Cashless Sucks | Hacker News Reader

Cashless Sucks

aeon.co

70 pointst0bia_s67 comments

IRL I exclusively use cash, bitcoin, and visa gift cards (purchased with cash).

Small vendors very often give me discounts. They hate paying stripe/cc fees and want to encourage more to use cash.

The visa gift cards are a last resort. I prefer not to support cashless businesses as they discriminate against the undocumented, unbanked, and privacy conscious. I have been the former two at previous points in my life, and remain the latter.

I refuse to disclose my timestamped location and what I purchased for lunch, or at a pharmacy, to Visa or Mastercard, Stripe, and god only knows how many insurance companies, political campaigns, and adtech firms they sell data to.

IRL I mostly use credit cards. On a recent trip to the UK+Ireland, I exclusively used credit cards behind Apple Pay.

Indeed I rarely use an actual credit card and I leave most of them in a sock drawer. It's usually behind Apple Pay. So I was pretty damned annoyed when I got a burger (not particularly good) at the Sports Page deep in Google-ville and they didn't take Apple Pay or presumably Google Pay either.

I used to use debit cards (behind Apple Pay) but I didn't get any benefit from them. Now I have the Amex trifecta.

I still use cash occasionally. Tomorrow morning, I'll be buying a knee brace that I found on Facebook Marketplace with cash. But my favorite taco truck switched over to Toast and so I switched to using my phone.

I don't hit ATMs at all anymore and am training my family not to either. I get cash at the grocery store when I need it.

Is this brave new world better than cash? Pretty much it is. It's safer for me and safer for the vendor. If the men in black hats want to know that I frequent Tacos Sinaloa on International late at night, I do. They make a good taco.

Is this "safety" really worth excluding ~5% of the US unbanked from participating in commerce if you succeed in helping cashless proponents succeed?

Is it worth the very real risk of this data empowering political candidates with information on what money is spent on, where, and the demographics of who spends it, to help them do (sadly very effective) propaganda targeting?

Statistically advertisers and social media content weighting systems armed with enough data to target you, -will- change your behavior. Our brains are easy to hack no matter how smart we think we are. Ask any magician or casino operator.

Is it worth rising insurance rates when POS systems sell out who is buying what over-the-counter drugs at the pharmacy? Or how often they buy car oil from autozone?

I wonder how much safety hundreds of billions of dollars of US transaction value could buy if placed somewhere besides the pockets of payment corpos.

We could still adopt safe, private, digital cash with all the advantages of the current corpo system, and none of the above drawbacks.

We must reject corpo cash to get something better into popular use though.

> Is this brave new world better than cash? Pretty much it is.

I guess it depends on what you consider "better". I think it's worse overall, personally. Sure, there are safety gains, but they're overshadowed (in my opinion) by the losses in other areas.

> If the men in black hats want to know that I frequent Tacos...

Can you imagine any other downsides to a cashless society?

If so, what do you think we should do to prevent them while still retaining the benefits of cashless transactions?

Society? Yeah, that would be the unbanked. But cash still exists and I occasionally get it to pay people.

The problem of “unbanked people” is solvable, as can be seen in Nordic countries. They also have laws to force some parties (like banks) to accept cash.

People who avoid using cash becoming the majority are why so many businesses are being conned into going cashless.

To support the unbanked, you must literally vote with your wallet.

I'm talking about a future where cash is banned.

Do you think that's a good world? Why or why not?

I'm not seeing your future where cash is banned. I am seeing my present where I'm not using cash very much (but still a little).

Try pretending to be unbanked and switching to only cash for a month and you will quickly learn how many businesses refuse US currency, accepting only visabucks or masterbucks now.

We need laws mandating businesses accept cash, but until then the more people using it, the less businesses can justify dropping it

> you will quickly learn how many businesses refuse US currency

Can you provide examples?

