| ▲ | sneak 7 days ago |
| > Secondly it costs the consumer nothing. The cost goes to the merchant. If anything the customer gets rewards. Just like tariffs, right? Visa/MC is a +1% income tax on most of the economy. |
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| ▲ | Tor3 7 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| It isn't - using cards, with fees, is cheaper than cash. I realized that when shops started to refuse cash (even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash). The argument? Cash is too expensive. |
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| ▲ | Imustaskforhelp 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | They only use cards because credit cards can allow them to get sales from people who wouldn't have been able to buy the product through debit itself, but they can buy it from credit.., so they are okay with eating 1-2% of costs in the fact that sale might happen and the companies will get 0.5-1% of it to you back as rewards (hopefully) and so there is incentive to buy using credit card for rewards but they might also give incentives of 1-2% if you buy through cash since they aren't eating that 1-2% cost. And this whole network has now been built in such a way that now even debit costs the same charge just as network fees Open sourcing this might be a step in good faith and I mean, we have UPI where I live and it has 0 fees and trust me its crazy good. I personally wish that either everybody in the world could use UPI or pixis from brazil. | | |
| ▲ | Tor3 7 days ago | parent [-] | | The argument doesn't hold - if cards were only about getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get - and the part about "getting sales which they otherwise wouldn't get", is true enough - then there's no reason to refuse cash payments. That's additional sales, right? But the fact is that more and more shops refuse cash payments entirely. "Pay by card or go somewhere else". | | |
| ▲ | Imustaskforhelp 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I can't comment on this fact of more and more shops refusing for cash payments entirely as I personally have NEVER seen that? Provide me an article or some proof to this fact for me to comment further as currently we are at an disagreement on this thing which I hope we can turn into meaningful discussion. | | |
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| ▲ | heavensteeth 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > even if cash is legal tender and they, by law, _have_ to accept cash this is not true as it is not what "legal tender" means. Legal tender is something that the government must accept as payment, not private enterprise. > Businesses don’t have to accept cash.[0] > There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services.[1] [0]: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-servic... [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm | | |
| ▲ | Tor3 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That depends on the country. There are many countries (including my own) where any business must accept certain parts of the cash payment system (around here a taxi doesn't have to accept the highest-value bank note, but the rest cannot be refused). And shops, of course. That's why newspapers bother to write articles about it. | |
| ▲ | wat10000 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Note that legal tender does apply to private entities when it comes to paying debts, at least in the US. Creditors must accept legal tender, or give up claim to the debt. It’s true that private businesses can set pretty much any payment terms they want for a transaction that hasn’t yet taken place. But the moment you move to a situation where you owe money, they do have to accept cash. | |
| ▲ | sneak 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They don’t have to accept cash in advance. They do have to accept cash for debts, such as when you have already eaten the meal. | |
| ▲ | SJC_Hacker 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They have to accept cash, huh? * Cash Payment Method Will No Longer Be Accepted
A Notice by the Patent and Trademark Office on 10/03/2017* https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/03/2017-21... |
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| ▲ | Imustaskforhelp 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | how is cash too expensive?? huh? | | |
| ▲ | Tor3 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | _Handling_ cash is expensive. I never thought of that until my SO started working in a shop. To and from the bank, with stacks of coins and notes.. and there's presumably much more than that for larger firms.
In general I rely my statement on what merchants themselves are saying. Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. "It's too expensive. It reduces our bottom line." That kind of thing. When I look around I see "Cards only" a lot of places. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > Newspapers are writing interviews with merchants who (illegally) have stopped accepting cash, even though it's legal tender. That's legal. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm Legal tender applies only to debt/creditor relationships. | | |
| ▲ | Tor3 6 days ago | parent [-] | | The USA is not all the world. The US rules don't apply in other countries. Rules differ. In many countries _businesses_ have to accept legal tender. Including in my own. That's why it's such a big deal when businesses actually still refuse cash. | | |
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| ▲ | ubercow13 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Of course cash is expensive, you have to handle it, count it, transport it. Haven't you ever seen those heavily armoured cash delivery vehicles? I mean just think how inefficient cash obviously is in every aspect of how it works compared to modern tech. | |
| ▲ | SJC_Hacker 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Time spent totaling it, transporting it to from bank Having to buy a register / point of sale which can handle it Hoping you employees don’t pocket a few bills here and there Hoping you don’t get robbed |
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| ▲ | ceejayoz 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| That’s an acceptable fee for the consumer protections I receive. |
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| ▲ | sneak 5 days ago | parent [-] | | There is another hidden cost: total mass government surveillance of the entire economy, including the ability to arbitrarily veto any transaction or participant for any reason (such as publishing) without trial or even burden of proof. https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ People are only okay with this because it hasn’t been visibly abused on a large scale yet. Imagine Nazi Germany having this sort of access to the private transactions of everyone in an entire country. The abuses won’t ever be front-page news, either, because they’ll only ever be targeted against tiny fractions of society, and most people won’t be directly affected by their lives being surveilled and their rights being so infringed. https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html Generally and commonly used payment systems (ie cash) that cannot be centrally censored are the only way to avoid this. Presently that means physical cash, physical precious metals, and cryptocurrency. The first two are impractical for large-scale use. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > Generally and commonly used payment systems (ie cash) that cannot be centrally censored are the only way to avoid this. Presently that means physical cash, physical precious metals, and cryptocurrency. The first two are impractical for large-scale use. Tether freezes accounts. Bitcoin gets confiscated. Eth forked when big stakeholders didn't like how the DAO went. And it's a bit hard to take seriously privacy concerns that propose a public transaction ledger as a solution. (And of the three, only physical cash has actually been proven in large-scale use.) |
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