very rarely carry cash now. Very occasionally you get a place which is cash only, but in London at least there are vastly more places which are card only (small stalls etc which have a iPad EPOS and a card reader, which avoids the need to worry about cash being counted/stolen/paid into the bank).

I think this is _really_ regional. Lots of places in Germany don't take cards. Virtually everywhere in Ireland takes cards now (for small places via mobile phone gadgets). Some places in Sweden don't take cash.

Dude, In which bubble do you live?;-) In the netherlands, (maestro) card payments are king. Currently in Denmark and last week in Sweden: (maestro) card payments. And in Sweden apps like Swish are really popular as well. (Pay to a phone number).

Granted: germany and france are a bit behind in this.

France may be behind, but Germany is consciously choosing to keep using cash. By the way, the Dutch central bank has also said that cash should remain.

Chiming in from Canada. Tap to pay is mostly ubiquitous here. You will find the odd fresh fruit/vegetable stand that doesn't at least have something like Square set up, but that is the exception. I only have cash on me if someone happens to repay me in cash.

In London, food stalls by the side of the road generally use wireless or USB-powered contactless gadgets, connected to phones via bluetooth, to take payment.

My local Turkish grill has not only started taking cards, but has signed up to some kind of healthy eating wheeze:

https://alehm.org.uk/services/healthier-catering-commitment/

This country isn't what it used to be.

If you are really in Europe, you should know better than to generalize across 44 countries.

In the UK most of these smaller places got card machines with the rollout of contactless (which has lower fees), there are still some places that only accept cash, but it's not many anymore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com