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Cash is cool. Cash is anonymously. Cash is independent from any payment processor. Cash has no payment fees. Cash does not require power, so it is somehow envir

Cash is cool. Cash is anonymously. Cash is independent from any payment processor. Cash has no payment fees. Cash does not require power, so it is somehow environment friendly. Cash is just cool.

philfrasty 8y ago
"Cash has no payment fees" This is simply not true. Take a business for example: 1.) have a cashbox (or multiple) 2.) guard cashbox 3.) every evening count money in cashbox 4.) hope the cash you took in is still in the cashbox 5.) if not 4) --> accounting nightmare + fire employee 6.) bring cash to bank
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  Only for businesses that handle large volumes of cash. For person-to-person transactions, cash is the way to go.
  - harperlee 8y ago
    ATM withdrawal is not generally free; both the ATM network and your bank can charge fees for withdrawing money. At least in Spain this is true; I think it is generally true at least lso with French banks. Withdrawing abroad is normally with fees. EDIT: Downvotes in HN are not a dissenting mechanism; they are there to bury inappropriate/misleading/etc. comments (not that I particularly care, but it seems a proper opportunity to clarify a misconception).
    - richardknop 8y ago
      In a lot of Europe it is free.
      - aequitas 8y ago
        Just as free as free shipping, at the end of the day you pay for it someway, like (higher) banking fees, cost for (extra) card, reduced interest rates, etc.
        richardknop 8y ago
        Interest rates have been basically zero in all western world for a long time. Transferring money in Europe is also cheaper than in US, very few fees if any.
    - Aaargh20318 8y ago
      As far as I know ATM withdrawals are free within Europe (if you're a customer of another European bank).
      - harperlee 8y ago
        Again, that depends on the bank. But there is no European legal obligation for it to be free of fees.
        richardknop 8y ago
        That’s true but practically speaking if you live in Europe 9/10 times you will pay 0 fees. If you don’t travel much (and during travel use ATM at the airport), you might never pay any fees.
        tluyben2 8y ago
        In my experience in Spain for instance, most ATMs make you pay a fee unless you are with their bank or if your bank pays for it. In north EU a less common see fees charged.
        Aaargh20318 8y ago
        Why would you join a bank that charges a fee to use the ATM ?
        harperlee 8y ago
        Perhaps because you save more money on a cheaper mortgage than you spend on ATM fees, as you don't take a lot of money from the ATM because you can pay by card almost everywhere, for example?
        Aaargh20318 8y ago
        Except those aren't related at all. You can have a mortgage at bank A and a checking account at bank B. In fact, that's the most common case for most people.
    - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y ago
      In Europe, if you use ATMs of your bank’s network, it is free. For example, customers of a bank that is part of the UniCredit group can withdraw money for free from another bank’s ATM as long as this bank is also part of the UniCredit group.
      - harperlee 8y ago
        In reality it depends on the ATM network, not on the bank (different companies!), although fees might be waived by your bank for commercial reasons. For example, a spanish Santander card is free in the 4B network, but you will be charged on the german Santander ATM, as it is another ATM network (the Cash Group).
        zingmars 8y ago
        > not on the bank (different companies!) Not necessarily. Here in Latvia banks manage their own ATMs and whether you will have to pay a fee depends on your bank having a contract with the bank whose ATMs you're trying to use (usually there is no fee for taking money out of your bank's ATMs with a few exceptions, i.e. my bank has a 10% fee on withdrawals from credit cards, though most have debit cards anyway).
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        > In Europe, if you use ATMs of your bank’s network, it is free. Who do you think is paying to run that ATM?
    - tomhoward 8y ago
      > Downvotes in HN are not a dissenting mechanism PG stated very early on in HN's history that downvoting to signal disagreement is reasonable [1], and that's been generally accepted as a guiding principle in the community ever since (though it's not in the guidelines, so it's a matter of individual preference). What is in the guidelines is this: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - harperlee 8y ago
        Fair point, I was mistaken on that. How can the community learn about the rules if we should not point to or discuss the rules? If it were not for my comment, you would not have pointed that to me :)
        tomhoward 8y ago
        :) A good starting point, aside from keeping familiar with the guidelines themselves, is to follow dang's and sctb's comment threads, where issues like this are discussed freqquently. That's how I keep up. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb The reason not to comment on things like voting behaviour is that it takes discussions away from their primary topic and into the territory of being repetitive, uninteresting, and sometimes resentful and hostile. Of course that can never be avoided altogether, but it can and should be minimised :)
