8 ms·

I don't buy this because it discounts the high costs of cash controls. Cash has high costs that likely make electronic forms of payment competitive. You have

I don't buy this because it discounts the high costs of cash controls. Cash has high costs that likely make electronic forms of payment competitive. You have - Employees skimming the till; - Theft insurance for a safe, the nightly amount in the safe - Managers balancing the cash registers with change/safe - Armored trucks picking up the money (2-3 men guarding the transfer) - Banks processing the money - Employee time and frustration ensuring they didn't come up short tldr; It takes one armed robbery or employee malfeasance before ~2% fees seem very much worth it to reduce cash on hand.

matthewwiese 8y ago
> Employee time and frustration they didn't come up short To add to this, back when I was a retail cashier in high school, there was also the threat of having too much money in the register. Either by negligence, due to miscounting a customer's change, or of outright malevolence (by doing the same). Before I even began training at the register, I was told by the store manager that if the cash in my drawer at the end of my shift was over the amount that the transaction history specified I should have (I believe this was > ~$5 lifetime? It's been a few years so I'm foggy as to the exact figure) that I would be let go. Now, I don't mean to bring this up to debate the point one way or the other, just that it is yet another friction to managing cash as opposed to credit cards.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It’s an indicator of skimming gone awry. When I worked at a bagel shop, a common transaction was $4.03. Seeing cash coming out, the cashier would subtotal (sending the ticket down to print), and cancel/no sale the transaction. They would do it 10 times and pull $40.
IshKebab 8y ago
Yeah but those costs are more or less fixed. The only way to reduce them is to stop accepting cash entirely. Also just because cash has costs doesn't mean credit card fees aren't insane. They could be close to 0% if they implemented real security to reduce fraud, and there was actual competition (vendors were allowed to pass fees on to customers).
- fipple 8y ago
  No, you typically transfer cash from a store once a day, and if 95% of your transactions are card, then you now have only 5% of your takings in your till at the end of the day.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    The costs of counting and banking cash are proportional to the amount of cash you take - but the costs of CCTV cameras to point at cash drawers and the driver hours for a single daily armoured car collection are the same regardless of how much money is involved.
    - PeterisP 8y ago
      If the amount of cash becomes relatively small, then you stop doing collection every day, and also don't bother with an armored car.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  The EU legislated down card interchange fees to 0.2/0.3%. I imagine that helped drive the strong adoption of EMV/Chip+PIN and 3DSecure you see in Europe
caf 8y ago
If this was the case then merchants would happily encourage people to use cards rather than cash.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  Outside the US merchants almost invariably encourage the use of cards. Zero places here are cash only (not even a hot dog stand) but tons are explicitly cash free. [edit: in some places.] The big savings come when you have zero cash to deal with. Then you have no counting/change/armed transport/security issues at all.
  - llewey 8y ago
    That is definitely not true in Germany. There were many places that only accepted cash while I lived there. I just spent 2 weeks in Spain and there were many places I tried to eat that were cash ø ly. In Chinatown in London, as well, many places are cash only. "outside the US" is a big place, be careful to be more specific.
    - alkonaut 8y ago
      I know - I went to Berlin and noticed Taxis wanted cash and would not accept cards. Was like traveling 20 years back in time. I did not mean to say all places outside the US
      - raverbashing 8y ago
        To be fair the only place where I saw taxis accepting cards as a rule was NYC Practical, still a bit weary though especially without EMV readers
        Jommi 8y ago
        Go to any place in northern Europe and it's basically only card.
daemin 8y ago
Little story: I actually saw one employee at a fast food joint brazenly dig into the till and take a 20 out and put it into his pocket right in front of me. He wasn't a cashier but just someone that assembles the food product.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  I once got a call from a co-worker shortly after midnight saying that when she'd cashed up her till, she was twenty down, so then she cashed up my till again (even though I'd done it before leaving) and I also was twenty down. Didn't hesitate; called the area manager and told him the facts and nothing more. Never saw her again. Don't skim from your co-worker's till.
swiley 8y ago
I wouldn’t buy things with cash if there where a half way decent debit card or similar I could replace it with. It needs to have real transaction authentication so I don’t have to deal with fraud and it needs to decline transactions when I actually don’t have enough money in the account (instead of charging $40 in fees.) That’s it, but no one seems to offer that so I use cash instead.
- kennydude 8y ago
  You don't have that? Damn Monzo needs to get to the states soon!
- cmurf 8y ago
