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I wouldn't mind these machine so much if they always accepted cash. The problem is that more often than not they don't. When I was on vacation in London about

I wouldn't mind these machine so much if they always accepted cash. The problem is that more often than not they don't. When I was on vacation in London about 5 years ago when Visa had an outage: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jun/01/visa-outage-payment-chaos-after-card-network-crashes-live-updates https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jun/01/visa-outa... I was trying to pick up some food at the only grocery market that was within walking distance of where I was staying. The grocery store only had self-checkout machines. As the checkout line piled up, the payment system failed to process my card. I gave it another try with another card, and after a long wait that one went through. By that time as I was looking around, I noticed that pretty much everyone else around me was stuck at the machines and weren't moving on. I assumed there was some sort of outage going on. I guess I came within a few seconds of needing to scramble to try to find a way not to go hungry that night. I had plenty of cash on me, but that wouldn't have helped me complete the purchase because the machines simply didn't accept cash. There was no obvious way to get an employee's attention so I could give them my money. They were probably stuck with some of the other customers scratching their heads as to why the magic card charging system, which appeared to have been the only possible way to pay for food at that grocery store, wasn't working.

atmavatar 3y ago
Agreed - that's been a huge annoyance to me as well. What's worse is many of the self-checkout stations around where I live used to accept cash, but the stores have been transitioning a larger and larger proportion of them to card-only. Another annoyance I've run into at one store in particular is that the self-checkout machine no longer pre-calculates the tax amount. Now, I have to hit the pay button before I'm given the true amount due. The self-checkout machines are getting worse over time. It's quite reminiscent of how ATMs have evolved.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> I wouldn't mind these machine so much if they always accepted cash. The problem is that more often than not they don't. Ooof. I haven't seen a SCO with no cash capability. I know cash-handling equip costs but if they don't want pay for that, they might need a cashier. Walmart may have a couple SCO that won't do cash temporarily - but there will be 10 more fully working.
- steelframe 3y ago
  I'm seeing mixed responses, so it may be a locality thing as to whether machines generally accept cash. For example I remember almost all machines in Japan accepting cash. The machines at the Whole Foods near my house, for example, only accept cards, phones, or palm prints. Only half the machines at a Safeway near my house accept cash. The machines at another grocery market (Haggen's) are card- or phone-only, and they furthermore show a video feed of you on the screen with a "You're Being Watched by AI" warning to try to cut down on thefts. The last time I tried checking out at one of those machine it flagged me as trying to steal something because the system didn't know that a container of chips I had were free with the sandwich I bought.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > The last time I tried checking out at one of those machine it flagged me as trying to steal something because the system didn't know that a container of chips I had were free with the sandwich I bought. I hit that a couple of times but I scan stuff quickly. I also live in a house of 6 adult guys. It's lots of buying & lots of scanning. Cashiers had it sorted before I figured out something was up.
- coderjames 3y ago
  This may be regional or brand-specific. As a data point, the Winco I frequent has seven SCO stations - three accept cash, four are card-only. There is a single cashier monitoring all seven stations.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Here a lot of places have these auto-cash-counting machines you just throw the money in and it counts it and feeds back to the PoS; MASSIVE noisy machines that are stuck half of the time. So while stores must accept cash & cards, cash is often simply broken and the employee cannot really help anything as they are not allowed to process manually, so they can only throw their hands up.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Every machine I've seen can be built and configured to accept cash, but they're always "broken down" and "can't accept cash"
fencepost 3y ago
There's likely a way to use cash, but it probably requires an employee override and a receipt that you take to a customer service desk to continue the transaction.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
The fact that a credit card CAN have an outage is ridiculous. They were invented as an eventually-consistent system first! Just save up the credit card info, and charge the bank when the network connection is back up.
- zinekeller 3y ago
  It no longer works that way in Europe (or basically anywhere outside the US): most customers and banks insist that they see payments in real-time (in the name of fraud prevention (user-controlled credit card locks are a thing here) and convenience).
  - steelframe 3y ago
    > () (()) Totally off-topic, but I challenge you to try writing without using any parentheses. They generally don't contribute positively toward either the legibility or impact of your prose.
- lxgr 3y ago
  This capability is actually built deeply into the chip payment specification used by most credit and debit cards, but it's fallen out of fashion in favor for online-first processing: The original motivation for offline capabilities was that phone calls were expensive in Europe (early terminals worked via dialup modems, which were also slow to connect), and phone lines were not ubiquitous in all stores. Now that that's been solved, just keeping everything online-only is much less of a headache for the card issuer, but it does suffer from greatly reduced availability in case of outages such as the one you mention: No overdrawn accounts, lost/stolen cards can instantly be blocked, PIN verification becomes much easier etc. That said, merchants are still free to accept any card offline – they just bear the full risk of that card being overdrawn or lost/stolen. And in case of a publicly visible outage, you can absolutely expect fraudsters to start showing up at the checkout in large numbers and with full shopping cards bearing lost and stolen credit cards. I really hope we'll see it make a return, if not for credit and debit cards then for the various upcoming CDBC projects. Not being able to purchase anything in case of a power outage or cyberattack is a huge risk to society and can even be actually dangerous in some cases (imagine e.g. a small unattended card-only gas station – not that uncommon in the US!)

