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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

If you visit Georgia (the country, not the state), they have a cool system for cash payments to websites.

You go on the website, order your stuff. When the normal payment screen that comes up, instead of Mastercard or visa, you choose "Cash". You'll then be sent a text message with a number (or the number appears on the screen if you don't have a phone). You go to any ATM anywhere in the country, put that number into the ATM, feed the cash into the coin and note slot, and then your goods will be ordered.

The same system is used for paying taxes in cash, utility bills in cash, etc.

They can do refunds in cash using the same system.

You do pay a fairly hefty (10% if I remember correctly) fee for using that service though.

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That is still depended on some sort of payment rails though, no? Bank, government or whoever can decline transactions to that “cash” action.

I think what is different though is they don't know what you're buying (I think).

It's more expensive to know.

Or it's accessible for those who operate without banks. I think there is a term for it, "unbanked" or something like that... there's some decent chunk of the population that doesn't have a bank account / can't get a credit card / etc.

Not sure why that would be any different than credit card payments, which don't itemize every purchase either - they still know how much and to what seller, tracking a seller and banning them seems just as easy.

What they don't get is the buyer's information.

...except for the time and place, with a device that almost certainly has cameras for theft deterrence. Which might be fine now, but seems pretty law-enforcement-capturable.

CC certainly has the capability for extremely granular and personal details. For now, this is usually restricted to hotel stays and airline trips. But the tech exists to encode quite a bit of information about both sides of a transaction and its nature.

>> But the tech exists to encode quite a bit of information about both sides of a transaction and its nature.

Which has monetary value and thus will be monetized, sooner or later.

CC's do get transaction information.

Check out "Level 3 data"

https://www.tidalcommerce.com/learn/what-is-level-3-data

As someone who has implemented code revolving around Level 3 data, the information provided is often of incredibly low quality.

Many shopping carts don't bother sending the data, because they'd rather say "let's support 900 obscure payment platforms in a de-minimis way" than "let's support a handful WELL"

Then there's actually getting the right information into the message to the processor. There's vague and inconsistent documentation on how to tag things like "commodity codes" and data formatting (Should the per-unit price be rendered as $12.79 or $12.7903?)

Even if you have the right intentions, you can easily blow things up by just having out-of-bounds data-- encoding a nonsense discount or tax rate.

What happens is that people set up software that sets up bare-minimum and mediocre data for every order that's good enough to get the "you sent level 3 data" rates, and the actual visibility is still quite poor.

Maybe there are some top-tier merchants who actually do everything right, but there's a hell of a lot of noise amid the signal.

I've done payments too, and I agree. But I'm assuming all the major retailers in the USA (Target/Walmart/Supermarkets) all do this. (And probably more with the data from the register not going through the CC machine).

Absent any information, I just assumed that any supermarket that can handle EBT/SNAP etc was sending transaction details anyway -- the computer will refuse or only partially pay the transaction if any items not elegible for benifits is on the order.

But this is a remote transaction - no matter the form of currency, an intermediary would be required.

If they have the account number. Ideally you would only need a bank account with any bank for this to work. That would allow anyone to receive payment this way.

This is available in much of Asia actually. It is common to pay in "cash" in many Asian countries and this service is available through 7/Eleven.

Brazil has a similar system called “boleto”, you chose that option and the systems promts you a barcode you can use to pay with cash in ATMs, paharmacie and some other stores with no comission AFAIK.

It has some limits (10000 BRL when i used it) but thats more than enough for most purchases

Switzerland has (or had?) those red and blue slips that you could pay online or at a bank or perhaps an ATM. It made online payments virtually zero overhead, not sure if it was anonymous.

Do you have an account with the ATM provider? I'm wondering how these payment providers are in compliance with KYC and KYT regulatuons.

TLDR: it is a feature, not a bug

Long version:

I don't think Georgia has copied what I think of as the mistake of KYC, yet at least.

I feel KYC regulations as they exist today are a big mistake, that does little good, more harm than good and causes a lot of extra work and annoyance.

People always seem to think that de-anonymizing things will always make things better.

As I get older I feel the more someone wants to know my real identify the more likely I am to be abused somehow.

Meanwhile, talking to thousands of absolute strangers here on HN or via an anonymous reddit account or something feels relatively safe.

I have also with time started to think that in the long run the risk from governments harming me or my family is a lot bigger than the risk that someone else does it.

Perhaps expand on this into a blog post and post it here on HN...?

Even if the ship has sailed on living in an identity-optional society, at least in most of the world, I still think it's good to record the benefits of such a society.

I can't do it from this account and I might not be the best writer to get the points through, but yes, someone should probably do it.

No - you don't give your identity to the ATM, or to the website. Which is lucky, because Georgia doesn't even have a good record of every citizen's name....

Well that's one of the points of a 'cash' transaction... Identity-optional.

At least in Thailand, no, you do not have an account with the ATM provider to use the cash deposit functionality. The closest thing to KYC is that most ATMs have a security camera.

KYC is not needed as cash is still a thing. It’s accepted that pretty much anonymous physical transactions can and will occur and the police will need to do old fashioned detective work to find the criminal.

on a similar note, you can buy airplane tickets online and then pay cash at any 7-11 before your flight.

Surprise, the ATM is bound to the same people that excommunicated Hatreon, Gab and whatever else. You did not give your cash to the website, you gave it to a bank.

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