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New Zealand has gone largely cashless (and entirely chequeless). Everyone is paid by direct credit to their account. You pay your bills via direct credit / deb

New Zealand has gone largely cashless (and entirely chequeless). Everyone is paid by direct credit to their account. You pay your bills via direct credit / debit. I don't think any bank is charging fees (for customers) for electronic transactions via card, or direct credits/debits. They don't even charge a fee for using another bank's ATM anymore. I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. NZ retailers moved away from cheques in the 90s due to their massive fraudulent use case (back when cheques were common, so was chequebook theft). The last banks that would accept cheques stopped doing so in 2020, IIRC. You can use cash, but few people do. Parking machines have tap n pay. I really only need cash when the kids are having a bake sale or disco at school. But as part of that shift, the Government owned bank ensures that anyone can have a bank account with no fees, no matter how spotty your previous track record. Works for us. But I don't think we'll ever go cashless, there's no real desire to do so from anyone other than the people who have to pay to make the cash.

alx__ 4y ago
> anyone can have a bank account with no fees, no matter how spotty your previous track record. We're still working on that idea :(
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  Yeah, it was realised that a bank of last resort was needed.
16amxn16 4y ago
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Not an appropriate comment for HN. You should read the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - 16amxn16 4y ago
    I know the guidelines. I decided to break them to get my point across, at the cost of this throwaway.
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      Except you haven't really to almost anyone because now your comments are flagged dead and most people don't have showdead on.
      - 16amxn16 4y ago
        >and most people don't have showdead on. Well, that's on them. Lots of valuable comments get flagged. You have a point though. If snobbery and walking in eggshells is what's valued here, why waste my time?
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        soco 4y ago
        Walking on eggshells is what built the human society since like forever. You can complain about fantasy wokeism online as much as you like, but in the real world a comment like the above would have gotten you punched in every corner of the world.
        16amxn16 4y ago
        >but in the real world a comment like the above would have gotten you punched in every corner of the world. Of course not.
grecy 4y ago
>I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. Banking in the US is like going back in time 20 years. Even when I flew through Dallas and LAX during the height of COVID I had to hand my credit card over for someone to swipe, then pickup a pen that thousands of others had touched to sign a piece of paper. I've been tapping to pay exclusively for years and forgot about all that ancient stuff.
- kurthr 4y ago
  Wow, that's pretty rare. TTP and chip are basically required now. Unless your card fails, I don't know many places that would have desire or even equipment to swipe. Even square doesn't do it now.
- csomar 4y ago
  Most places in the US accept Apple Pay now. I think it's harsh to judge the whole country based on a few exceptions. The US is also huge which means some people are going to stick to the old way of doing things.
  - collegeburner 4y ago
    Uhh no that is not true in lots of places. Probably highly region and demographic dependent tho. Also apple pay alone is not a solution, no way am i paying for some overpriced iphone bc "oh were cashless now and only take apple pay".
- jltsiren 4y ago
  I think that backwardness is now a thing of the past. Most developed countries I'm familiar with made cheap/free wire transfers the most fundamental banking product decades ago. The change was driven by the banks, because handling checks was expensive and there was too much fraud involved. The US never made the change, probably because there were too many banks that could not agree on anything. That doesn't matter much anymore, because online card payments and ACH transfers (which are technically not wire transfers) are prevalent. Another thing that contributes to the perception of backwardness is that American credit card issuers never adopted chip and PIN like the rest of the developed world. Elsewhere, banks wanted to reduce fraud and accepted the need to remember PINs as a small price for that. In the US, banks could afford more fraud due to higher fees, and they chose convenience instead. But today, cards have chips without a PIN anyway, and swiping is used mostly as a rare fallback mechanism. And apps such as Apple Pay and Google Pay (or whatever it's called this week) are quickly removing the need for physical cards.
kurthr 4y ago
