7 ms·

How exactly is it inconvenient? I can't really think of anything. For example, proponents of cashless payments often like to claim that paying with cash takes m

How exactly is it inconvenient? I can't really think of anything. For example, proponents of cashless payments often like to claim that paying with cash takes more time than paying with a card, but the opposite is true. [1] And if you have "the need to constantly visit the ATM", then perhaps it would be a good idea to withdraw more money to last you longer? My bank actually doesn't allow withdrawals of less than 50 Euros, but even before that was introduced I simply withdrew the money I needed for a month at the beginning of a month -- and that was it. [1] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/meine-finanzen/geld-ausgeben/was-ist-schneller-bargeld-oder-kartenzahlung-14546519.html?printPagedArticle=true http://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/meine-finanzen/geld-ausg... (German)

chrisseaton 8y ago
How is cash inconvenient? Well: - instead of just going to a shop, I now need to go to a bank, and then to a shop - I mean that's pretty obviously and undeniably less convenient for a start - I have to carry a lot of little bits of valuable paper around with me - enough for an entire month of expenses in your opinion! - when I pay I have to wait for them to count the money, gather up the change, return the change, which I then have to count, compared to just tapping my card and going - I get no protections such as insurance for my purchases I can't how understand how anyone can argue cash is more convenient! And how can you possibly argue cash is faster? Paying by card takes 0.5 seconds - I don't have to even look at what I'm doing I just wave my card and go. Your articles talks about arcane things like inserting your card, paper printouts, signing with a pen - you haven't needed to do that with cards for a decade or more.
- mpweiher 8y ago
  > I now need to go to a bank, and then to a shop Hmmm...if you go to a bank to withdraw cash every tine you go to a shop I could see your point, but I would suggest that "you're holding it wrong". > I have to carry a lot of little bits of valuable paper around with me Which are limited in terms of risk, whereas a card can withdraw...whatever your limit. Carrying the bits of paper (and coins) has the big benefit of being tangible, that is we get to use all our senses to understand something otherwise very abstract. > when I pay I have to wait [..] Err...sorry, cash transactions are invariably much quicker than card transactions around here. > I get no protections such as insurance You mean you don't have ridiculous services bundled together for no reason whatsoever. > I can't how understand how anyone can argue cash is more convenient! And I can't understand how anyone can argue that cards are more convenient, when they clearly are not. >And how can you possibly argue cash is faster? Paying by card takes 0.5 seconds - Where? Around here, card transactions always take longer. > arcane things like inserting your card, paper printouts, signing with a pen [..] decade or more. Actually, having to sign on EC payments has become a thing recently, it used to be exclusively PIN. And sometimes it's PIN, sometimes it's signature, in the same shop, with the same card. They payment processor seems to choose by some randomized algorithm.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    But going to N shops is more convenient than going to N shops + 1 bank isn't it? I mean it is literally strictly less places to visit. > whereas a card can withdraw...whatever your limit That's not my liability - it's the card company's. As long as I'm not negligent, like giving someone my PIN, I am not liable for someone stealing my card and using it. I don't lose anything. I'm strictly liable for less value with card than cash. > Where? Around here, card transactions always take longer. How does it manage to take longer? Don't you have contactless in Germany? If you don't, then that's the problem - not the cards themselves. The last point seems debatable given Germany's backward card infrastructure, but for liability and number of places I have to visit, it just seems a mathematical fact that cards are more convenient.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      > N shops + 1 bank Only by 1/N. And since there are ATMs near my shops and it's mostly about trips, not about # of shops, it's both negligible and certainly well worth it for the benefits. And if that epsilon of effort is too much for you, you can get cash-back at most grocery shops, though the amount will typically be smaller, one reason I prefer the bank ATM. > That's not my liability - it's the card company's Not around here it ain't. And of course if the card company "takes on" the liability, it just redistributes it to its customers. So you are paying for it. > Don't you have contactless in Germany? Rarely if at all. Also I don't see how contactless (you just swipe? No PIN?) manages security. So: tangibility, security and data protection are clear benefits. Convenience as well around here, and can only be improved by making the entire thing less secure.
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        It sounds like Germany has a self-imposed chicken and egg problem - you don't think cards are better, so you don't implement modern cards, but card aren't better because you haven't implemented modern cards. We had a card-provider sponsored big-bang on contactless payments years ago in the UK and it's been an epiphany. Life is so much better cashless.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  Signing no, but inserting the card and entering pin is a commonplace in europe, the whole payment takes maybe 20 seconds. This is how everybody pays in malls whenever I visit (france, switzerland). Contactless payments - no thank you, I like to have some control over my cash flows. The mix of both is by far the best - have cash when you need it, have a card when you need it. Why can't people understand that not everybody thinks/behaves/lives same as they do?