We must live in very different areas, because there is not a physical store I use that would not take cash, and a lot of would prefer it over credit cards. Even my apartment building rent can be paid in cash if you really wanted. Maybe the utility companies would not take cash?

Obviously online purchases are different here, but a lot of bigger places (Apple, Amazon, etc.) have gift cards you can buy with cash locally to use online at the shop.

On the flip side, there are places I frequent that accept only cash.

In Palo Alto, and the wider bay area I visit bars and restaurants often with small "card only" signs which I have learned to spot early. I do not always spot them, and get a bill and am suddenly asked to pay with a card, often having to pay a friend cash to cover for me.

A couple times I just tipped extra to get an employee to pay with a card for me.

I wonder what would happen if you didn't spot the sign and simply told them you don't have a card. Like will they accept the cash? Let you eat for free? Call the cops?

Ah, yeah I guess if you are in the heart of Silicon Valley places like this might be more prevalent. In my experience, the rest of the US isn’t like this, even major cities (at least one ones I’ve lived in and traveled to).

Fortunately, in my part of the US, it's very difficult to find a place that won't accept cash.

You're telling me that you're unable to imagine this?

Really?

Previous poster asked if it was ok to exclude a certain population and you basically answered "yes because the privacy/convenience ratio is worth it for me". I think you missed his point.

I like apple pay (shops do not see my credit card nb anymore, less tracking on their side) but I think cash is a mandatory requirement to keep state's power in check. Cashless shops should be forbidden. And as previously mentioned, a vulnerable portion of the population relies on cash.

Which 3 cards are your trifecta? I’m guessing green and gold are two of them?

Platinum, Gold and BCE.

I don't really like the Platinum but then I got a huge SUB and the benefits, credits and perks outweigh the $695 AF. It's just complex to use to get AF back.

I really like the Gold. It's has a $250 AF and $240 in easy to use credits.

The BCE is $0 AF and 3% cash back from online retail purchase. The BBP is also good, 2x on everything and no AF. A quadfecta.

I used to use debit only but I didn't get anything from this. I'm happy with Amex but I may revisit the Platinum.

How you play this depends on whether you do points or cash or both. I lean toward points but really I do both.

I use BCE, but only for that sweet 5% cashback at supermarkets.

BCE is 3% cash for groceries, online retail + gas which is pretty good for $0 AF. Still, I use the Gold Card for groceries and restaurants, 4X points and 3x on flights.

There are other eco systems, Chase + Capital One. There are hotel cards (Ritz Carlton which is a Marriott card), airline cards (Alaska Airlines Visa). The whole thing becomes a game of which card where and using credits and benefits to justify the AF. But it's second nature to me at this point. Apple Pay and probably Google Pay makes this easy. I rarely use a physical card.

Occasionally, Amex gets declined (grill inside an Indian casino late at night on I5, weird). Then I just use a Visa debit. In modern traveling, you need Visa as a backup. Visa is pretty universal.

Not OP. Gold, Platinum, and Blue Biz Plus. I swapped out the Blue Biz for Fidelity’s credit card, ymmv. Business platinum might also be a better fit if you have your own business, vs personal platinum (for deducting annual fee).

https://thepointsguy.com/credit-cards/american-express/amex-...

Those of you complaining about cash being inconvenient.

You are feeding an unnecessary middleman taking another piece of the pie and in the end you are paying more for the same thing even if you don't see it right in front of you.

What we should have is an electronic cash equivalent operated by the central bank, no tracking of transactions and zero fees as we have with cash.

https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491

https://www.axios.com/2023/07/22/fednow-instant-payments-cre...

> FedNow launch hints at payments wars to come

> Pix, the Brazilian instant-payments system, was nonexistent pre-pandemic. Today, per Matera, a Brazilian payments software company, Pix sees 8.1 billion transactions per quarter. That's more than the next two highest payments methods — credit cards and debit cards — combined. Credit card transactions have fallen by 20% in one year. “Pix shows how intuitive payments can be," says Matera CEO Carlos Netto. "It poses the greatest threat yet to credit card dominance."

