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> But more detailed record-keeping may undermine financial apps’ usefulness. “If people know that there’s going to be a record every time they use Apple Pay, ba

> But more detailed record-keeping may undermine financial apps’ usefulness. “If people know that there’s going to be a record every time they use Apple Pay, based on our theory, people actually will use it less compared to if Apple Pay doesn’t automatically track and record and remind them in the statement.” This is so weird to me since I want to know how much I spend in any category. I’m annoyed only one of my linked Apple Pay cards reports transactions off Apple Pay (my AmEx). The study specifically says it looked only at cases where “the payment method hadn’t been decided beforehand” but that strikes me as really weird. Everyone I know knows how they’re going to pay for a purchase before they walk into a store, mostly because walking into a store has become so intentional. You are either carrying (sufficient) cash on you or not. You either have enough credit on your card or not. And, honestly, for most people in the USA of my generation (so-called “millennials”) if there’s any thinking involved it might be “which card do I charge this to” and not “cash or credit?” Also as with other studies making claims like these I immediately wonder about reproducibility.

GravelRocks 3y ago
I assure you there are people that haven't decided how to pay for something before they reach the register. There's also a lot of people that will decide how to pay for something based on how much the purchase is at the register. Both of those examples are anecdotal, and come from working a register some decade and a half ago. Anecdotally, I bring cash with me when I go on vacation. I never really thought about it so much as guilt, but you could probably characterize it somewhat as that. It's at least done partially for budgetary reasons, but I'm sure subconsciously I really don't want to remember spending $80 at the Tiki bar. As for the reproducibility it looks like, from the article, that they at least constructed several simular studies to test their theory: 1. "In one study, the authors analyzed more than 118,000 real-world purchases at the Stanford University Bookstore." 2. "Another study asked participants to imagine buying a 30-minute reiki session. Half read that the session was recommended by their doctor and would be at a hospital..." 3. "Another study explored shoppers’ preference for untraceable payment methods besides cash. Half the participants were informed they had a $20 bill and a debit card linked to their bank account; the other half were told they had a $20 bill and a prepaid debit card." It's at least not a single, "3 grad students did this in an afternoon at the 7-11" study that tend to get picked up. I don't doubt that more research into the phenomenon might help get a better understanding of the underlying motivations for "cash/credit", but it does look like they are getting similar results from multiple experiments.
JohnFen 3y ago
> This is so weird to me since I want to know how much I spend in any category. So do I -- I would just prefer that Apple (or insert any other company in their place) didn't have access to that information. I can keep track of my own spending, I don't need a company to do it for me.

GravelRocks 3y ago

I assure you there are people that haven't decided how to pay for something before they reach the register. There's also a lot of people that will decide how to pay for something based on how much the purchase is at the register. Both of those examples are anecdotal, and come from working a register some decade and a half ago. Anecdotally, I bring cash with me when I go on vacation. I never really thought about it so much as guilt, but you could probably characterize it somewhat as that. It's at least done partially for budgetary reasons, but I'm sure subconsciously I really don't want to remember spending $80 at the Tiki bar. As for the reproducibility it looks like, from the article, that they at least constructed several simular studies to test their theory: 1. "In one study, the authors analyzed more than 118,000 real-world purchases at the Stanford University Bookstore." 2. "Another study asked participants to imagine buying a 30-minute reiki session. Half read that the session was recommended by their doctor and would be at a hospital..." 3. "Another study explored shoppers’ preference for untraceable payment methods besides cash. Half the participants were informed they had a $20 bill and a debit card linked to their bank account; the other half were told they had a $20 bill and a prepaid debit card." It's at least not a single, "3 grad students did this in an afternoon at the 7-11" study that tend to get picked up. I don't doubt that more research into the phenomenon might help get a better understanding of the underlying motivations for "cash/credit", but it does look like they are getting similar results from multiple experiments.

JohnFen 3y ago

> This is so weird to me since I want to know how much I spend in any category. So do I -- I would just prefer that Apple (or insert any other company in their place) didn't have access to that information. I can keep track of my own spending, I don't need a company to do it for me.