What is the reason we still use physical money?
For me, it is that I don't like all my purchases to be tracked in one giant database.
If you still use cash, what are your reasons?
For me, it is that I don't like all my purchases to be tracked in one giant database.
If you still use cash, what are your reasons?
I’ve had my cards rejected randomly. Since I travel a lot and mainly use cards abroad, I’ve had my cards rejected more times than not. It’s pretty troublesome to be stranded somewhere and unable to get a hotel or ride a train because your card was rejected.
I always keep a fat wad of cash for that reason. Also that at any time my bank could be shut down, governments or banks could decide I don’t have a right to buy something, power outages could render payments useless, or hackers could easily take down a network if they were motivated (and state-level actors have plenty of motivation now).
Concretely, I went across town last year with my wife to try a popular counter-service restaurant. Their payment system wasn't working, and during the time I paid for and waited for my order, they turned away about 10 other people who didn't have cash to pay.
Otherwise the centralized digital currency road someday leads to a bureaucrat locking your account because you wrongthinked.
You can already catch glimpses of this with payment processors refusing to do business with people they disagree with ideologically.
And not everyone has access to Venmo. Anyone under the age of 18 can't legally use Venmo.
There are plenty of legit uses for paper currency.
1. it's simple to stick to a budget, I withdraw every week x$ and don't allow myself to withdraw until the next one. Compared to the tap tap everywhere, there's no surprise, it's very predictable and never over budget. Yes, you could use an app but I don't carry a phone everywhere so it wouldn't work for me
2. I don't like hard to read bank statement full of stuff I don't care about. For all those things, I only pay cash (aka 95% of the time) so whenever I pull a bank statement, it's very easy to read with very few lines each month that only has the things I care about and I really like that simplicity
3. I don't like the idea of credit card companies triple charging for what I see being a useless service, taking a cut from my fees, another cut from the vendor and because that's not enough another cut by selling that data, that alone is enough to get me out. Maybe some credit card companies don't resell their data but I have other things to do than reading their term of service when cash work great for me
Not me personally, but in the UK, postal orders [0] are still a thing because they let you walk into a post office, hand over some cash and get a token that you can give to a named recipient, who can then themselves walk into a post office and obtain the specified amount of cash. This lets you relatively safely exchange money without either party possessing a bank account. They are still accepted by some govt institutions so as not to discriminate people without bank accounts. When I was a kid they were used to snail-mail birthday-present money.
That is one big reason, yes. A very important one.
Aside from that, cash is optimal in terms of dependencies. Namely, a cash transacion is solely between the only two parties that are relevant to the transaction, the buyer and the seller. Nothing can interfere or stop the payment if the buyer and seller agree if they use cash.
All other payment types introduce third parties into the mix, all of whom can now block the transaction. So it adds risk.
And the newer electronic payment types (like paypal, venmo etc, as opposed to credit cards) are even more sketchy. As HN knows from tons of submissions, they will not only block you on a whim but also steal any and all previous money you may have received. I'll never use any of those, the risk is way too high.
Finally, there is also infrastructure risk. Even if the payment processor isn't trying to block your transaction or steal your money, the payment is dependent on all the infrastructure working correctly (server, their internet, your internet, your phone in many cases, etc). If anything is down, suddenly you can't pay anymore. While not super common, it is nonetheless relatively frequent around here to walk into a small shop where they have a sign saying "our internet is down, cash only today". So important to always have cash handy.
The credit card cashback and buyer protections are attractive admittedly, so I end up using credit cards for anything larger but try to generally always use cash for anything under $100 for all the benefits of cash.
As any engineer knows, every additional moving part dependency you add to a system also adds risk of failure. Cash has zero external dependencies so it is optimally resilient.
There are multiple middlemen involved in any transaction, value is extracted _and_ data
Everything I do is linked to my identity
The lack of physical interaction more easily results in overspending
I can't actually pay a person unless they invest in hardware (which 99.99% of people do not have), cards produce a hierarchy of "businesses" and "consumers"
I'm using cards for small payments because of convenience, but there's no way I'd ever trust all my money to bank.
But, for daily use? I only use it for Kijiji/Facebook Marketplace purchases, that's pretty much it. I don't even use it for charity these days, most will have an online option.
I agree 101% in principle with the notion of less trackable (not untrackable) method of payment, but now that I have kids and work and mortgage and so on, I must admit that on a daily basis, convenience wins :-/
I also tip heavy and I want that money to go directly to the worker. I don't care if they pocket it right then and there. If I appreciate the service they gave and want to reward them directly without having a faceless manager or company take a cut, cash is the best way to do it.
Gotta keep my doordash buddies happy!
It's the one thing that stands in the way of governments (or supranational unions) pushing negative interest rates or even harder means to surreptitiously or openly disown citizens via the money itself e.g. as an easy way to reduce the state debt in times of state debt crisis.
Of course there are other ways for states to do that (e.g. inflation)… but those come with much bigger other problems and obstacles for any politician who would want to use them.
In comparison to what ?
In comparison to bank transfer, then yes, maybe there's "funny business" going on.
In comparison to card payment, then probably not.
The "problem" with card payments from a small business perspective is three-fold:
1. You take a cashflow hit. Card companies typically sit on the cash for 5–7 days before allowing you to withdraw.
2. You take a fees hit, typically 1–2%, but AMEX are famous about charging more ! And that's just the transaction fee, if you are dealing with currency conversion then add a few percent extra...
3. The fraud risk (you do the job, someone pays on a card ... few weeks later, the card company claws the money back from you because either it wasn't their card or they did a fraudulent chargeback)
Yes you could say cash is technically irrevocable too, but it comes with other risks for the small business (counterfeit notes, employees taking from the till etc.etc.)
I should be careful about saying "often". In my experience it has been something that contractors I've done work with numerous times might throw my way as a way for me to pay less and for them to accomplish whatever goal they have. For all I know they want cash so they can run to the casino.
Not sure it’s always tax avoidance, in my doctors case I just assume some portion covered the credit card fee, and some portion covered some reduced paperwork burden.
2. poker
3. back up in case of emergency