  - dagw 8y ago
    Making change in person-to-person transactions is a pain. If I owe you $15 bucks and you and I only have 20s, there is no easy solution other than you owning me money, one of us writing off a debt, or me having to put off paying you. Much easier for me to pull out my phone, type in your phone number and the amount I want to give you and just hit send.
    - ballenf 8y ago
      There are network effects. In Germany, everyone has the change on hand because they're using it so much. If they don't someone nearby will have it and be willing to help.
  - tluyben2 8y ago
    Anecdotal again but for person to person I know few people who use cash anymore; Revolut, Wechat, Paypal and others are preferred: with most of them p2p payments are free, instant and easy.
- nbsd4life 8y ago
  guarding the cashbox isn't so bad because they have to do the same for the merchandise.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    No one ever got killed guarding a pin terminal.
    - jonknee 8y ago
      No, because you'll get robbed without ever knowing it (see Target or any number of other large POS hacks).
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        Sure, but the skimmers target the consumers, not the company. Having a lot of cash for places like Home Depot and so on is a real problem. It also enables all kinds of fraud and embezzlement.
        jonknee 8y ago
        Target registered $252 million in expenses for the breach. Insurance covered $90 million or so, but either way that would add up to a lot of robberies.
        jacquesm 8y ago
        Pretty sloppy processes if that went on for so long and they didn't notice.
- therealmarv 8y ago
  I've read once that the break even cash vs. electronic payment is at around 5 Euros. If you pay more than 5 Euros it's cheaper at the end of month to use electronic payment. Cash gets more and more expensive (exponentially) on the amount of money (security, deposition etc.). On electronic cash it's like a flat line.
  - ballenf 8y ago
    Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it's cheaper to take one or the other, but if you mostly take credit cards then there is a marginal cost to also accepting cash? And vice versa. However: - If I'm doing a large cash business then the next $5+ costs me basically nothing. - However if I'm doing a mostly credit card business, the next $5 will cost me the same as the first $5. With that, I think the analysis you read was funded by payment processors.
    - therealmarv 8y ago
      It's a good mind trick to look on a single additional transaction. But you are also not thinking about all the costs you have per month for storing, securing, exchanging cash. But to correct myself: This 5€ break even is on a macroeconomic level on all parties. Cash is more expensive on this level when you spend more than 5€ on a single transaction. Just one example of the other party: the end consumer also cannot get cash for free (even when he get's it free from the ATM, there are costs the bank has and maybe you pay them indirectly).
- PinguTS 8y ago
  A cash-free business: 1.) have a terminal that supports all the different card types 2.) guard the IT infrastructure according to the PCI rules (have you ever needed to implement those, especially for small shop owners with no IT know-how) 3.) every day/week/month accounting of the payments to the corresponding receipts 4.) hope that the customer doesn't initiate a reimbursement 5.) if not 4) --> accounting nightmare + loss of the reimbursed money 6.) spending weekends (small business) for the required IT infrastructure
  - gruez 8y ago
    >2.) guard the IT infrastructure according to the PCI rules (have you ever needed to implement those, especially for small shop owners with no IT know-how) is this really necessary? AFAIK it's only necessary if you handle credit card numbers, which you don't, and can be outsourced to the payment processor so you're not seeing credit card numbers at all. >3.) every day/week/month accounting of the payments to the corresponding receipts this can't be handled by the POS software? >4.) hope that the customer doesn't initiate a reimbursement probably not a big issue with card present purchases
  - Retric 8y ago
    But avoid "Pay payment processor ~30 cents per transaction AND ~3%." Many businesses can't afford to offer credit card transactions because they would be extremely expensive.
  - h1d 8y ago
    1) What's the concern here? 2) Why does the seller have to guard the payment processor's IT infrastructure? 3) Certainly faster than counting cash on top of counting the reciepts. 4) The problem doesn't exactly lie in the cash less system. Dealing with complaint is your business' problem. 5) Reversing 1 entry isnt a nightmare. 6) Are you developing your own solution or something?
  - tluyben2 8y ago
