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Comment by NorwegianDude | Hacker News Reader

Ease of payment? Paying with a card is much simpler and faster. Take your card, phone or watch and hold it to the terminal for one second and you're done. It's not normal for payouts to take 5 days. In Norway it's the next day.

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I was assuming payment for things like contractors or furnace repair that don't walk around with visa terminals.

I agree that in a grocery store, it is far easier to pay with a card.

That's done through a SEPA transfer that shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to complete, last time I paid a contractor more than 4k€ it was in their account in seconds.

But people usually do have a terminal to accept payment. If not, they usually just send you an invoice. Makes bookkeeping much simpler for the business too.

I have only paid in-person using NFC for nearly 10 years in Norway. I understand that the situation is different other places, but I'm literally not sure what our physical currency looks like now.

However, I walked into a store in Spain yesterday that was cash only. Now I have cash in EUR that I not only overpaid insanely for because of the ATM , but I also can't use it in Norway. If cash was no longer an option then it would be much simpler and cheaper as my bank does the currency exchange for me.

Digital payments are probably better in every way when it's the norm, except for privacy, and that's a big one.

> ow I have cash in EUR that I not only overpaid insanely for because of the ATM , but I also can't use it in Norway

Ha, well you'll have a heart attack when you look at your visa statement and realized that visa can charge even worse rates for currency conversion than ATM's do.

Plus visa charges the vendor a fee( around 2ish%) that has to be born by the buyer and seller. Cash doesn't have this built in tax.

Now I'll admit I have no idea bout Norway, so maybe you have some special way to pay with zero transaction fees and have the cash show up instantly with no holds on the payment ever, if so, good for you guys.

I don’t know much about Norway, but how would you transact during a natural disaster when power or network services are down for an extended period of time?

Centralized digital payments fail here as well.

LOL. I love these kinds of posts. Ok smarty pants, you like cash. You have none in your wallet during a natural disaster. You need to buy emergency supplies. The ATM does not work. Now what?

Please do not reply to this post saying that you are a "prepper".

How much nonsense is this? Is it so hard to think ahead and go to the ATM before the disaster hits? There are various types of disasters you know, some you see coming for weeks. Many people also keep cash on hand.

All you’ve shown is you have a delayed reaction, and claim preparing for a disaster is a bad thing. I mean think about that for a second.

I was visiting a place while a mild earthquake. It didn't cause any damage, but it took many locals by surprise, as it didn't take place in a seismic country.

Naturally the mobile phone network, GPRS/3G that POS devices relied on was overwhelmed. And maybe something else went wrong on the banks backend.

So international credit card transactions were hit or miss for half a day. I was happy I had got some local before the earthquake. So I was able to continue the rest of the day with no issues.

There's also the fee. When I bought a used van from a private party recently, I paid $8000 cash. No point in paying an extra percentage just to use a card.

> Take your card, phone or watch and hold it to the terminal for one second and you're done.

I'm not sure I'd feel safe if anyone could pay an amount above € 3000 after stealing my watch / phone / card and putting them on a terminal.

Well, you can just turn off payments on the stolen device.

As for the phone, you need to unlock the phone for larger purchases. The card requires a pin for larger purchases. The watch needs to be unlocked to after being removed from the arm.

So that is not something to be worried about.

Maybe in Norway, but there absolutely is no pin check when making large purchases through at least Apple Card via Apple Pay. I made a $9800 US purchase a few months back and it was just face ID, which apparently can be fooled easily.

Fooled easily? This is news to me. The YouTube videos that I have seen are elaborate. And no way you can do this at a store!

Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word easily. It can be spoofed, maybe not easily. And people buy things at more than a store, like online, and phones verify those purchases just the same.

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