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    I don’t think contactless is uncontrolled - you see the total before you present the card so they can only take that amount.
    - bchallenor 8y ago
      Plus, I get an instant notification on my phone whenever my card is used. And if I see anything suspicious, I can freeze the card via the app (declining all further payments).
- badpun 8y ago
  Extra annoyances with paying cash in Poland: - The smaller amounts (equivalent of a more or less dollar) are coins, not banknotes. They make your wallet way bulkier. - When paying with a bank note straight out of an ATM (usually a 100 PLN note), the clerk will usually ask you for a smaller note, and sometimes refuse to do the sale, as he has no change. Other times, he'll take your hundred, but with an eye roll. Meanwhile, contactless card transactions take under 10 seconds and work pretty much always.
- kara_jade 8y ago
  > instead of just going to a shop, I now need to go to a bank, and then to a shop - I mean that's pretty obviously and undeniably less convenient for a start On my way to work, before I get to the subway station, I pass no less than three banks with ATMs where I can withdraw money. You can even withdraw money in supermarkets without fees if you spend a certain amount of money. > I have to carry a lot of little bits of valuable paper around with me - enough for an entire month of expenses in your opinion! Possibly. I never said you have to carry around all of it at any given time. But I'd think that it's pretty much expected that you always have cash in your wallet in Germany. > when I pay I have to wait for them to count the money, gather up the change, return the change, which I then have to count, compared to just tapping my card and going That takes...a few seconds? How is that an issue? > I get no protections such as insurance for my purchases Protection from what exactly? Insurance for my groceries? > I can't how understand how anyone can argue cash is more convenient! In Germany it is. That's a simple fact. > And how can you possibly argue cash is faster? Paying by card takes 0.5 seconds - I don't have to even look at what I'm doing I just wave my card and go. Yes, contactless payment is also possible in Germany, depending on the stores and whether you have the right card. But the way it's implemented here doesn't make it that much faster in the end. > Your articles talks about arcane things like inserting your card, paper printouts, signing with a pen - you haven't needed to do that with cards for a decade or more. Oh, I guarantee you, it's not arcane at all in Germany, it's used every day.
  - y_tho 8y ago
    >Protection from what exactly? Insurance for my groceries? https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+card+price+match https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+card+price+match Beyond that, making a purchase of an electronic device with a credit card can extend your warranty. Don't know if that applies to Germany, it may apply to where ever the person you are replying lives.
liveoneggs 8y ago
cards charge a fee so it is in the interest of card issuers to collect fees. Speed has nothing to do with anything and it clearly a lie. Cashiers handling cash are a liability because they can steal and make mistakes more easily than a computer system, so paranoid business owners can reduce that particular risk.
hobofan 8y ago
Since the site was unusable and I wasn't able to look up the study they cite I'll have to make a small assumption: Based on the date of the article, I assume this mostly precludes contactless payment. As a personal anecdote, a salad place I know in Berlin recently switched over to card-only and they specifically encourage and educate people to make use of the contactless payment feature thats enable in most debit/credit cards Germans have. They went from unmanageable long queues that made eating there a chore to almost no queues and one of the fastest ways to pick up food via that single change.
- freeflight 8y ago
  > Since the site was unusable I thought it was just me. On Chrome the site kept on reloading as soon as I scrolled down. Managed to bypass that behavior by hitting the "cancel refresh" button as soon as I scrolled down. Still, a weird thing to happen, this morning Twitter had a pretty similar issue with their GDPR message: It would keep on reloading and reloading, making the whole thing unusable, until you manually told the browser to stop reloading. This behavior persists with or without adblocker active, did GDPR break the Internet?
- kara_jade 8y ago
  FAZ, like many other German newspapers and magazines, uses ad-blocker blocking. Disable scripts for the site and it works.
freeflight 8y ago
> For example, proponents of cashless payments often like to claim that paying with cash takes more time than paying with a card, but the opposite is true. That really depends on the type of cashless payment you are using. EC payment usually takes longer because it involves the process of preparing the reader, having the customer put in his card, wait till the reader is ready, input pin, wait again, done. But I've also seen contactless card payment with Visa/Mastercard that didn't require any PIN entry/signature, those are surprisingly fast.