  Chime? If your balance isn't enough to cover the debit charge, the debit charge is declined, no fees. And you can enable/disable the card in app. And it's part of a fee free ATM network, app finds the nearest free ATM or cash back business.
  - swiley 8y ago
    That sounds almost like what I'm looking for but it sounds like you still have to share an ID number (enough to pull money from the account) with everyone in order to use it.
    - cmurf 8y ago
      I can't parse "share an ID number". Anyway, it comes with a debit card with an associated bank account number with ABA so you can do direct deposits to it, and use it for EFT payments to pay bills that don't accept cards. I use the Chime card with locally owned merchants to keep their processing fees down, and as a way to track discretionary spending. I have a Citicard that generates one time virtual card numbers for online payments. It's a really neat idea but with a painful interface that makes it impractical. I'd like to get a virtual number for each merchant that has a user configurable credit line and can be used multiple times. That way I'd have a unique card on file with each online merchant, with its own credit limit set by me.
what-the-grump 8y ago
Not really. 2% on your gross is a lot and any standard commercial policy will cover cash on hand. 50% of the country is broke, 80% live pay check to pay check. Many working minimum wage, low income bracket do not have bank accounts. The idea that cash is ‘hard to operate’ is a stretch, we’ve been exchanging currency for as long as commerce existed. If you handle enough cash to need an armored truck, you are far above most businesses in processing. There are a few places in NYC that do not take cash, and they exist in their own micro economy revolving around serving lunch.
- gruez 8y ago
  >50% of the country is broke what is meant by this? is this the often cited "50% of Americans don't have any savings" number? in savings accounts only
  - pixl97 8y ago
    >Some 50.8 million households or 43% of households can’t afford a basic monthly budget for housing, food, transportation, child care, health care and a monthly smartphone bill, according to an analysis of U.S. government data released this month by the United Way Alice Project, a nonprofit based in Cedar Knolls, N.J. that aims to highlight the number of people who live in poverty.
    - frockington 8y ago
      I'm going to assume they grossly overestimated when creating that number. Their aim is "to highlight the number of people who live in poverty". I think I am technically "poor" by a number of standards because I don't have any money in a savings account because I prefer higher yield investments.
      - sls 8y ago
        Methodology described here [1] if you want to go beyond assuming their result is essentially a lie. In the per-state data [2] you see results like 31-32% below ALICE in the Dakotas, but 47-49% in NY and California. If one wanted to present a partisan hit piece to encourage establishment liberal/"Great Society" safety net policies, this would appear to be the opposite of what you would want to produce. [1] https://www.unitedwayalice.org/methodology https://www.unitedwayalice.org/methodology [2] https://www.unitedwayalice.org/in-the-us https://www.unitedwayalice.org/in-the-us
tonyb 8y ago
Going "cash-less" is a growing trend in the restaurant world. I know several restaurant owners that are moving that direction for the reasons you listed. Time is one of the biggest ones, you have to have someone (normally a manager) dedicated to cash management before opening and after closing.
- phkahler 8y ago
  >> Time is one of the biggest ones, you have to have someone (normally a manager) dedicated to cash management before opening and after closing. When I eat with a group of people, it's very common that I'm the only one who pays cash. It's also very common that taking care of my bill is the fastest of them all. It's easiest on the wait-persons time. But since the owners generally fuck over the wait staff anyway, it's no surprise that they don't care about their time.
  - pgm8705 8y ago
    In America, paying with cash is so much faster because of the still way too common and outdated process for credit cards: Bring bill to customer > walk away while they review > return to collect card > go to fixed portal to run transaction > return to customer with receipt > walk away again > return to collect receipt with tip amount More restaurants need to start adopting handheld terminals for waitstaff, which reduces the whole process to 1 step and makes it faster than cash since they do not need to go fetch change.
    - mrep 8y ago
      Also, it helps prevent credit card skimming since you can always see the card which is why I think it is even a law in some countries.
    - Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
      My wife an I frequently eat at a couple places that have touch-screen terminals (I think called Ziosk?) on them. While you're eating, you can use them to order drinks or pay to play tablet games, but you can also pay your bill without any interaction with the wait staff. They're quite the time saver.
rland 8y ago
The costs you mentioned, though they sound physically imposing, do not approach the 2% gross on all transactions charged by card issuers. In addition, with cash, there is another abstract (collective) benefit. It is anonymous. An entity can neither trail a single dollar bill as it moves through individuals, nor arbitrarily prevent certain individuals from spending. Electronic forms of payment are less free and less secure from a very broad social standpoint.