    As a normal merchant you are getting an off the shelve machine which runs on existing infra so no idea what you are talking about in point 1, 2 or 6. The other points, sure, but they are the same with cash and with cashless they are mostly automated. You hook them up to Xero or something and everything goes straight from PoS to there. Cashless is definitely less hassle for the merchant (life altering experiences like being robbed was not mentioned but anecdotally I know at least two wine merchants who sucked up the small costs of cashless after they were robbed) ; the only things they will mention as negatives is the % on transactions and being unable to do stuff under the table easily. It might be good to know as well that charge backs in the EU are not as common or easy as in the US.
bigpeopleareold 8y ago
"Cash is anonymous" : This is a feature it seems particularly for Germans, known for their privacy laws and privacy efforts.
- a254613e 8y ago
  No it's not. Because Payback has 30 million customers in Germany. Their whole business model is literally based around mining user data. In markets you'll see people paying with cash and then using the Payback card for the bonus points. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_(Bonusprogramm) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_(Bonusprogramm) https://www.payback.net/de/ueber-payback/daten-fakten/ https://www.payback.net/de/ueber-payback/daten-fakten/
  - anotheryou 8y ago
    I wonder what GDPR does here.
    - perlgeek 8y ago
      Even 5 years ago, you had to agree to at least 3 pages of information about how your data is being processed. I guess it's 10 pages now. If you as a consumer agree to your data being processed and shared as a business model, GDPR can't really do much for you.
      - krageon 8y ago
        If they make it very difficult to say no to extra processing (more than is required for the core business) that comes very close to coercion. Once the storm of US companies not complying (and let's be honest, the big corporations are currently not compliant in the least) and being fined has died down I can't imagine the regulatory bodies will not go after this kind of behaviour.
  - teamhappy 8y ago
    Paying cash and using a loyalty card for your day-to-day shopping and then not using it at your local pharmacy, sex-shop or whatever is exactly the same thing as using Chrome for your day-to-day browsing and Tor Browser for looking up that weird thing on your foot, or closing your curtains when you change your clothes.
s-macke 8y ago
As long as cash is available, it is difficult to charge penalty interest on your bank account.
Matt3o12_ 8y ago
I agree with your first three points but the last ones are not true. Case doesn’t have payments fees but it gets mishandled. You give away too much or a customer said I gave you 50, not 20, etc. Furthermore, unless you are a small business, cash needs to be handled and brought to a bank. That costs a lot of money. You have to pay an armed vehicle with a private security company to get to your store and drive it to the bank. You also have to have cash reserves at your store which can be stolen, etc. those are all cash “fees”. Cash requires power to “create”. You can’t just create it by changing some bytes. They need to be replaced every 5 years or so. And with all the chemicals used to make it secure, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was worst for the environment. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any sources to confirm or deny that, so that is only my speculation. Your other points are valid and the only advantage card payments have is that they can be analyzed (which is good if you do that but bad if someone else does it to sell you something) and that you can’t lose it (you only have to pay a small fee to get a new card if you lose it).
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  "Cash requires power to “create”. You can’t just create it by changing some bytes." Compared to the power utilization of some crypto currencies I'd argue that this is negligible.
  - Matt3o12_ 8y ago
    We are not talking about crypto currencies. We are talking about visa and MasterCard which use a centralized network to process those payments. That is as cheap as it can get. The power requirements for crypto currencies are the main reason I oppose them. They are a great idea but useless because mining and verifying transactions puts such a strain on our environment that I couldn’t justify the advantages for everyday use. And a crypto currency with doesn’t require a lot of power kind of misses the point.
- kuschku 8y ago
  A study by Steinbeis, funded by the German Central Bank, discovered that the transportation and production costs of cash are equivalent to around a fee of 0.2% For comparison, the German EC card system has fees of 0.125%, and most credit cards had fees of around 2-3% (VISA, MasterCard) or even in some situations up to 7% (AMEX, certain goods). This combined with credit cards banning users and merchants for sellibg goods based on their own discretion (see the trouble the Rossmann group had selling Cuban goods in their German stores) should explain by VISA and MasterCard have to be eradicated.
hknd 8y ago
"Cash does not require power, so it is somehow environment friendly" This is not true. Notes last ~15months in average and use cotton and linen > this is bad for the environment because creating those products requires heavy use of water, pesticides and fertilizers. And coins are _super_ bad for the environment: Extracting metals is not only environmentally taxing, it's also energy-intensive. Think about the mining, milling, and smelting processes.