In the US checks (cheques) are used mostly for significant transactions, because it acts as a contract. As a consumer you can easily get away with using electronic or credit/debit transactions for almost everything. However, some transactions over $5-10k are worth using checks. If you get a car loan, you don't need a check, but if you pay "cash" then a check is most likely preferred by you and the dealer. For house down payments, cash is illegal (note that it says DEBTS public and private) in the US, but checks are accepted and ACH/wire transfers are most common. By using a check and filling in the note properly you can create a legal requirement that a service or product be delivered on payment (which is different from asking for your money back from a bank or card company through their resolution procedure), if you need to go to court. I'm sure there's a grandma out there using checks at the grocery store, but it's quite rare. And except for very small grocery purchases ($1-5) cash is pretty rare too. Japan seems like the most culturally cash based (and China the least) place I've been. Europe and US are in the middle. South America may still be fairly cash based, but I haven't visited recently.
- phist_mcgee 4y ago
  I think that's a solution looking for a problem. Payment via bank transfer is also a contract, the dispute resolution is no different. I don't see how a promise note on a piece of paper somehow protects you better than an electronic transfer that is visible to you, the other party, the bank, and to authorities.
  - qabqabaca 4y ago
    Agree. It's like Stockholm Syndrome. It comes across the same as when someone from the US tries to argue that putting the month before the day actually makes sense in dates because then the max values go from lowest to highest (12/31/9999+).
    - alexvoda 4y ago
      That is the perfect moment to mention ISO 8601 and RFC 3339.
animal531 4y ago
Many countries in Africa are probably leading the way. Central and up uses phones as a virtual card, they send cash around with their phones using different types of sms/digital technologies. In the south such as South Africa a lot of people have some form of bank card (apart from the people on the very bottom of society). As such those people on the bottom are affected by being cashless, because for example people might no longer carry around cash to hand out to the needy on street corners etc.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Same situation in the Netherlands. I have a 20 euro bill in my wallet for emergencies when the electronic payment system is down. I think 70% of transactions are electronic these days.
refurb 4y ago
Just like cash, people ignore the benefits of checks. I remember buying a house and receiving about 3 notices of rampant wire fraud when you send closing costs. Realtors or even worse title organizations and crappy security meant you needed to double, triple check the wire details, because once you send that money - it's gone. Instead of that silly game, I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and stay with me here hand delivered the check. No worries if some Russian criminal org stole my money or if they go it in the end.
- ra120271 4y ago
  In the UK when you set up bank transfer the legal entity names are verified and displayed back tot he user and asked to be matched. This helps reduce wrong account detail transfers. Not full proof but does help.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and stay with me here hand delivered the check You could do the same, except with your bank on the phone while the title agency reads out wire instructions. Hell, you could bring your banker.
  - refurb 4y ago
    How do I know the bank is talking to the real title company? Hackers have been know to put fake numbers in emails. Will they pay me back if the money is sent to the wrong place? Probably not.
starkd 4y ago
Sure, it's convenient for now. You never know what turn society is going to take somewhere down the line. The government is in a much better position to dictate rules for all of your commerce. Whether that happens in a few years or decades from now is anybody's guess, but the temptation to excercise that power is all the more likely.
- EdwardDiego 4y ago
  I'll let you know when New Zealand becomes a dictatorship, I guess.
  - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
    It was pretty authoritarian over the course of the last two years!
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      No it wasn't, not sure why people keep choosing to believe that when Kiwis keep correcting them.
  - starkd 4y ago
    There is such a thing as "soft tyranny". It can be just as insidious and demoralizing to individual rights as a hard tyranny.
silvestrov 4y ago
Same in Denmark (Northern Scandinavia) which has gone all-in on this. Denmark is an almost cashless society. It is seldom I see people paying cash in the supermarket. Cheques are no longer valid here: you cannot get cheques, you cannot pay with them. Canada is not nearly as cashless as the article makes it out to be, it is amusing how much the article ignores the rest of the world. The people hit by cashless are not the poor ones, but old people who have trouble learning to do things a new way. This also applies to communication with hospitals and docters which also is done online today in Denmark. So the cash problem is not special. Cashless is better for the homeless as it is much harder to rob money from a cashless person. Digital payments can be traced (it took a few years for robbers in Denmark to learn this). Banks in Denmark are required by law to give you a simple account and debit card. Governments pay out money by transfering them to your bank account. You tell the goverment which bank account you want to receive money on, like a default shipping address. We have a very good domestic version of paypal which makes it very easy to pay other people (just type in their phone number and you can send them money). So it is easier to pay friends using this system than to use cash!