matthewwiese 8y ago

> Employee time and frustration they didn't come up short To add to this, back when I was a retail cashier in high school, there was also the threat of having too much money in the register. Either by negligence, due to miscounting a customer's change, or of outright malevolence (by doing the same). Before I even began training at the register, I was told by the store manager that if the cash in my drawer at the end of my shift was over the amount that the transaction history specified I should have (I believe this was > ~$5 lifetime? It's been a few years so I'm foggy as to the exact figure) that I would be let go. Now, I don't mean to bring this up to debate the point one way or the other, just that it is yet another friction to managing cash as opposed to credit cards.

Spooky23 8y ago
It’s an indicator of skimming gone awry. When I worked at a bagel shop, a common transaction was $4.03. Seeing cash coming out, the cashier would subtotal (sending the ticket down to print), and cancel/no sale the transaction. They would do it 10 times and pull $40.

IshKebab 8y ago

Yeah but those costs are more or less fixed. The only way to reduce them is to stop accepting cash entirely. Also just because cash has costs doesn't mean credit card fees aren't insane. They could be close to 0% if they implemented real security to reduce fraud, and there was actual competition (vendors were allowed to pass fees on to customers).

fipple 8y ago
No, you typically transfer cash from a store once a day, and if 95% of your transactions are card, then you now have only 5% of your takings in your till at the end of the day.
- michaelt 8y ago
  The costs of counting and banking cash are proportional to the amount of cash you take - but the costs of CCTV cameras to point at cash drawers and the driver hours for a single daily armoured car collection are the same regardless of how much money is involved.
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    If the amount of cash becomes relatively small, then you stop doing collection every day, and also don't bother with an armored car.
kalleboo 8y ago
The EU legislated down card interchange fees to 0.2/0.3%. I imagine that helped drive the strong adoption of EMV/Chip+PIN and 3DSecure you see in Europe

caf 8y ago

If this was the case then merchants would happily encourage people to use cards rather than cash.

alkonaut 8y ago
Outside the US merchants almost invariably encourage the use of cards. Zero places here are cash only (not even a hot dog stand) but tons are explicitly cash free. [edit: in some places.] The big savings come when you have zero cash to deal with. Then you have no counting/change/armed transport/security issues at all.
- llewey 8y ago
  That is definitely not true in Germany. There were many places that only accepted cash while I lived there. I just spent 2 weeks in Spain and there were many places I tried to eat that were cash ø ly. In Chinatown in London, as well, many places are cash only. "outside the US" is a big place, be careful to be more specific.
  - alkonaut 8y ago
    I know - I went to Berlin and noticed Taxis wanted cash and would not accept cards. Was like traveling 20 years back in time. I did not mean to say all places outside the US
    - raverbashing 8y ago
      To be fair the only place where I saw taxis accepting cards as a rule was NYC Practical, still a bit weary though especially without EMV readers
      - Jommi 8y ago
        Go to any place in northern Europe and it's basically only card.

daemin 8y ago

Little story: I actually saw one employee at a fast food joint brazenly dig into the till and take a 20 out and put it into his pocket right in front of me. He wasn't a cashier but just someone that assembles the food product.

EliRivers 8y ago
I once got a call from a co-worker shortly after midnight saying that when she'd cashed up her till, she was twenty down, so then she cashed up my till again (even though I'd done it before leaving) and I also was twenty down. Didn't hesitate; called the area manager and told him the facts and nothing more. Never saw her again. Don't skim from your co-worker's till.

swiley 8y ago

I wouldn’t buy things with cash if there where a half way decent debit card or similar I could replace it with. It needs to have real transaction authentication so I don’t have to deal with fraud and it needs to decline transactions when I actually don’t have enough money in the account (instead of charging $40 in fees.) That’s it, but no one seems to offer that so I use cash instead.