- quohM0Ho 8y ago
  It's not like you need to mine new metals every time you mint new coins. Old ones can be recycled.
  - aequitas 8y ago
    But then that recycled material can not fill other demand for material so eventually you end up mining more nontheless. Also recycling itself it not free, depending on the quality you need you need to put in energy and resources (chemicals).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
some_account 8y ago
Cash also keeps the power to pay for something in your hands instead of the banks.
- awat 8y ago
  I think this is an underated pro of cash. You can’t manipulate or freeze cash assets on someones person or just out of the bank without real world intervention.
pgtan 8y ago
Obviously you don't stay everyday in a line for hours waiting for Germans to count their coins back and forth.
- chopin 8y ago
  I stand everyday in a line waiting for Germans finishing their electronic transaction. Cashless may have its virtues but speed is not one of them.
drdaeman 8y ago
> Cash is anonymously Every note has an unique ID. But unlike with an online transaction, tracing a bank note requires a significant effort, sometimes even impossible. An average cash register doesn't log such things. > Cash does not require power It most certainly does. First, printing requires power. Any large transaction would likely to require use of a note-counting machine (unless a precise amount is not important). Any small transaction requires human power to process (counting, change) - and it's not free, because it takes power to provide suitable operational conditions. Given that humans are orders of magnitude slower, it could indirectly contribute to a significant resource waste (like queues are being slowes, so mall's parking lot being more occupied, requiring more power to drive around to find a spot, etc etc).
- sorokod 8y ago
  Every note has an unique ID. But unlike with an online transaction, tracing a bank note requires a significant effort, sometimes even impossible. "Sometimes impossible" implies some sort of parity with "Sometimes possible" which I think is incorrect. A challenge: AH26 184646 is the serial on a five pound note in my hand. Where did I get it from?
  - drdaeman 8y ago
    How I'm supposed to know this? I'm not even in Europe or UK. Yet, the fact I can't know it doesn't mean no one can. Banks may (and most likely do) know which exact ATM had issued this bank note to whom. As well as when it was last encashed and from whom. This does not guarantee anything (the note could've swapped hands a few times), but it's less than perfect anonymity, and I'm sure big data can reveal a thing or two.
    - sorokod 8y ago
      If it was a dollar bill would it make easier on you? As to less than perfect anonymity , yes, it is imperfect compared to an abstract definition but, boy is it sparkling perfect compared to a credit card transaction.
joncrocks 8y ago
> Cash has no payment fees. Cash does not require power This is a good example of 'out of sight, out of mind'. There are obviously costs in creating cash, distributing it, maintaining it (take old/damaged currency out of circulation) and enforcement of counterfeit protection. And ditto for power. These costs and power requirements are not obvious though, and so the end-user is not aware of the costs involved. Any comparison between cash and non-cash needs to be sure to count the complete lifecycle of and payment processing and not just the bits that the end-user sees.
- Retric 8y ago
  The same is true of credit cards by design. People don't see what can end up as 25% of vending machines costs etc.
- jlg23 8y ago
  > These costs and power requirements are not obvious At the time of payment they are irrelevant. > Any comparison between cash and non-cash needs to be sure to count the complete lifecycle of and payment processing and not just the bits that the end-user sees. Where is it convenient for you to draw the line? Do you include the production of card readers, the creation and maintenance of power and communication lines?
bluthru 8y ago
Cash can be created without giving a private bank interest.
dominotw 8y ago
as a scatter brain prone to losing things. You can also lose cash or have it stolen from you, with no recourse.
wil421 8y ago
Cash can be stolen. Cash can be misplaced or lost. Cash can be destroyed by fire or other natural forces.
- jonknee 8y ago
  I'd wager the vast majority of money stolen is done so electronically.
  - wil421 8y ago
    Yea and it’s been done to me twice. Guess what? The bank and credit cards refunded the charges 100%. Guess what happened when I lost my wallet? Or when I washed some dollars in my pants? All my money was gone.
greggarious 8y ago
I also find I spend less when I carry cash. I've moved to paying my online bills via credit card, but money for eating out, coffees, movies etc gets withdrawn in cash - and I often find I have more left over than if it was a line item in a budget spreadsheet. (Fun fact: this effect is one of the major reasons casinos have you gamble with chips)
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
ATM fees