alx__ 4y ago

> anyone can have a bank account with no fees, no matter how spotty your previous track record. We're still working on that idea :(

EdwardDiego 4y ago
Yeah, it was realised that a bank of last resort was needed.

16amxn16 4y ago

rjbwork 4y ago
Not an appropriate comment for HN. You should read the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 16amxn16 4y ago
  I know the guidelines. I decided to break them to get my point across, at the cost of this throwaway.
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    Except you haven't really to almost anyone because now your comments are flagged dead and most people don't have showdead on.
    - 16amxn16 4y ago
      >and most people don't have showdead on. Well, that's on them. Lots of valuable comments get flagged. You have a point though. If snobbery and walking in eggshells is what's valued here, why waste my time?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - soco 4y ago
        Walking on eggshells is what built the human society since like forever. You can complain about fantasy wokeism online as much as you like, but in the real world a comment like the above would have gotten you punched in every corner of the world.
        16amxn16 4y ago
        >but in the real world a comment like the above would have gotten you punched in every corner of the world. Of course not.

grecy 4y ago

>I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. Banking in the US is like going back in time 20 years. Even when I flew through Dallas and LAX during the height of COVID I had to hand my credit card over for someone to swipe, then pickup a pen that thousands of others had touched to sign a piece of paper. I've been tapping to pay exclusively for years and forgot about all that ancient stuff.

kurthr 4y ago
Wow, that's pretty rare. TTP and chip are basically required now. Unless your card fails, I don't know many places that would have desire or even equipment to swipe. Even square doesn't do it now.
csomar 4y ago
Most places in the US accept Apple Pay now. I think it's harsh to judge the whole country based on a few exceptions. The US is also huge which means some people are going to stick to the old way of doing things.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  Uhh no that is not true in lots of places. Probably highly region and demographic dependent tho. Also apple pay alone is not a solution, no way am i paying for some overpriced iphone bc "oh were cashless now and only take apple pay".
jltsiren 4y ago
I think that backwardness is now a thing of the past. Most developed countries I'm familiar with made cheap/free wire transfers the most fundamental banking product decades ago. The change was driven by the banks, because handling checks was expensive and there was too much fraud involved. The US never made the change, probably because there were too many banks that could not agree on anything. That doesn't matter much anymore, because online card payments and ACH transfers (which are technically not wire transfers) are prevalent. Another thing that contributes to the perception of backwardness is that American credit card issuers never adopted chip and PIN like the rest of the developed world. Elsewhere, banks wanted to reduce fraud and accepted the need to remember PINs as a small price for that. In the US, banks could afford more fraud due to higher fees, and they chose convenience instead. But today, cards have chips without a PIN anyway, and swiping is used mostly as a rare fallback mechanism. And apps such as Apple Pay and Google Pay (or whatever it's called this week) are quickly removing the need for physical cards.

kurthr 4y ago

In the US checks (cheques) are used mostly for significant transactions, because it acts as a contract. As a consumer you can easily get away with using electronic or credit/debit transactions for almost everything. However, some transactions over $5-10k are worth using checks. If you get a car loan, you don't need a check, but if you pay "cash" then a check is most likely preferred by you and the dealer. For house down payments, cash is illegal (note that it says DEBTS public and private) in the US, but checks are accepted and ACH/wire transfers are most common. By using a check and filling in the note properly you can create a legal requirement that a service or product be delivered on payment (which is different from asking for your money back from a bank or card company through their resolution procedure), if you need to go to court. I'm sure there's a grandma out there using checks at the grocery store, but it's quite rare. And except for very small grocery purchases ($1-5) cash is pretty rare too. Japan seems like the most culturally cash based (and China the least) place I've been. Europe and US are in the middle. South America may still be fairly cash based, but I haven't visited recently.

