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Comment by dexwiz | Hacker News Reader

So this is what the new scrip for the company store looks like? Facebook is having a hard time getting Libra started, but it will be trivial for Walmart. All they have to do is give employees a bonus to get paid in Walbucks over USD/Euro/Other, and maybe a slight discount when using it. Walmart already employs thousands or even millions that are economically vulnerable, in part because Walmart destroyed their local retail economy. This would only lock those people in further.

How long before Amazon announces their coin? Free Prime delivery if using A-Coin!

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I would go further than that even.

I'm from the kind of family where the vast majority of my relatives are nearly exclusively Walmart shoppers. Every now and again, if they want to splurge, they use Target. And there are a couple who can afford, once in a very rare blue moon, to use Amazon or the Apple store.

Here's the thing though, even when they are using Target, or Amazon, or the Apple store, that segment of the population is probably doing it not with bank cards, but with prepaid Walmart connected cards. So Walmart, if they wanted, could create something that would be actually more valuable than dollars to people from my family's socioeconomic background. If they could pay their rent and electric in Wally Bucks, they would literally have no use for dollars at all.

And that class of people is very large, and growing. (At least it is out here in Wisconsin. And I'd imagine most of fly over country is similar.)

IIRC Amazon has a perks program for their high performing employees called Swag bucks which can be used to purchase prime and shop at Amazon :).

>which can be used to purchase prime and shop at Amazon :).

I wish.

At least at the Amazon FC where I work, they can purchase cheap branded stuff like water bottles, lanyards and t-shirts, gift cards and coupons for the commissary, but not Prime or general purchases.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can comment but I believe the US would not allow that after they blocked them from their payment-by-atm-card scheme.

It is not legal in the US to pay employees using scrip:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/29/531.34

> "Scrip, tokens, credit cards, “dope checks,” coupons, and similar devices are not proper mediums of payment under the Act. They are neither cash nor “other facilities” within the meaning of section 3(m). However, the use of such devices for the purpose of conveniently and accurately measuring wages earned or facilities furnished during a single pay period {{ is not prohibited. }} Piecework earnings, for example, may be calculated by issuing tokens (representing a fixed amount of work performed) to the employee, which are redeemed at the end of the pay period for cash. The tokens do not discharge the obligation of the employer to pay wages, but they may enable him to determine the amount of cash which is due to the employee. Similarly, board, lodging, or other facilities may be furnished during the pay period in exchange for scrip or coupons issued prior to the end of the pay period."

Gig economy my friend. Back the currency in some nominal amount of USD and pay the independent contractor at the door 1 walbuck per customer greeted.

So long as the employer provides a free token-USD exchange that pays out to employees the cash amount equal to their wage I don't see an issue; people can do what they want with their earnings.

> The old Truck enactments were very numerous and date from about the year 1464. The particular evil intended to be remedied was the truck system, or payment by masters of their men's wages wholly or in part with goods – a system open to various abuse – when workmen were forced to take goods at their master's valuation. The statutes were applied first to one branch of manufacture, and then in succession to others, as experience and the progress of manufactures dictated, until they embraced the whole or nearly the whole of the manufactures of England. They established the obligation, and produced, or at least fortified the custom, of uniformly paying the whole wages of artificers in the current coin of the realm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_Acts

Walmart already has something like this in the form of direct-deposit prepaid checking cards with baked-in walmart discounts:

https://www.walmartmoneycard.com/about-our-products

this is taking it one step further, and it seems like using cryptocurrency technology to basically eliminate/compete with visa as a payment network (and therefore recoup txn fees locally and earn them outside of their own stores)

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