I’m at a cashless festival – why does it feel like a dystopian future? | Hacker News Reader

I’m at a cashless festival – why does it feel like a dystopian future?

theguardian.com

21 pointsbeardyw14 comments

I was at a festival that did this earlier this year. A bunch of us were joking about selectively hacking/jamming the vendor wifi so that only specific vendor’s rfid terminals could verify wristbands. “That’s a nice sushi stall you have there. It’d be a pity if you couldn’t make any sales…<nudge nudge wink wink>”

A friend went so far as to experiment, he had a drone with a 2.4gHz video transmitter that could be turned up to 500mW, and it successfully shut down all the pos transactions in sight for 30 seconds or so… there is (at least in my experience) a reasonable crossover between festival crowd and hacker/cyber security crowd.

Lol. Because it is a shit implementation.

In sweden, even garage sales etc have been cashless since at least 5 years back. People just send each other money with an app. Even small vendors accept payment that way. Larger stores accept cash, but everyone uses nfc/card.

Swish isn't really comparable here since everyone in Sweden uses it and it has nothing to do with individual festivals.

The real question is why did they even implement a system themselves? Why not just allow credit cards?

Yes, the problem with going cashless is that it's not yet convenient, and not the centralized control and surveillance it enables. Another insightful article from the Guardian.

Tim Dowling isn’t an investigative journalist, he writes a weekly column where he moans about various slice-of-life type things in a self-deprecating and slightly-amusing way. No idea why this is on HN.

I have been cashless for years. It is convenient if you live somewhere that invests in the infrastrure that enables it.

I live in the 3rd world and haven't used cash in probably 2-3 years. I just use my credit card to tap and go, nothing could be simpler.

For a lot of people the convenience is the greater detail there. I'm sorry not everyone is as paranoid about surveillance as you.

India has the best cashless system in the world, it's called UPI -unified payment interface. With the help of this you literally go anywhere without cash.

Even small vendors and Street hawkers use upi qr code to get their business done.

What makes it the best? It doesn't sound any different from what we use around here. Now if I can travel to India and use it as a tourist, that would be something.

AFAIK the main difference is it's interoperable, like if you could scan a cashapp qr with venmo and it would just work.

In Denmark we have wireless cards as “the normal way” to pay, but also mobile pay that works with QR codes and also allows person to person transfers, which is how you normally settle things with friends.

Won’t claim it’s the best in the world, but no one ever carry’s cash.

This is common at state festivals (and local city festivals), and has been going on for years using “coupons” or other fake festival cash. They do it to skim their rake from the vendors.

TLDR; Guy performed at festival where they had pay-by-bracelet, spent 30m figuring it out how to add money to buy a beer. Turned out beer was free backstage.

You have been saved from wasting 10m of ur life.

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