kennydude 8y ago
You don't have that? Damn Monzo needs to get to the states soon!
cmurf 8y ago
Chime? If your balance isn't enough to cover the debit charge, the debit charge is declined, no fees. And you can enable/disable the card in app. And it's part of a fee free ATM network, app finds the nearest free ATM or cash back business.
- swiley 8y ago
  That sounds almost like what I'm looking for but it sounds like you still have to share an ID number (enough to pull money from the account) with everyone in order to use it.
  - cmurf 8y ago
    I can't parse "share an ID number". Anyway, it comes with a debit card with an associated bank account number with ABA so you can do direct deposits to it, and use it for EFT payments to pay bills that don't accept cards. I use the Chime card with locally owned merchants to keep their processing fees down, and as a way to track discretionary spending. I have a Citicard that generates one time virtual card numbers for online payments. It's a really neat idea but with a painful interface that makes it impractical. I'd like to get a virtual number for each merchant that has a user configurable credit line and can be used multiple times. That way I'd have a unique card on file with each online merchant, with its own credit limit set by me.

what-the-grump 8y ago

Not really. 2% on your gross is a lot and any standard commercial policy will cover cash on hand. 50% of the country is broke, 80% live pay check to pay check. Many working minimum wage, low income bracket do not have bank accounts. The idea that cash is ‘hard to operate’ is a stretch, we’ve been exchanging currency for as long as commerce existed. If you handle enough cash to need an armored truck, you are far above most businesses in processing. There are a few places in NYC that do not take cash, and they exist in their own micro economy revolving around serving lunch.

gruez 8y ago
>50% of the country is broke what is meant by this? is this the often cited "50% of Americans don't have any savings" number? in savings accounts only
- pixl97 8y ago
  >Some 50.8 million households or 43% of households can’t afford a basic monthly budget for housing, food, transportation, child care, health care and a monthly smartphone bill, according to an analysis of U.S. government data released this month by the United Way Alice Project, a nonprofit based in Cedar Knolls, N.J. that aims to highlight the number of people who live in poverty.
  - frockington 8y ago
    I'm going to assume they grossly overestimated when creating that number. Their aim is "to highlight the number of people who live in poverty". I think I am technically "poor" by a number of standards because I don't have any money in a savings account because I prefer higher yield investments.
    - sls 8y ago
      Methodology described here [1] if you want to go beyond assuming their result is essentially a lie. In the per-state data [2] you see results like 31-32% below ALICE in the Dakotas, but 47-49% in NY and California. If one wanted to present a partisan hit piece to encourage establishment liberal/"Great Society" safety net policies, this would appear to be the opposite of what you would want to produce. [1] https://www.unitedwayalice.org/methodology https://www.unitedwayalice.org/methodology [2] https://www.unitedwayalice.org/in-the-us https://www.unitedwayalice.org/in-the-us

tonyb 8y ago

Going "cash-less" is a growing trend in the restaurant world. I know several restaurant owners that are moving that direction for the reasons you listed. Time is one of the biggest ones, you have to have someone (normally a manager) dedicated to cash management before opening and after closing.

phkahler 8y ago
>> Time is one of the biggest ones, you have to have someone (normally a manager) dedicated to cash management before opening and after closing. When I eat with a group of people, it's very common that I'm the only one who pays cash. It's also very common that taking care of my bill is the fastest of them all. It's easiest on the wait-persons time. But since the owners generally fuck over the wait staff anyway, it's no surprise that they don't care about their time.
- pgm8705 8y ago
  In America, paying with cash is so much faster because of the still way too common and outdated process for credit cards: Bring bill to customer > walk away while they review > return to collect card > go to fixed portal to run transaction > return to customer with receipt > walk away again > return to collect receipt with tip amount More restaurants need to start adopting handheld terminals for waitstaff, which reduces the whole process to 1 step and makes it faster than cash since they do not need to go fetch change.
  - mrep 8y ago
    Also, it helps prevent credit card skimming since you can always see the card which is why I think it is even a law in some countries.
  - Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
    My wife an I frequently eat at a couple places that have touch-screen terminals (I think called Ziosk?) on them. While you're eating, you can use them to order drinks or pay to play tablet games, but you can also pay your bill without any interaction with the wait staff. They're quite the time saver.

rland 8y ago

The costs you mentioned, though they sound physically imposing, do not approach the 2% gross on all transactions charged by card issuers. In addition, with cash, there is another abstract (collective) benefit. It is anonymous. An entity can neither trail a single dollar bill as it moves through individuals, nor arbitrarily prevent certain individuals from spending. Electronic forms of payment are less free and less secure from a very broad social standpoint.