> Americans will be slow to give up their credit cards. But if merchants get aggressive in pushing us toward something more instantaneous, they could end up saving tens of billions of dollars in interchange fees.

https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/fednow-could-sco...

> Walmart and Kroger are reportedly interested in using FedNow to give customers an alternative to card payments, according to Payments Dive, which cited comments from the retailers’ representatives during a panel at the Faster Payments Council spring meeting.

Soon.

The only way there's going to be any competition is if stores lower the price of goods by the equivalent amount that they save from credit card transaction fees.

Otherwise, consumers will continue to prefer using credit cards due to cash back, safety, and convenience.

Merchants will surcharge the credit cards to drive consumers to cheaper instant rails. Many already do surcharge, and the number continues to increase. If you want to pay 3-4% extra to use credit card rails as a consumer, that is a choice. T-Mobile requires autopay customers to move to ACH from credit cards to continue to receive their autopay discount. AT&T and Verizon charge surcharges to pay with credit card. This is only the beginning, merchants will get more comfortable as peers make these attempts and are successful.

I expect Walmart’s progress here to be a bellwether. Their consumers are price sensitive and they have the power to drive consumer behavior. Their success (or lack thereof) will drive the actions of smaller volume merchants. Walmart spends ~$3B on credit and debit interchange fees annually; they are highly incentivized to get off of expensive payment rails and specifically commented on this during the public FedNow comment period.

Anecdotally, my landscapers will only take Zelle or a check. I don’t blame them.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-car...

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/30/credit-card-fee-fight-pits-p...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012866

https://www.federalreserve.gov/SECRS/2019/December/20191227/...

https://www.ft.com/content/c50a840b-394d-45e3-894d-301d9e1fa... | https://archive.today/m3qnH

> Payment consultancy TSG reckons between 5-10 per cent of 8mn card-accepting small businesses in the US now charge fees for credit card usage. That is up from 2 per cent five years ago. Underscoring the growing trend, TSG said about 15 per cent of new merchants who accept card payments have a surcharge policy.

> Business owners may feel they have no choice. Credit card fees, which average 2-4 per cent of the transaction amount, are most merchants’ highest operating cost after labour, says the National Retail Federation. Surcharges help cover the interchange fees that they would otherwise pay to card network and bank.

thats illegal in many EU countries, if not EU wide. its even illegal to print on the reciept how much the credit card transaction fee was

more specifically it is not allowed to charge a fee for common payment methods. exceptions are uncommon credit cards (everything except visa and mastercard) or paypal.

that means if you pay cash or card, the price is the same.

you are also not allowed to reject cards for small amounts.

It honestly doesn't matter much for Europe though because Europe's interchange fees are capped at around 10% the US interchange fees.

I keep my money at a bank. If I want to spend cash, I have to go to the bank, the ATM, and get it. The bank is indeed an unavoidable middle man. The card just simplifies the transaction.

One could imagine though having universal accounts with the central bank, and no middleman for most transactions. Cashless but banks for checking and basic savings really aren't necessary.

In many places it's also possible to receive a cash back from the counter. Works in Germany, works in the UK.

Works here as well, at the grocery store and this is safer.

> What we should have is an electronic cash equivalent operated by the central bank

Is it really impossible for people to envision even the small failure modes of such a system? What about the big, evil, malicious ones?

Did we forget the Wikileaks banking blockade already? How about the Canadian trucker protest? How about freelance porn models?

It's critically important that you retain the ability to pay and be paid when the state would really prefer that you not be able to.

Sure, I'd like to see a fee free system set up. But I currently would much rather pay the fee than deal with cash.

Realistically cash has plenty of fees in the form of security and handling which are just baked in to the price of everything we buy. As cash becomes less common, these hidden fees start to go away.

