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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

I have to go out of my way to get cash. It’s not that I avoid carrying it, it’s that I never use it for anything so I don’t have it on hand. I never pay for anything with cash except tips, and the smallest bills I can get from an ATM are $20, which (except in the case of movers) is already more than a typical delivery tip.

Exactly. I haven’t carried a significant amount of cash for several years now. I’ll pull out a little if I’m meeting friends at a cash only bar or something but otherwise, it’s just an encumbrance and a liability.

> I read this sort of thing all of the time and it sounds as if you're just going out of your way to not carry cash for the sake of it. The drawer behind me right now has loose change in it, my jeans pocket always has a fiver.

What happens when you tip that fiver away? You have to go to the ATM and replace it.

It's been years since I've carried a wallet in my pocket. When I go out I have my keys in one pocket and a phone, whose case has a slot for a credit card in it, in the other pocket. I never have my debit card with me, and my memory of the PIN keeps getting rustier. The barrier to getting cash and then carrying it around keeps getting higher; and it's rare that I have a problem from the lack of it.

The big problem here is you've no fall-back for when the place you're trying to pay, or their merchant services provider, has a communications/network outage or malware attack or has assets frozen - some of which affect multiple large retailers.

There have been many instances over the years, even just in the U.K., where small and large stores have been unable to accept digital/network-required payments and ended up with massive queues or customers abandoning shopping carts full of items due to not having cash.

"Spar cyber attack hits more than 300 convenience stores" (2021-12) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lancashire-59554433

"Manx Telecom broadband outage affects 4,000" (2020-08) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-53920785

"Wirecard: 'It’s really bad. I’m left with nothing'" (2020-06) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53222181

"Debit card glitch means thousands charged twice" (2018-09) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-45400234

"Visa (Europe) says service returning to normal" (2018-06) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44335804

"Asda card machine fault leads to queues at checkouts" (2016-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37815973

"RBS says it has resolved debit card computer glitch" (2016-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37658559

"Lloyds Banking Group says card problems sorted" (2014-01) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25907000

"Card payments system crash disrupts shoppers" (2010-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11458962

Also, interesting and somewhat unexpected contactless from long distance!

"Contactless 'charging errors' at Marks and Spencer" (2013-05) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22545804

And there's no fallback for when you have to make multiple payments and don't have the cash on hand already. There's no fallback for an ATM outage where you can't withdraw the cash. There's no fallback for a communications/network outage at the bank where they can't query your balance and withdraw funds for you.

There are problems with any system. This one has the advantage of convenience.

Ok. But it's the rare instance where I can't postpone my purchase until the system comes back online, or just go elsewhere. I can't remember the last time the US had a nationwide outage like that. Maybe an individual store but not the entire region.

I keep an emergency $20 on me going back to the early 1990s but I've only ever needed to spend it once in almost 30 years.

Or the store just has to close entirely because they "can't" accept cash.

He went out of his way because he simply doesn't carry cash anymore, what's so hard to grasp?

I live in a capital city in Europe and I hardly ever have cash at hand because EVERYONE accepts credit cards, I can even go days without reaching for my wallet because of NFC.

It sounds like the whole benefit behind this new form of Apple Pay acceptance is that there is no app. You just double tap the sleep/wake button to open Apple Pay and then tap the phone to the payee's phone. That's no more complicated then reaching for a wallet and pulling cash out of the wallet.

It's significantly more complicated because there's a protocol and negotiation involved.

If I want to give you $1, I hold my hand out and there it is. I can literally stuff it into your back pocket. You're not involved in the exchange, there is no exchange.

We can even do it UDP style - imagine that I check out of a hotel room and leave a dollar on the bedside table for the room staff. There's not even an ack.

By contrast this involves me asking if you have an iPhone, and then asking if it has this feature, and then we both get them out, and then I type in an amount, and then we tap. We'll just assume that it works perfectly first time. Maybe you need data, maybe you don't. It's not everywhere, basement of a bar, long distance train comes to mind.

It's not rocket science, sure, but it's way more complicated.

In the UK I can send payments using online banking. If I already know the payment details of the recipient, then sending a transfer is approximately the same level of convenience as cash e.g. I just choose the amount and press send. But the initial setup is far more onerous.

It's only simpler if you're a cash refusenik for whatever reason and so you first inject the whole "well then I had to go to an ATM". The equivalent would be like me saying "well first I had to get an iPhone", obviously that would be unfair.

The user doesn't know that any of that stuff is going on, though, and you don't need data for this to work.

It's not anywhere near as complicated as you're making it out to be. Those saying "I had to go to an ATM" are simply voicing a legitimate downside of cash that this doesn't have because you only have to get an iPhone once whereas you have to go to an ATM/bank every time you need cash.

How can you not know it's going on?

I'm at your house and I've just done a thing for you. You want to give me some money.

This is the protocol: "Hi, can I pay you for this?" "Sure." "Do you have an iPhone?" "Yes." "Okay, here you go." <writes numbers in, taps phone>.

This is assuming I actually have one. Otherwise you have to do a fallback method.

Contrast with the protocol for cash:

<reaches into pocket, counts out $x, hands over $x>.

It's the same amount of effort as the very final step of the other protocol.

There is no fallback here because I can guarantee that I have cash.

The whole thing is just obviously overcomplicated. If you like cards and phones and stuff because they're techy, that's cool man. I like tech too.

But it's utterly false that they're somehow simpler or more convenient. They work in some specific golden paths whereas the only case in which cash doesn't work is online.

The whole ATM problem you're describing is also super contrived, you may as well say that baked beans are difficult to eat because every time you eat one you need to buy one. Well sure, but you don't buy them one by one do you.

And it's not as if the only place a person gets cash is an ATM, everyone who I pay or who pays me has just gotten cash from.... not an ATM.

I dunno man, whatever, this is just a really weird thread in general, it's like you're treating cash as this magical archaic thing Grandad used to use when to me it's an integrated part of my everyday life.

Is this one of those "Cus COVID" things that don't actually make rational sense but apparently loads of people do it now just "Cus"?

I have to go out of my way to have any cash, which I do, since I happen to go to bars that still accept cash (many in my area are cashless). It's nice to throw down cash in a crowd vs. trying to swipe and sign when the line is crazy.

To get money, I have to drive to an ATM and pay 1-5% fee to convert my money from bits to paper. Fortunately I have a bank that refunds ATM fees.

The point of this thread is that we are one step closer to making your first scenario "Hey let me tap you the money" and that's the end of the discussion.

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