chrisseaton 8y ago

How is cash inconvenient? Well: - instead of just going to a shop, I now need to go to a bank, and then to a shop - I mean that's pretty obviously and undeniably less convenient for a start - I have to carry a lot of little bits of valuable paper around with me - enough for an entire month of expenses in your opinion! - when I pay I have to wait for them to count the money, gather up the change, return the change, which I then have to count, compared to just tapping my card and going - I get no protections such as insurance for my purchases I can't how understand how anyone can argue cash is more convenient! And how can you possibly argue cash is faster? Paying by card takes 0.5 seconds - I don't have to even look at what I'm doing I just wave my card and go. Your articles talks about arcane things like inserting your card, paper printouts, signing with a pen - you haven't needed to do that with cards for a decade or more.

mpweiher 8y ago
> I now need to go to a bank, and then to a shop Hmmm...if you go to a bank to withdraw cash every tine you go to a shop I could see your point, but I would suggest that "you're holding it wrong". > I have to carry a lot of little bits of valuable paper around with me Which are limited in terms of risk, whereas a card can withdraw...whatever your limit. Carrying the bits of paper (and coins) has the big benefit of being tangible, that is we get to use all our senses to understand something otherwise very abstract. > when I pay I have to wait [..] Err...sorry, cash transactions are invariably much quicker than card transactions around here. > I get no protections such as insurance You mean you don't have ridiculous services bundled together for no reason whatsoever. > I can't how understand how anyone can argue cash is more convenient! And I can't understand how anyone can argue that cards are more convenient, when they clearly are not. >And how can you possibly argue cash is faster? Paying by card takes 0.5 seconds - Where? Around here, card transactions always take longer. > arcane things like inserting your card, paper printouts, signing with a pen [..] decade or more. Actually, having to sign on EC payments has become a thing recently, it used to be exclusively PIN. And sometimes it's PIN, sometimes it's signature, in the same shop, with the same card. They payment processor seems to choose by some randomized algorithm.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  But going to N shops is more convenient than going to N shops + 1 bank isn't it? I mean it is literally strictly less places to visit. > whereas a card can withdraw...whatever your limit That's not my liability - it's the card company's. As long as I'm not negligent, like giving someone my PIN, I am not liable for someone stealing my card and using it. I don't lose anything. I'm strictly liable for less value with card than cash. > Where? Around here, card transactions always take longer. How does it manage to take longer? Don't you have contactless in Germany? If you don't, then that's the problem - not the cards themselves. The last point seems debatable given Germany's backward card infrastructure, but for liability and number of places I have to visit, it just seems a mathematical fact that cards are more convenient.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    > N shops + 1 bank Only by 1/N. And since there are ATMs near my shops and it's mostly about trips, not about # of shops, it's both negligible and certainly well worth it for the benefits. And if that epsilon of effort is too much for you, you can get cash-back at most grocery shops, though the amount will typically be smaller, one reason I prefer the bank ATM. > That's not my liability - it's the card company's Not around here it ain't. And of course if the card company "takes on" the liability, it just redistributes it to its customers. So you are paying for it. > Don't you have contactless in Germany? Rarely if at all. Also I don't see how contactless (you just swipe? No PIN?) manages security. So: tangibility, security and data protection are clear benefits. Convenience as well around here, and can only be improved by making the entire thing less secure.
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      It sounds like Germany has a self-imposed chicken and egg problem - you don't think cards are better, so you don't implement modern cards, but card aren't better because you haven't implemented modern cards. We had a card-provider sponsored big-bang on contactless payments years ago in the UK and it's been an epiphany. Life is so much better cashless.
saiya-jin 8y ago
Signing no, but inserting the card and entering pin is a commonplace in europe, the whole payment takes maybe 20 seconds. This is how everybody pays in malls whenever I visit (france, switzerland). Contactless payments - no thank you, I like to have some control over my cash flows. The mix of both is by far the best - have cash when you need it, have a card when you need it. Why can't people understand that not everybody thinks/behaves/lives same as they do?
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  I don’t think contactless is uncontrolled - you see the total before you present the card so they can only take that amount.
  - bchallenor 8y ago
    Plus, I get an instant notification on my phone whenever my card is used. And if I see anything suspicious, I can freeze the card via the app (declining all further payments).
badpun 8y ago
Extra annoyances with paying cash in Poland: - The smaller amounts (equivalent of a more or less dollar) are coins, not banknotes. They make your wallet way bulkier. - When paying with a bank note straight out of an ATM (usually a 100 PLN note), the clerk will usually ask you for a smaller note, and sometimes refuse to do the sale, as he has no change. Other times, he'll take your hundred, but with an eye roll. Meanwhile, contactless card transactions take under 10 seconds and work pretty much always.
kara_jade 8y ago
> instead of just going to a shop, I now need to go to a bank, and then to a shop - I mean that's pretty obviously and undeniably less convenient for a start On my way to work, before I get to the subway station, I pass no less than three banks with ATMs where I can withdraw money. You can even withdraw money in supermarkets without fees if you spend a certain amount of money. > I have to carry a lot of little bits of valuable paper around with me - enough for an entire month of expenses in your opinion! Possibly. I never said you have to carry around all of it at any given time. But I'd think that it's pretty much expected that you always have cash in your wallet in Germany. > when I pay I have to wait for them to count the money, gather up the change, return the change, which I then have to count, compared to just tapping my card and going That takes...a few seconds? How is that an issue? > I get no protections such as insurance for my purchases Protection from what exactly? Insurance for my groceries? > I can't how understand how anyone can argue cash is more convenient! In Germany it is. That's a simple fact. > And how can you possibly argue cash is faster? Paying by card takes 0.5 seconds - I don't have to even look at what I'm doing I just wave my card and go. Yes, contactless payment is also possible in Germany, depending on the stores and whether you have the right card. But the way it's implemented here doesn't make it that much faster in the end. > Your articles talks about arcane things like inserting your card, paper printouts, signing with a pen - you haven't needed to do that with cards for a decade or more. Oh, I guarantee you, it's not arcane at all in Germany, it's used every day.
- y_tho 8y ago
  >Protection from what exactly? Insurance for my groceries? https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+card+price+match https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+card+price+match Beyond that, making a purchase of an electronic device with a credit card can extend your warranty. Don't know if that applies to Germany, it may apply to where ever the person you are replying lives.