Cash is cool. Cash is anonymously. Cash is independent from any payment processor. Cash has no payment fees. Cash does not require power, so it is somehow environment friendly. Cash is just cool.

philfrasty 8y ago

"Cash has no payment fees" This is simply not true. Take a business for example: 1.) have a cashbox (or multiple) 2.) guard cashbox 3.) every evening count money in cashbox 4.) hope the cash you took in is still in the cashbox 5.) if not 4) --> accounting nightmare + fire employee 6.) bring cash to bank

ForHackernews 8y ago
Only for businesses that handle large volumes of cash. For person-to-person transactions, cash is the way to go.
- harperlee 8y ago
  ATM withdrawal is not generally free; both the ATM network and your bank can charge fees for withdrawing money. At least in Spain this is true; I think it is generally true at least lso with French banks. Withdrawing abroad is normally with fees. EDIT: Downvotes in HN are not a dissenting mechanism; they are there to bury inappropriate/misleading/etc. comments (not that I particularly care, but it seems a proper opportunity to clarify a misconception).
  - richardknop 8y ago
    In a lot of Europe it is free.
    - aequitas 8y ago
      Just as free as free shipping, at the end of the day you pay for it someway, like (higher) banking fees, cost for (extra) card, reduced interest rates, etc.
      - richardknop 8y ago
        Interest rates have been basically zero in all western world for a long time. Transferring money in Europe is also cheaper than in US, very few fees if any.
  - Aaargh20318 8y ago
    As far as I know ATM withdrawals are free within Europe (if you're a customer of another European bank).
    - harperlee 8y ago
      Again, that depends on the bank. But there is no European legal obligation for it to be free of fees.
      - richardknop 8y ago
        That’s true but practically speaking if you live in Europe 9/10 times you will pay 0 fees. If you don’t travel much (and during travel use ATM at the airport), you might never pay any fees.
        tluyben2 8y ago
        In my experience in Spain for instance, most ATMs make you pay a fee unless you are with their bank or if your bank pays for it. In north EU a less common see fees charged.
      - Aaargh20318 8y ago
        Why would you join a bank that charges a fee to use the ATM ?
        harperlee 8y ago
        Perhaps because you save more money on a cheaper mortgage than you spend on ATM fees, as you don't take a lot of money from the ATM because you can pay by card almost everywhere, for example?
        Aaargh20318 8y ago
        Except those aren't related at all. You can have a mortgage at bank A and a checking account at bank B. In fact, that's the most common case for most people.
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 8y ago
    In Europe, if you use ATMs of your bank’s network, it is free. For example, customers of a bank that is part of the UniCredit group can withdraw money for free from another bank’s ATM as long as this bank is also part of the UniCredit group.
    - harperlee 8y ago
      In reality it depends on the ATM network, not on the bank (different companies!), although fees might be waived by your bank for commercial reasons. For example, a spanish Santander card is free in the 4B network, but you will be charged on the german Santander ATM, as it is another ATM network (the Cash Group).
      - zingmars 8y ago
        > not on the bank (different companies!) Not necessarily. Here in Latvia banks manage their own ATMs and whether you will have to pay a fee depends on your bank having a contract with the bank whose ATMs you're trying to use (usually there is no fee for taking money out of your bank's ATMs with a few exceptions, i.e. my bank has a 10% fee on withdrawals from credit cards, though most have debit cards anyway).
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      > In Europe, if you use ATMs of your bank’s network, it is free. Who do you think is paying to run that ATM?
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    > Downvotes in HN are not a dissenting mechanism PG stated very early on in HN's history that downvoting to signal disagreement is reasonable [1], and that's been generally accepted as a guiding principle in the community ever since (though it's not in the guidelines, so it's a matter of individual preference). What is in the guidelines is this: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - harperlee 8y ago
      Fair point, I was mistaken on that. How can the community learn about the rules if we should not point to or discuss the rules? If it were not for my comment, you would not have pointed that to me :)
      - tomhoward 8y ago
        :) A good starting point, aside from keeping familiar with the guidelines themselves, is to follow dang's and sctb's comment threads, where issues like this are discussed freqquently. That's how I keep up. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sctb The reason not to comment on things like voting behaviour is that it takes discussions away from their primary topic and into the territory of being repetitive, uninteresting, and sometimes resentful and hostile. Of course that can never be avoided altogether, but it can and should be minimised :)
- dagw 8y ago