phist_mcgee 4y ago
I think that's a solution looking for a problem. Payment via bank transfer is also a contract, the dispute resolution is no different. I don't see how a promise note on a piece of paper somehow protects you better than an electronic transfer that is visible to you, the other party, the bank, and to authorities.
- qabqabaca 4y ago
  Agree. It's like Stockholm Syndrome. It comes across the same as when someone from the US tries to argue that putting the month before the day actually makes sense in dates because then the max values go from lowest to highest (12/31/9999+).
  - alexvoda 4y ago
    That is the perfect moment to mention ISO 8601 and RFC 3339.

animal531 4y ago

Many countries in Africa are probably leading the way. Central and up uses phones as a virtual card, they send cash around with their phones using different types of sms/digital technologies. In the south such as South Africa a lot of people have some form of bank card (apart from the people on the very bottom of society). As such those people on the bottom are affected by being cashless, because for example people might no longer carry around cash to hand out to the needy on street corners etc.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Same situation in the Netherlands. I have a 20 euro bill in my wallet for emergencies when the electronic payment system is down. I think 70% of transactions are electronic these days.

refurb 4y ago

Just like cash, people ignore the benefits of checks. I remember buying a house and receiving about 3 notices of rampant wire fraud when you send closing costs. Realtors or even worse title organizations and crappy security meant you needed to double, triple check the wire details, because once you send that money - it's gone. Instead of that silly game, I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and stay with me here hand delivered the check. No worries if some Russian criminal org stole my money or if they go it in the end.

ra120271 4y ago
In the UK when you set up bank transfer the legal entity names are verified and displayed back tot he user and asked to be matched. This helps reduce wrong account detail transfers. Not full proof but does help.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and stay with me here hand delivered the check You could do the same, except with your bank on the phone while the title agency reads out wire instructions. Hell, you could bring your banker.
- refurb 4y ago
  How do I know the bank is talking to the real title company? Hackers have been know to put fake numbers in emails. Will they pay me back if the money is sent to the wrong place? Probably not.

starkd 4y ago

Sure, it's convenient for now. You never know what turn society is going to take somewhere down the line. The government is in a much better position to dictate rules for all of your commerce. Whether that happens in a few years or decades from now is anybody's guess, but the temptation to excercise that power is all the more likely.

EdwardDiego 4y ago
I'll let you know when New Zealand becomes a dictatorship, I guess.
- inkblotuniverse 4y ago
  It was pretty authoritarian over the course of the last two years!
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    No it wasn't, not sure why people keep choosing to believe that when Kiwis keep correcting them.
- starkd 4y ago
  There is such a thing as "soft tyranny". It can be just as insidious and demoralizing to individual rights as a hard tyranny.

silvestrov 4y ago

Same in Denmark (Northern Scandinavia) which has gone all-in on this. Denmark is an almost cashless society. It is seldom I see people paying cash in the supermarket. Cheques are no longer valid here: you cannot get cheques, you cannot pay with them. Canada is not nearly as cashless as the article makes it out to be, it is amusing how much the article ignores the rest of the world. The people hit by cashless are not the poor ones, but old people who have trouble learning to do things a new way. This also applies to communication with hospitals and docters which also is done online today in Denmark. So the cash problem is not special. Cashless is better for the homeless as it is much harder to rob money from a cashless person. Digital payments can be traced (it took a few years for robbers in Denmark to learn this). Banks in Denmark are required by law to give you a simple account and debit card. Governments pay out money by transfering them to your bank account. You tell the goverment which bank account you want to receive money on, like a default shipping address. We have a very good domestic version of paypal which makes it very easy to pay other people (just type in their phone number and you can send them money). So it is easier to pay friends using this system than to use cash!