> operated by the central bank

Who's paying for this? What happens if I want to spend my money abroad? Why would you assume a central bank won't be tracking us?

Visa, Mastercard, Amex, et al are all extracting profit from fees and ad-intelligence, but only about half of this revenue results in net profit. Running these things isn't free.

> you are paying more for the same thing even if you don't see it right in front of you

By extension, I infer that you think cash is free to handle. It's not.

For a high-volume business (eg supermarket, big box store), cash is an absolute nightmare. Counting at the point of sale, counterfeiting, storing, balancing and float management. That has time cost, while mistakes at any point have direct monetary costs. A 2% card fee compares pretty favourably, especially if you go cash-free.

I welcome any disruptors, but we need to be realistic. Given the awful history of simple bank transfers in the US, I wouldn't be expecting the answer to come from them.

I hate change and wish I could have a change card.

What's better than a middleman?

An even bigger middleman! :)

The difference is a central bank middleman is (at least in theory) democratically owned an operated. You have a say in how it's run. Contrast to today's system where the likes of JP Morgan and Wells Fargo can defraud people in broad daylight with zero repercussion.

> defraud people in broad daylight with zero repercussion

Hmmmmm

>unnecessary middleman

Well, define unnecessary. A car is also unnecessary to go 50miles. Still nice to have I would say. My point is, carrying a wallet around is not the greatest experience ever, especially when it's super hot.

>You are paying more

I'm not, Im curious to understand how your card works.

>Electronic cash

I agree that's a great idea actually. EU is working on it since years already. Let's make MasterCard/amex/visa unnecessary please.

any excuse to bring up gnu taler again https://taler.net/en/index.html

Cash is very inconvenient to use. It requires frequent trips to some place to get it. When paying for something, if I get coins back, I have to figure out a way to use them? I don't.

Credit cards give me about 2% back on my purchases. I get nothing back with cash. I do carry some cash. But, I pull it out as a matter of last resort.

Cashless is winning primarily because of massive massive convenience. You can pretend all day long that cash is just as convenient, and you'd be wrong.

Also, govt. actually prefers if you use cash. When something bad happens to your cash, like if it goes up in smoke, govt. gets free money.

Cash also incentivizes violent crime. Muggings have trended down since people have predominantly stopped carrying cash. It's a win for businesses as well, because payroll for managing tills and the cost of armored couriers is expensive. Cash is a liability.

Also, having credit is far preferable to worrying about day to day liquidity. It's not like you can cash stocks out or shift money from savings accounts in minutes if you have an unexpected expense.

Some countries have no cents, just notes. I hope we get there soon. I hate carrying coins and is one of the main reasons I don't use cash often.

Leftover coins used to bother me. Not any more.

I usually use them first on my next transaction and then charge the remaining to my credit card .

That way no fees to exchange coins

I spent a few years visiting India and the all cash economy (where paytm was only starting to unfold) was not very intuitive. Nobody has change. Nobody wants to give you change, especially when you’re a foreigner. You just have to carry a large roll of 100 rupee notes around everywhere. Things are better there now, Paytm works wonderfully if you can get on to it, and American Express works for me virtually everywhere else.

Thats why you geoblocked your site for India ?

The geofence notice even says it was even built in Delhi among other locations.

C’mon Kyle, shows us what’s behind the choli, dude!

Not India specifically, but much of the world. I've learned over the years it's better to keep a much more limited web presence if you're sharing details about your personal life (for example, for the hotel people who would google their guests to determine if their room has anything of interest in it)

Well, cash is annoying.

If you want to experience a time machine IRL, go to any supermarket/store that lacks self-checkouts, in a cash-preferred country. That's how things worked 30-40++ years ago, and you will never want to go back again.

That's how I do it every time I shop. It's perfectly fine.

T-Mobile no longer offers Autopay discounts for credit cards. Only debit cards (which have less fraud protection) or directly linking a bank account for ACH. How many data breaches have taken place at US telcos, leaking information for millions of consumers?