  Making change in person-to-person transactions is a pain. If I owe you $15 bucks and you and I only have 20s, there is no easy solution other than you owning me money, one of us writing off a debt, or me having to put off paying you. Much easier for me to pull out my phone, type in your phone number and the amount I want to give you and just hit send.
  - ballenf 8y ago
    There are network effects. In Germany, everyone has the change on hand because they're using it so much. If they don't someone nearby will have it and be willing to help.
- tluyben2 8y ago
  Anecdotal again but for person to person I know few people who use cash anymore; Revolut, Wechat, Paypal and others are preferred: with most of them p2p payments are free, instant and easy.
nbsd4life 8y ago
guarding the cashbox isn't so bad because they have to do the same for the merchandise.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  No one ever got killed guarding a pin terminal.
  - jonknee 8y ago
    No, because you'll get robbed without ever knowing it (see Target or any number of other large POS hacks).
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Sure, but the skimmers target the consumers, not the company. Having a lot of cash for places like Home Depot and so on is a real problem. It also enables all kinds of fraud and embezzlement.
      - jonknee 8y ago
        Target registered $252 million in expenses for the breach. Insurance covered $90 million or so, but either way that would add up to a lot of robberies.
        jacquesm 8y ago
        Pretty sloppy processes if that went on for so long and they didn't notice.
therealmarv 8y ago
I've read once that the break even cash vs. electronic payment is at around 5 Euros. If you pay more than 5 Euros it's cheaper at the end of month to use electronic payment. Cash gets more and more expensive (exponentially) on the amount of money (security, deposition etc.). On electronic cash it's like a flat line.
- ballenf 8y ago
  Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it's cheaper to take one or the other, but if you mostly take credit cards then there is a marginal cost to also accepting cash? And vice versa. However: - If I'm doing a large cash business then the next $5+ costs me basically nothing. - However if I'm doing a mostly credit card business, the next $5 will cost me the same as the first $5. With that, I think the analysis you read was funded by payment processors.
  - therealmarv 8y ago
    It's a good mind trick to look on a single additional transaction. But you are also not thinking about all the costs you have per month for storing, securing, exchanging cash. But to correct myself: This 5€ break even is on a macroeconomic level on all parties. Cash is more expensive on this level when you spend more than 5€ on a single transaction. Just one example of the other party: the end consumer also cannot get cash for free (even when he get's it free from the ATM, there are costs the bank has and maybe you pay them indirectly).
PinguTS 8y ago
A cash-free business: 1.) have a terminal that supports all the different card types 2.) guard the IT infrastructure according to the PCI rules (have you ever needed to implement those, especially for small shop owners with no IT know-how) 3.) every day/week/month accounting of the payments to the corresponding receipts 4.) hope that the customer doesn't initiate a reimbursement 5.) if not 4) --> accounting nightmare + loss of the reimbursed money 6.) spending weekends (small business) for the required IT infrastructure
- gruez 8y ago
  >2.) guard the IT infrastructure according to the PCI rules (have you ever needed to implement those, especially for small shop owners with no IT know-how) is this really necessary? AFAIK it's only necessary if you handle credit card numbers, which you don't, and can be outsourced to the payment processor so you're not seeing credit card numbers at all. >3.) every day/week/month accounting of the payments to the corresponding receipts this can't be handled by the POS software? >4.) hope that the customer doesn't initiate a reimbursement probably not a big issue with card present purchases
- Retric 8y ago
  But avoid "Pay payment processor ~30 cents per transaction AND ~3%." Many businesses can't afford to offer credit card transactions because they would be extremely expensive.
- h1d 8y ago
  1) What's the concern here? 2) Why does the seller have to guard the payment processor's IT infrastructure? 3) Certainly faster than counting cash on top of counting the reciepts. 4) The problem doesn't exactly lie in the cash less system. Dealing with complaint is your business' problem. 5) Reversing 1 entry isnt a nightmare. 6) Are you developing your own solution or something?
- tluyben2 8y ago
  As a normal merchant you are getting an off the shelve machine which runs on existing infra so no idea what you are talking about in point 1, 2 or 6. The other points, sure, but they are the same with cash and with cashless they are mostly automated. You hook them up to Xero or something and everything goes straight from PoS to there. Cashless is definitely less hassle for the merchant (life altering experiences like being robbed was not mentioned but anecdotally I know at least two wine merchants who sucked up the small costs of cashless after they were robbed) ; the only things they will mention as negatives is the % on transactions and being unable to do stuff under the table easily. It might be good to know as well that charge backs in the EU are not as common or easy as in the US.

