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Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

• xvector 2y ago
  10% is way higher than I thought. Probably <0.1% of my transactions are in cash. Cash is cumbersome and annoying. I wish there was a digital anonymous replacement.
  • drewcoo 2y ago
    > Cash is cumbersome and annoying. So is freedom. Tech that robs us of freedom offers ease of use or extra "free as in beer" services.
    • blfr 2y ago
      Freedom is usually the opposite of cumbersome and annoying. And current payment tech does not rob us of freedom. I can wire money to virtually anyone in the EU at no cost. I can pay any merchant in the world with a credit card, in any currency, with minimal spread. It's both convenient and greatly expands my options for engaging in commerce. Cashless system operated by regulated banks certainly comes with a risk of being used as a tool of repression (like it was in Canada during the truckers protests) but as of now it's freeing (as in speech).
      • elevatedastalt 2y ago
        You will find out how easily you can wire money to someone in the EU if you decide to hold political opinions that are not in line with the ruling elite. The truckers in Canada for sure found out how "free" the digits of their bank accounts were. Russian oligarchs for sure found it out in 2022.
        • ryandrake 2y ago
          The truckers did had their bank accounts frozen due to their actions, not due to their political opinions.
          • adamiscool8 2y ago
            Their actions were Charter-protected freedom of expression and the freeze was a Charter-breaching unreasonable seizure. >Justice Mosley ruled that “the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness – justification, transparency and intelligibility – and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration” [0] [0] https://www.aclrc.com/blog/2024/2/1/federal-court-rules-that-the-governments-invocation-of-the-emergencies-act-on-february-14-2022-was-unreasonable-and-not-justified https://www.aclrc.com/blog/2024/2/1/federal-court-rules-that...
            • ryandrake 2y ago
              I wasn't commenting on the legality of the asset freeze. I was responding to OP's attributing it to "if you decide to hold political opinions that are not in line with the ruling elite." As far as I'm aware, they did not survey the population and then take action against people with the wrong opinions.
              • adamiscool8 2y ago
                A distinction without a difference. The ruling elite doesn't have to survey the population. They sandbagged the population into alignment with their own opinions, then strong-armed holdouts and specifically targeted them along every possible vector (social, legal, economic, etc.) for their adherence to wrong beliefs. I shudder at how much worse this could get in a fully cashless society.
                • ryandrake 2y ago
                  So, everyone in the population of Canada who disagreed with the ruling elite's opinions was personally "strong-armed" and "targeted"? Or only a subset of them? If it was just a subset, could there have been anything that distinguished much of that subset apart from the rest of the people who weren't "targeted?" Maybe some event they took part in or helped?
        • singpolyma3 2y ago
          Blocking terrorist financing is nothing new.
          • logicchains 2y ago
            If you give the government the power to block financing to anyone they declare a terrorist then they'll just declare anyone who opposes them to be terrorists.
            • brainwad 2y ago
              Empirical evidence suggests otherwise, at least in liberal democracies.
              • eimrine 2y ago
                survirorship bias
              • elevatedastalt 2y ago
                Empirical evidence can suggest anything you want it to if you choose to ignore empirical evidence that's inconvenient to you. The Canadian trucker protesters were not "terrorists" by any stretch of imagination, but sure let's assume otherwise because it helps us sleep better at night, right?
                • singpolyma3 2y ago
                  Pretty sure building a bomb on Parliament Hill makes you a terrorist group. Nevermind all the other dangerous stuff that was going on.
        • surgical_fire 2y ago
          > if you decide to hold political opinions that are not in line with the ruling elite. Then don't. It's much easier to adhere to the status quo.
          • adamiscool8 2y ago
            This is the milquetoast approach of most Canadians - a major factor in why Canada, in it's current state, is rather cooked.
  • woleium 2y ago
    Monero?
  • teddyh 2y ago
    > I wish there was a digital anonymous replacement. There are, for instance GNU Taler: <https://taler.net/ https://taler.net/>. But what you want is an implemented system of digital anonymous cash. And that’s a whole other kettle of fish, since basically everybody actually in a position to implement such a system is incentivized to do it in a way which minimizes privacy.
  • poldk 2y ago
    Money-less society with security to stop hoarders looting stores. All digital security ends up security through obscurity; encrypt with noise the data along some algorithmic path to obscure what the data is, divide up go has admin and tier their access to obscure who is needed for what. There still needs to be someone with full control over the AWS account or whatever to grant further permission. There’s no perfect system security and anonymity if someone out there can drill in and use admin/keys to unwrap things. That’s why governments like CEOs and root nodes on such groups; keeps surface area for getting what they want small.
  • vundercind 2y ago
    Nearly all of my cash use, by dollar count, is paying service folks (home repair stuff, cleaners) who prefer payment in cash to evade taxes. I very rarely use cash for any other reason, and it’s always tiny amounts when I do.
