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Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

> All customers must be able to pay with cards or contactless devices ...

I find that directive/rule/law very very very nice. I wish more were like that. I don't see why I'd need to have a phone with me and even less why I'd need to install any app on it.

> (at present, some charging networks require subscriptions or app downloads).

Makes me happy to know they'll either comply or GTFO.

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Then why not require cash payment as an option. Vending machines have been able to do that for well over half a century.

Probably the cost associated with storing, counting, insuring, securing, depositing the money. I get the privacy aspect but then why not get a prepaid credit card or something like that?

AFAIK as part of anti-money-laundering (AML) efforts, most places require ID when you try to buy prepaid cards with cash.

Sounds reasonable. You are still anonymous towards the merchant when you use the prepaid card

No it doesn't. I resent being asked to produce ID for every little thing. Someone tried to card me when I bought beer in a supermarket the other day. I'm 52.

That must have been traumatic for you

I didn't know that, thanks, yeah it's the same here in Canada, EU presumably too.

Well, then we're SOL and won't be able to charge our cars (fully) anonymously.

Is that an EU thing? In the US you can buy as many $500 visa cards as you want at any grocery store with no ID. You may need a manager's override if you're buying over $10,000 but that's just to verify that you're not falling for a gift card scam.

Converting >$10k from card to cash on the other hand often requires an ID

> In the US you can buy as many $500 visa cards as you want at any grocery store with no ID.

Canada requires retaining a record of the ID used to buy the prepaid credit cards, too.

https://fintrac-canafe.canada.ca/guidance-directives/client-...

There’s a lot of complication involved there. Someone has to come by regularly, take the deposited money, put in the appropriate number of coins to give change, the machines break regularly, yadda yadda.

I’m annoyed by todays cashless society too but there aren’t good answers to these problems.

Not only that, the sums involved and siting (relatively unprotected) are going to be very attractive to theft, driving up the cost to secure.

Sell prepaid cards at approved vendors and in more centralized vending machines which take cash. Kind of like most public transit cards.

This was also an issue with mobile phone payments, it was solved then, it can be solved today.

It makes a lot more sense for public transit, though: they’re located in dense cities with many vendors nearby. Same can’t be said of a car charging network.

This was actually talked about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36816539 tldr; Money laundering is the bigger issue.

However if we ignore the problem with money laundering, prepaid cards can still be a nice option for many people. If you are about to leave for a road trip you just make sure your card has enough money on it to cover the trip, then you don’t have to worry about your phone dying or your bank card failing etc. which can get you stranded.

> I’m annoyed by todays cashless society too but there aren’t good answers to these problems.

Those problems have been solved for generations. The solutions aren’t free and require some work, but it’s a little crazy to say there “there aren’t good answers to these problems.” If they mandated that cash should be accepted, the companies would figure it out and it really would be fine.

But maybe not for the amounts we talk about when it comes to charging. Thinking of it, I cannot remember whem I last saw someone pay cash at a gas station. Most pay by card.

We have a lot of unmanned stations here. No option for cash payments so most will just pay with card. And it seems to work well enough.

EU is broadly moving to a cashless economy. There are certainly not going to be any new laws that mandate cash payment. The opposite is happening all the time, with more and more things becoming impossible to buy with cash.

I think this war is well and truly lost. Cashless systems are superior in every single way aside from privacy.

Because it's the EU. Several member states are basically entirely cashless

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