bigpeopleareold 8y ago

"Cash is anonymous" : This is a feature it seems particularly for Germans, known for their privacy laws and privacy efforts.

a254613e 8y ago
No it's not. Because Payback has 30 million customers in Germany. Their whole business model is literally based around mining user data. In markets you'll see people paying with cash and then using the Payback card for the bonus points. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_(Bonusprogramm) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_(Bonusprogramm) https://www.payback.net/de/ueber-payback/daten-fakten/ https://www.payback.net/de/ueber-payback/daten-fakten/
- anotheryou 8y ago
  I wonder what GDPR does here.
  - perlgeek 8y ago
    Even 5 years ago, you had to agree to at least 3 pages of information about how your data is being processed. I guess it's 10 pages now. If you as a consumer agree to your data being processed and shared as a business model, GDPR can't really do much for you.
    - krageon 8y ago
      If they make it very difficult to say no to extra processing (more than is required for the core business) that comes very close to coercion. Once the storm of US companies not complying (and let's be honest, the big corporations are currently not compliant in the least) and being fined has died down I can't imagine the regulatory bodies will not go after this kind of behaviour.
- teamhappy 8y ago
  Paying cash and using a loyalty card for your day-to-day shopping and then not using it at your local pharmacy, sex-shop or whatever is exactly the same thing as using Chrome for your day-to-day browsing and Tor Browser for looking up that weird thing on your foot, or closing your curtains when you change your clothes.

s-macke 8y ago

As long as cash is available, it is difficult to charge penalty interest on your bank account.

Matt3o12_ 8y ago

I agree with your first three points but the last ones are not true. Case doesn’t have payments fees but it gets mishandled. You give away too much or a customer said I gave you 50, not 20, etc. Furthermore, unless you are a small business, cash needs to be handled and brought to a bank. That costs a lot of money. You have to pay an armed vehicle with a private security company to get to your store and drive it to the bank. You also have to have cash reserves at your store which can be stolen, etc. those are all cash “fees”. Cash requires power to “create”. You can’t just create it by changing some bytes. They need to be replaced every 5 years or so. And with all the chemicals used to make it secure, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was worst for the environment. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any sources to confirm or deny that, so that is only my speculation. Your other points are valid and the only advantage card payments have is that they can be analyzed (which is good if you do that but bad if someone else does it to sell you something) and that you can’t lose it (you only have to pay a small fee to get a new card if you lose it).

CaptainZapp 8y ago
"Cash requires power to “create”. You can’t just create it by changing some bytes." Compared to the power utilization of some crypto currencies I'd argue that this is negligible.
- Matt3o12_ 8y ago
  We are not talking about crypto currencies. We are talking about visa and MasterCard which use a centralized network to process those payments. That is as cheap as it can get. The power requirements for crypto currencies are the main reason I oppose them. They are a great idea but useless because mining and verifying transactions puts such a strain on our environment that I couldn’t justify the advantages for everyday use. And a crypto currency with doesn’t require a lot of power kind of misses the point.
kuschku 8y ago
A study by Steinbeis, funded by the German Central Bank, discovered that the transportation and production costs of cash are equivalent to around a fee of 0.2% For comparison, the German EC card system has fees of 0.125%, and most credit cards had fees of around 2-3% (VISA, MasterCard) or even in some situations up to 7% (AMEX, certain goods). This combined with credit cards banning users and merchants for sellibg goods based on their own discretion (see the trouble the Rossmann group had selling Cuban goods in their German stores) should explain by VISA and MasterCard have to be eradicated.

hknd 8y ago

"Cash does not require power, so it is somehow environment friendly" This is not true. Notes last ~15months in average and use cotton and linen > this is bad for the environment because creating those products requires heavy use of water, pesticides and fertilizers. And coins are _super_ bad for the environment: Extracting metals is not only environmentally taxing, it's also energy-intensive. Think about the mining, milling, and smelting processes.

