Hacker News Reader

Comment by CiscoCodex | Hacker News Reader

Just today I listened to an article from NPR talking about some sort settlement involving small businesses and credit card vendors. I want to support my local business and not have them pay the credit card charges. But the convenience of carrying around just one card vs various bills and coins is hard to give up.

I’m curious, how do you personally handle change specially small currency like pennies and nickels?

View on HN

> the convenience of carrying around just one card vs various bills and coins is hard to give up.

How hard is it to carry cash? You don't have to take coins; you just take your wallet which already has the bills. "various" doesn't make sense: you don't need to make sure to bring some 1s, a 5, 4 10s, etc.

Just put the change in your pocket and put it in a bowl when you get home.

Keep it in my pocket until I get home. Stick it in a jar. It becomes a little fun or emergency money. I find that using cash, I tend to not buy dumb little things as I'm out and about and don't actually carry change around all that often.

We may need to help them by looking at the POS interface and make sure they're using/requesting debit for debit cards.

I suspect the POS defaults to credit. But I've never looked at any of the interfaces.

I know US Postal Service somehow detects my card is debit and then requests a debit transaction because the credit card pad asks for a PIN not a signature. So maybe some POS have an autodetect option.

(See also my other comment)

Cash-only here. I have not (generally) accepted pennies since the mid 1980's.

Many of the local places (Seattle - Belltown & the Market) are cool with rounding transactions to the nearest dollar, so that helps. It might also be part of being an active participant in the local society.

I don't use cash anymore, but if I still was. I'd just chuck them all in a tub and every now and then dump them in the coin counting deposit machine at the bank to get notes back.

I use cash still and this is exactly what I do with my coins. I have a huge vase that I keep all my coins in. Years ago, I used to convert the coins to bills maybe once or twice per year when the vase filled up now. I use cash so infrequently now (and also usually get change rounded to the nearest dollar) that it’s been several years since the last dump and the vase hasn’t filled up yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com