liveoneggs 8y ago

cards charge a fee so it is in the interest of card issuers to collect fees. Speed has nothing to do with anything and it clearly a lie. Cashiers handling cash are a liability because they can steal and make mistakes more easily than a computer system, so paranoid business owners can reduce that particular risk.

hobofan 8y ago

Since the site was unusable and I wasn't able to look up the study they cite I'll have to make a small assumption: Based on the date of the article, I assume this mostly precludes contactless payment. As a personal anecdote, a salad place I know in Berlin recently switched over to card-only and they specifically encourage and educate people to make use of the contactless payment feature thats enable in most debit/credit cards Germans have. They went from unmanageable long queues that made eating there a chore to almost no queues and one of the fastest ways to pick up food via that single change.

freeflight 8y ago
> Since the site was unusable I thought it was just me. On Chrome the site kept on reloading as soon as I scrolled down. Managed to bypass that behavior by hitting the "cancel refresh" button as soon as I scrolled down. Still, a weird thing to happen, this morning Twitter had a pretty similar issue with their GDPR message: It would keep on reloading and reloading, making the whole thing unusable, until you manually told the browser to stop reloading. This behavior persists with or without adblocker active, did GDPR break the Internet?
kara_jade 8y ago
FAZ, like many other German newspapers and magazines, uses ad-blocker blocking. Disable scripts for the site and it works.

freeflight 8y ago

> For example, proponents of cashless payments often like to claim that paying with cash takes more time than paying with a card, but the opposite is true. That really depends on the type of cashless payment you are using. EC payment usually takes longer because it involves the process of preparing the reader, having the customer put in his card, wait till the reader is ready, input pin, wait again, done. But I've also seen contactless card payment with Visa/Mastercard that didn't require any PIN entry/signature, those are surprisingly fast.