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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. That's max 100EUR in coins

And I'm glad coins are more popular in Europe than in the US because those $1 notes take too much space

Wow, as someone from the US I always thought the $1 notes were far superior to the equivalent coins in other countries. I dislike having coins in my pocket, but already have a note or 2. Adding a couple more adds negligent space.

You ruin notes if you put them in your pocket. Coins you can just drop in the coin pocket on jeans. I wish the 1USD coin was more than a legal tender collector item. Maybe up to 2USD would be nice.

I carry my cash in a pocket on my pants. It doesn't get ruined.

Maybe it is because I put my hands in my pocket all the time or something if I am the only one with this problem ..

Definitely not the only one, an entire country decided that durability is important for the $1 denomination, I'll copy what I posted above:

I was recently in El Salvador, which uses the USD as an official currency (alongside BTC lol). Despite using dollars, the $1 coins are used instead of notes almost exclusively for that denomination (mostly presidential dollars and some silver Susan B Anthony dollars). I was curious and did a bit of research, apparently the reason is that because day-to-day transactions are done almost entirely in small amounts of cash the paper notes have a very short lifespan (apparently <1yr) there, while coins will last decades.

Maybe some notes, but $1 bills are pretty durable. And most places will take them in nearly any condition, although, I did have a merchant in Ocean City, NJ recently that wouldn't take a $1 with a small tear, and I hear merchants overseas do want pristine USD.

More andecdotes but I've had british pound coins that were minted in the early 60's still in passable condition; nearly every dollar bill I've had in the US has been grimy and darkened and felt like it was three seconds from falling apart.

(ok, hyperbole, but I've had a few like that)

The US note was printed after 2001, that's a considerable time difference.

Though your $20 notes are usually in excellent condition for some reason compared to the british equivalent.

> nearly every dollar bill I've had in the US has been grimy and darkened and felt like it was three seconds from falling apart.

Yeah, that's how they are, but feeling like they're going to fall apart and actually falling appart are two different things.

> Though your $20 notes are usually in excellent condition for some reason compared to the british equivalent.

$20 bills tend to get picked up at the bank, spent at a merchant, and deposited at a bank. Banks will send worn notes to be retired. Many businesses don't take bills larger than $20, so don't use $20s to make change. It's uncommon to pay vendors and employees in cash, so merchants end up with a surplus of $20s that need to be deposited.

$1 bills are used in change, so they tend to get exchanged frequently. Few consumers will deal with $1s at a bank, and many businesses won't ever deposit them, but may need to make withdrawls in $1s so they can make change. They tend to pass through many hands before they get back to a bank where their condition can be checked.

> More andecdotes but I've had british pound coins that were minted in the early 60's still in passable condition;

The sterling pound coin was introduced in 1983. The 60s were pre-decimalisation even.

Yeah, that makes sense. Coins are clearly more durable, and for denominations that are handled frequently in places without access to federal reserve replacement, durability wins over preference / aggregate weight and volume.

In mainland US, preference for paper $1s isn't unduly burdensome. As a merchant, deposit the worst of the $1s and use the rest as change, no big deal. As a consumer, if someone doesn't take your grimy, half torn $1, try it a couple more places and then take it to a bank (perhaps even your bank). But it's unsurprising that doesn't really work for El Salvador.

Yup. El Salvador started importing dollar coins around 2012 in order to reduce currency substitution costs.

YMMV. I can slip a few bills in with my credit cards. If I can't really just ignore coins like I generally do in the US (not that I use much cash in the US at this point), I need some separate pouch to carry them. I dislike ~$1+ coins because you pretty much have to use them if you're paying and getting change in cash.

$1 coins have flopped whenever they've been tried in more or less living memory in the US.

Ironic, because people in the US don't usually use $1 coins because they take up too much space.

Technically we have 10€ coins that you can pay with (but usually nobody does).

And it’s also not a mandatory 100EUR coin acceptance limit - it is left to the discretion of the trader.

In the US, a lot of places won't readily (or at all) take $100 bills. The US is sort of in bill and coinage denomination stasis (denominations are essentially the same as they were over 50 years ago) though it's probably largely academic at this point given that many people basically don't use cash.

Fully agreed about $100 bills - even $50 bills are often rejected at places with lots of counterfeiting risk and/or mostly small purchases.

Many people in the US basically don’t use cash, quite true - but in some parts of the country like NYC, many restaurants and convenience stores are cash-only or only accept cards with a higher price or a minimum purchase amount. So cash is still very commonly carried in NYC and similar cities. The pandemic made it rarer than before for cards not to be accepted at all, but it still happens, as do minimums and price differences.

In case you’re wondering about legality: the policies I describe above can be legal or illegal depending on the specifics, but both legal and illegal versions of them are commonly seen in practice.

I believe it’s illegal to put a minimum sale price on credit card transactions in NY. Though I still see it frequently in NYC.

Maybe it's illegal or maybe it's against the store's merchant card agreement. In any case, in practice, retailers/restaurants/etc. can do pretty much whatever they want and probably get away with it so long as it's not too egregious.

Minimums used to be forbidden by many merchant agreements, but due to the federal Dodd-Frank Act from 2010, merchants can set credit card minimums up to no more than $10, as long as they set the same minimum for all types of credit cards they accept. This applies nationwide including NYC. Higher minimums are indeed still illegal, though that doesn’t mean you won’t still see them sometimes.

This provision of the Dodd-Frank Act does not cover debit cards, and I believe merchant agreements still prohibit minimums for debit cards. This prohibition is widely violated. I have no idea whether this prohibition is officially applicable to debit cards when they are processed as credit cards (which usually means no PIN for most US cards) - I’ve heard people say it’s not - but it definitely covers debit cards when they are processed as debit cards (which again for most US cards is always the case if a PIN is input).

As for NY’s current rules on price differences for credit cards vs cash and debit cards vs cash and the required disclosures, those are a bit complex, so I’ll just link an official explanation here:

https://dos.ny.gov/news/consumer-alert-nys-division-consumer...

But the TL;DR is, yes different pricing is legal if worded and disclosed correctly. To nobody’s surprise, illegal implementations remain common as well.

Thanks for the response. I wonder what the intent is.

I can see a merchant not wanting to pay the credit card transaction fee if the purchase is so low as to make the sale a wash or worse.

I just wonder if the $10 limit is throwing the dog a bone and small merchants really want/need a higher minimum to protect their margins.

Seems like not allowing merchants to decide how they accept payments is an overreach by the government.

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