quohM0Ho 8y ago
It's not like you need to mine new metals every time you mint new coins. Old ones can be recycled.
- aequitas 8y ago
  But then that recycled material can not fill other demand for material so eventually you end up mining more nontheless. Also recycling itself it not free, depending on the quality you need you need to put in energy and resources (chemicals).
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some_account 8y ago

Cash also keeps the power to pay for something in your hands instead of the banks.

awat 8y ago
I think this is an underated pro of cash. You can’t manipulate or freeze cash assets on someones person or just out of the bank without real world intervention.

pgtan 8y ago

Obviously you don't stay everyday in a line for hours waiting for Germans to count their coins back and forth.

chopin 8y ago
I stand everyday in a line waiting for Germans finishing their electronic transaction. Cashless may have its virtues but speed is not one of them.

drdaeman 8y ago

> Cash is anonymously Every note has an unique ID. But unlike with an online transaction, tracing a bank note requires a significant effort, sometimes even impossible. An average cash register doesn't log such things. > Cash does not require power It most certainly does. First, printing requires power. Any large transaction would likely to require use of a note-counting machine (unless a precise amount is not important). Any small transaction requires human power to process (counting, change) - and it's not free, because it takes power to provide suitable operational conditions. Given that humans are orders of magnitude slower, it could indirectly contribute to a significant resource waste (like queues are being slowes, so mall's parking lot being more occupied, requiring more power to drive around to find a spot, etc etc).

sorokod 8y ago
Every note has an unique ID. But unlike with an online transaction, tracing a bank note requires a significant effort, sometimes even impossible. "Sometimes impossible" implies some sort of parity with "Sometimes possible" which I think is incorrect. A challenge: AH26 184646 is the serial on a five pound note in my hand. Where did I get it from?
- drdaeman 8y ago
  How I'm supposed to know this? I'm not even in Europe or UK. Yet, the fact I can't know it doesn't mean no one can. Banks may (and most likely do) know which exact ATM had issued this bank note to whom. As well as when it was last encashed and from whom. This does not guarantee anything (the note could've swapped hands a few times), but it's less than perfect anonymity, and I'm sure big data can reveal a thing or two.
  - sorokod 8y ago
    If it was a dollar bill would it make easier on you? As to less than perfect anonymity , yes, it is imperfect compared to an abstract definition but, boy is it sparkling perfect compared to a credit card transaction.

joncrocks 8y ago

> Cash has no payment fees. Cash does not require power This is a good example of 'out of sight, out of mind'. There are obviously costs in creating cash, distributing it, maintaining it (take old/damaged currency out of circulation) and enforcement of counterfeit protection. And ditto for power. These costs and power requirements are not obvious though, and so the end-user is not aware of the costs involved. Any comparison between cash and non-cash needs to be sure to count the complete lifecycle of and payment processing and not just the bits that the end-user sees.

Retric 8y ago
The same is true of credit cards by design. People don't see what can end up as 25% of vending machines costs etc.
jlg23 8y ago
> These costs and power requirements are not obvious At the time of payment they are irrelevant. > Any comparison between cash and non-cash needs to be sure to count the complete lifecycle of and payment processing and not just the bits that the end-user sees. Where is it convenient for you to draw the line? Do you include the production of card readers, the creation and maintenance of power and communication lines?

bluthru 8y ago

Cash can be created without giving a private bank interest.

dominotw 8y ago

as a scatter brain prone to losing things. You can also lose cash or have it stolen from you, with no recourse.

wil421 8y ago

Cash can be stolen. Cash can be misplaced or lost. Cash can be destroyed by fire or other natural forces.

jonknee 8y ago
I'd wager the vast majority of money stolen is done so electronically.
- wil421 8y ago
  Yea and it’s been done to me twice. Guess what? The bank and credit cards refunded the charges 100%. Guess what happened when I lost my wallet? Or when I washed some dollars in my pants? All my money was gone.

greggarious 8y ago

I also find I spend less when I carry cash. I've moved to paying my online bills via credit card, but money for eating out, coffees, movies etc gets withdrawn in cash - and I often find I have more left over than if it was a line item in a budget spreadsheet. (Fun fact: this effect is one of the major reasons casinos have you gamble with chips)

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

ATM fees