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Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

wheres the disruptive fintech for these underbanked? Sounds like a gold mine for the right marketing team.

That fintech will get blacklisted by the other, bigger players. Not sure what else can be done to disrupt fintech to that point.

In the worst case, you could set up brick and mortar shops for getting dollar bills in and out.

I think you've just stumbled on the reason that folks are so determined to move us to a "cashless society"

In a cashless society, once the folks in charge deplatform you, you cease to be able to engage in any transactions of any kind, and you basically cease to exist.

I agree that that is a consequence. But I don't think it's the primary motivation.

When I talk to people around me about cash vs cards everyone agrees that paying with card is so much more convenient, especially when you just have to gently tap the reader with your card.

I know many people who have the phone case with space for a few cards. They don't even carry a wallet anymore. They have nowhere to put bulky coins or even bills.

Everything else: Decreased risk of being pick-pocketed, decreased risk of money vans being robbed, increased surveillance, increased control. All those are just secondary concerns.

Oh, individuals who enjoy using credit cards absolutely have convenience as the primary goal.

Regimes working on creating cash-free societies, where there are no legal anonymous payment schemes, on the other hand, simply want to use the threat of turning off your access to the economy as a means of control.

There will always be money around, even if it's not cash dollars

You're talking about people on the edge of society, rightfully so or more they already have many ways of making deals

Meanwhile cashless in a country like Italy could expose the 30% of tax evasion that erodes our freedom as honest and "paying for everybody who's not doing it" citizens

There are other payment platforms that still work here. The problem with most of these alternative platforms is their fraud rates are absolutely through the roof. For example, Green Dot and NetSpend are companies that provide pre-paid, secured credit cards online, and as someone who worked at a consumer fintech company, one of these cards coming through automatically raised the fraud score because we had so many issues with payments from these cards.

It's supposed to be called government. Public banking (like what California has recently approved) should be the answer for legal and under-banked.

But what do you do when the government is trying to shut down your access to banking (as in the case of gun sellers)?

The government doesn't need tricks to ban something...

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

Banking is a citizen right. Well, at least it should be.

In Germany every bank is obliged to offer everyone (including homeless, overindebted, asylum seekers, etc.) a so-called base account, which offers a way to receive payments and pay the bills and get a basic debit card. However, the law has a mistake: The price of the base account is not regulated. And many banks charge more than for a "normal" account.

Germany is still a cash country in many aspects. It's worse in Sweden in Finland, where you often cannot buy a train ticket without a debit (or credit) card, cash is no longer accepted.

> In Germany every bank is obliged to offer everyone a so-called base account

That's very commendable; I wish more countries had such a regulation. Does it extend to non-citizens living in Germany? What about to visitors to Germany? Could someone open an account (by right) while there on a holiday?

Non-citizens absolutely. Completely illegal immigrants no, but rejected asylum seekers who cannot be reasonably expected to leave the country yes. (The term is "geduldet", but I don't know the exact legal definition.) Visitors no, I'd guess.

Right, now I see why you ask, I wrote citizen right. Maybe I should have written human right.

In German there is the term of the "foreign co-citizen", not sure what an English equivalent would be. So when I wrote citizen I had in mind those with German citizenship and foreign co-citizens. It just includes everyone living in the country. (Illegal immigrants are smaller topic in Germany than the US, so there is little need to think about that distinction.)

“Tolerated”

There are free, base functionality accounts in every bank in Poland. Debit card use is also free provided you make few transactions per month.

What a strange rule. Debit cards presumably only cost the bank money if you use them.

So what. Everyone being capable of doing so should pay tax to maintain society functional. That banks should pay tax in form of a couple of free debit card transactions for poor people is not an unfair share. Banks earn enough money because society no longer works without debit cards.

No, I was saying that it is strange that the debit card is only free if you use it a few times. If you give me a debit card and I don't use it, what did it cost you? A few pennies for the plastic?

Ah, I read the original message as the card and its usage are free as long as you don't have too many transactions. No idea, my knowledge about Poland is very close to zero :(

It's not strange, it's the banks fighting back to prevent "cannibalization". Kind of like how Intuit lobbied the government to gimp the free tax tool.

I would be terrified to put money in a California-government-run banking institution.

What if they decided that I had too much money? What if they decided they didn't like who I voted for?

They'd just close the account and seize the money, and you'd have no recourse at all, because it's the state doing it.

In Sweden, the central bank is investigating the possibility of issuing an official digital currency. Quite interesting project IMHO.

https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/e-krona/e-krona...

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