atmavatar 3y ago

Agreed - that's been a huge annoyance to me as well. What's worse is many of the self-checkout stations around where I live used to accept cash, but the stores have been transitioning a larger and larger proportion of them to card-only. Another annoyance I've run into at one store in particular is that the self-checkout machine no longer pre-calculates the tax amount. Now, I have to hit the pay button before I'm given the true amount due. The self-checkout machines are getting worse over time. It's quite reminiscent of how ATMs have evolved.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> I wouldn't mind these machine so much if they always accepted cash. The problem is that more often than not they don't. Ooof. I haven't seen a SCO with no cash capability. I know cash-handling equip costs but if they don't want pay for that, they might need a cashier. Walmart may have a couple SCO that won't do cash temporarily - but there will be 10 more fully working.

steelframe 3y ago
I'm seeing mixed responses, so it may be a locality thing as to whether machines generally accept cash. For example I remember almost all machines in Japan accepting cash. The machines at the Whole Foods near my house, for example, only accept cards, phones, or palm prints. Only half the machines at a Safeway near my house accept cash. The machines at another grocery market (Haggen's) are card- or phone-only, and they furthermore show a video feed of you on the screen with a "You're Being Watched by AI" warning to try to cut down on thefts. The last time I tried checking out at one of those machine it flagged me as trying to steal something because the system didn't know that a container of chips I had were free with the sandwich I bought.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > The last time I tried checking out at one of those machine it flagged me as trying to steal something because the system didn't know that a container of chips I had were free with the sandwich I bought. I hit that a couple of times but I scan stuff quickly. I also live in a house of 6 adult guys. It's lots of buying & lots of scanning. Cashiers had it sorted before I figured out something was up.
coderjames 3y ago
This may be regional or brand-specific. As a data point, the Winco I frequent has seven SCO stations - three accept cash, four are card-only. There is a single cashier monitoring all seven stations.
anonzzzies 3y ago
Here a lot of places have these auto-cash-counting machines you just throw the money in and it counts it and feeds back to the PoS; MASSIVE noisy machines that are stuck half of the time. So while stores must accept cash & cards, cash is often simply broken and the employee cannot really help anything as they are not allowed to process manually, so they can only throw their hands up.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Every machine I've seen can be built and configured to accept cash, but they're always "broken down" and "can't accept cash"

fencepost 3y ago

There's likely a way to use cash, but it probably requires an employee override and a receipt that you take to a customer service desk to continue the transaction.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

The fact that a credit card CAN have an outage is ridiculous. They were invented as an eventually-consistent system first! Just save up the credit card info, and charge the bank when the network connection is back up.

zinekeller 3y ago
It no longer works that way in Europe (or basically anywhere outside the US): most customers and banks insist that they see payments in real-time (in the name of fraud prevention (user-controlled credit card locks are a thing here) and convenience).
- steelframe 3y ago
  > () (()) Totally off-topic, but I challenge you to try writing without using any parentheses. They generally don't contribute positively toward either the legibility or impact of your prose.
lxgr 3y ago
This capability is actually built deeply into the chip payment specification used by most credit and debit cards, but it's fallen out of fashion in favor for online-first processing: The original motivation for offline capabilities was that phone calls were expensive in Europe (early terminals worked via dialup modems, which were also slow to connect), and phone lines were not ubiquitous in all stores. Now that that's been solved, just keeping everything online-only is much less of a headache for the card issuer, but it does suffer from greatly reduced availability in case of outages such as the one you mention: No overdrawn accounts, lost/stolen cards can instantly be blocked, PIN verification becomes much easier etc. That said, merchants are still free to accept any card offline – they just bear the full risk of that card being overdrawn or lost/stolen. And in case of a publicly visible outage, you can absolutely expect fraudsters to start showing up at the checkout in large numbers and with full shopping cards bearing lost and stolen credit cards. I really hope we'll see it make a return, if not for credit and debit cards then for the various upcoming CDBC projects. Not being able to purchase anything in case of a power outage or cyberattack is a huge risk to society and can even be actually dangerous in some cases (imagine e.g. a small unattended card-only gas station – not that uncommon in the US!)