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Comment by omegaanon | Hacker News Reader

If you go into London now, so many homeless people have those card readers as people are just using their cards or mobile pay. Definitely see the change after the pandemic where they advertised cash in supermarkets to be the spreader of the virus.

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In Brazil, with a huge informal economy, you can now find all sorts of small street vendors with a card reader. Also the government has successfully rolled out Pix less than 2yrs ago, with now 50% of the population as registered users. Pix is the smartphone payment protocol which has basically nuked cash transactions countrywide, or at least where mobile networks work.

So, at least in Brazil, card readers are already on the way out for informal workers, and even some SMBs, and Pix with its QR codes and phone numbers are in.

This process has started in Puerto Rico, too. People still mostly use cash, but almost every vendor these days has ATH-Movil, a phone-based payment system through your bank.

I've heard the same with China and WeChat Pay even pre pandemic. This is just from second hand anecdotes though so take it with a grain of salt.

Can confirm. Beggars and small street paddlers in China all just have their WeChat Pay QR code printed and laminated or you can scan their phone. Hell, summer of 2018 when I was in Hong Kong there was an American tourist(? granted, he did look like one) that was begging with his QR code printed so he could "fly back home".

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