With FedNow coming online at some US banks, transaction-level data would be visible to the central bank. Connecting mobile phone billing to bank accounts can create a digital identity link between online traffic and legal identity. Such a link can be used for content "personalization", admission control, credit scoring, custom pricing, and more.

There is a U.S. regulatory effort to end the fees associated with credit cards which pay for points, airline/hotel miles, etc. Ignoring for a moment that these fees constitute the bulk of airline profits, the end of these fees would further influence the choice of cashless credit payments vs cashless debit/ACH payments. Future payments like CBDCs are unlikely to have the perks of Present credit cards. CBDC downsides have been discussed on HN and elsewhere.

It is technically possible to have cashless payment systems which preserve transaction freedom, without artificially conflating payments with digital identity. Even then, there will always be a role for physical payment mechanisms like cash.

I agree we should have some kind of private digital cash equivalent. However, I never use cash and I never want to ever again.

Cash should be a fundamental right. It is more important than the right to bear arms because without cash the payment system can be used to regulate that right to bear arms by proxy as well as speech (see companies being cancelled by credit card processors), religion, and many civil liberties.

"Congress shall not pass any law requiring a third-party , record keeping or identity verification for commerce between individuals unless the goods or services in question are specifically and with reasonable cause regulated by established law; the right to accumulate wealth and the presumption of innocence regarding how such wealth was obtained shall not be infringed; neither shall the natural right to share wealth and property with others free of charge be regulated or restricted"

That is the amendment I want!

Cashless is classist. Not everyone has easy access to banking. There's plenty of uses for credit, debit, wire, crypto, but thinking that cash doesn't have its place is short-sighted. Giving some 2-5% of every purchase to some other company for every transaction is not always the best way to do business.

As someone heavily invested in Block (SQ) and Bitcoin (BTC), I suggest using cash for small vendors.

People mention the "inconvenience" but this not really about physical currency. This is more about the ability to transact value nearly instantly and in a pseudo anonymous way. The best way currently to do this still remains "cash" aka the physical currency.

I mean who could really oppose this except for narcs?

The importance of cash in a technological society (2 weeks ago, 123 pts, 161 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38239286

I go cashless for one simple reason, going to the bank to withdraw money and making sure I carry the right change is inconvenient.

I think to get the purported freedom cash entails you'd also have to not have a bank account (which governments can freeze) or large illiquid assets which governments can confiscate.

I don't think having mediums like money is the solution to government overreach. I think the only possible solution is having a popular distrust of the government - which on a positive note is something that is slowly growing around the world

I hate ATMs. When I need cash (which is rarely) I get it at the grocery store. I have to use my debit card but it costs me nothing. Thank you, grocery store.

1/7th of the world can't use most non crypto cashless systems. That's not "better."

"You will not be able to give money to your kids" is a point I commonly see these conspiracy theorists go on about, and it's complete nonsense.

I absolutely hate having cash on me, everyone at work just transfers each other for lunch etc. Cash is very very inconvenient because I have to drive to the next town over to deposit it and make it useful.

So much of the article was pointing out why exactly the author is not one those "conspiracy theorists" and how they hate being associated with them. Did you just skip over that part?

Good article, and I sort of guess that maybe the author is trying to make people of their own political stripe that they can care about this issue without being "antisemites", which I get. But the whole thing rings a little of "it's not enough to agree with me on an issue, you must do so for the right reasons". Which is a bit counterproductive. A lot of our current political issues are precisely because we've lost the ability to cooperate on shared interests that emerge from differing perspectives. Ironically, exactly the problem the author is facing.

> But the whole thing rings a little of "it's not enough to agree with me on an issue, you must do so for the right reasons".

To be fair, I can come up with pretty some solid reasons why they wouldn't want to make allies out of the "Jews run the banks!"-type crowd.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com