4 ms·

Why would it be free? Shouldn't you pay for the service?

• lainga 9y ago
  Why shouldn't it be free? Would you accept an inescapable 0.3% tax on everything you bought?
  • alphaalpha101 9y ago
    I pay an inescapable 15% goods and services tax on everything I buy. So yes.
• arghwhat 9y ago
  Not when it is effectively forced as only means of payment. The idea of having to pay a fee to a series of private companies in order to be permitted to use money is absurd.
  • hocuspocus 9y ago
    As long as money creation and handling is delegated to private banks, how can you avoid this? Dealing with cash isn't free to merchants either. And that cost is passed on to the customer. Sure, governments that are pushing for a cashless society have ulterior motives. But you can't blame them for capping fees that used to be just spread onto everybody, regardless of the payment method. Now at least they're supposed to be comparable.
    • arghwhat 9y ago
      Dealing with cash is technically free to merchants. Banks have gotten more and more greedy, and come up with new and creative ways to charge extravagant fees, and thus charge merchants for cash orders and deposits (even though it is free for private customers). These fees are however a very different concept, as the bank here is only a storage service. The fees are entirely avoidable by buying a safe, and the fees are not related to money changing hands. With a credit card, fees are unavoidable and part of the transaction itself, and they're not even going to your bank, meaning that they want a slice of the cake from elsewhere (despite them technically earning money on your stored money through investments).