    • arresin 2y ago
      > paying service folks (home repair stuff, cleaners) who prefer payment in cash to evade taxes. And good on them!
      • vundercind 2y ago
        Yeah I mean I accommodate them when I can for a reason. The ones who want that don’t have real payroll or anything like that going on, so are never exactly rolling in dough.
    • grotorea 2y ago
      I wonder who will win when the people wanting government protection for cash will collide with the desire to avoid tax evasion by restricting cash.
  • tonetegeatinst 2y ago
    XMR is probably your best bet for privacy digital currency. That said XMR isn't stable like the USD is, but it also didn't have infinite printability as once market cap is reached then only tail emmisions are rewarded for mining....iirc that a set value of 20. XMR is the best for privacy, is resistant to asic mining and GPU mining, and is a time proven crypto. That said if your just using it so you can gain money from price fluctuations and not because of the fiction the coin provides then your never going to realise it's true value.
    • vhcr 2y ago
      Just to be nit-picky, but Monero can be mined with GPUs.
      • tonetegeatinst 2y ago
        I know, but it has adopted changes so it's more efficient to use a CPU to mine. Not saying GPU mining is dead, but its at least resistant to it.
  • nerdjon 2y ago
    It has come to the point that I switched to a wallet that I can put 1 or 2 bills in at most before it becomes cumbersome. I just keep a $20 in it for the once or twice a month I don’t just use card. I get the privacy issues, but in this particular case the convenience far outweighs it. I honestly sometimes get annoyed when I go to a cash only place and often just don’t go.
• janice1999 2y ago
  Governments really need to break the Visa and Mastercard Duopoly. Not mentioned in this article, but certainly related, was the Canadian governments unprecedented step to freeze hundreds of bank accounts of protestors during COVID protests using their Emergencies Act. While I couldn't be more politically removed from the protestors, using a legislative power envisioned for war like conditions to personally ruin protestors financially is more than worrying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act
  • olalonde 2y ago
    They just need to remove regulations. The reason there's a duopoly is that it's nearly impossible for a startup today to start a similar payment network.
    • gaganyaan 2y ago
      What regulations, specifically?
      • olalonde 2y ago
        AML/KYC mostly.
        • ryandrake 2y ago
          Smaller companies are more than able to comply with AML/KYC.
          • olalonde 2y ago
            Complying is easy, doing it economically is another thing.
            • viknesh 2y ago
              Sounds like a great opportunity for a startup to fix! In the country I live, there is a standard AML/KYC service that allows customers (banks, utilities) to easily perform ID verification in a few minutes.
• siliconc0w 2y ago
  Cashless is convenient but effectively amounts to automatic inflation. Not just from the merchant fees but making it easier to slowly raise prices/fees/tip %. Plus whatever % of the population is dumb enough to revolve credit and get buried in debt.
  • mattmanser 2y ago
    There's fees for handling cash as well. They're just less obvious. In the old days, those armoured vans used to have to go to stores every single day at peak times (Xmas, etc.). Plus you've got to pay for bags of change to be delivered. You've got to pay for a safe, insurance for your safe, plus a hard limit that safe is allowed to hold. If you're going to go over you need to request an on demand pickup from the cash people. You've got to have people in store collecting the cash, accounting it, trying to catch embezzlement, the cost of embezzlement, etc. All those costs were added on to the cost of goods. I used to work in the industry in the 90s, can't remember what any of that cost now, but I reckon it's comparable to the card merchant fees. Yes, the present duopoly is taking the piss with their fees, but accepting cash is also expensive.
    • matthewdgreen 2y ago
      I worked in a smaller, independent guitar store for a few years in the 90s. We received enough cash and checks that once a day someone would have to walk over to the “night deposit” slot and toss a bag in. Our cash handling cost was equal to my salary for the 30 minutes it took me to make that walk, plus the risk that I would get mugged ($0 lost over a few years.) Often the owner would rake out enough to cover his spending needs, so there was an additional (slightly illegal) tax benefit to using cash. Armored cars and pickup only comes into play when you’re a big store doing loads of transactions, and then economies of scale probably keep the costs modest as a percentage. Credit cards, on the other hand, can easily run you 30% on a $5 transaction here in the US, due to the unjustifiable fixed + percentage structure. Maybe it’s a little better in Canada.
      • ascorbic 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
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• porphyra 2y ago
  A cashless society with NFC tap to pay or QR code-based mobile payments is much better. No need to carry around a heavy and bloated wallet full of physical coins, no need to touch dirty bank notes that have germs and even drugs on them [1]. As a child, my parents always made me wash my hands with soap whenever I touch money, since you never know where the note has been. It just seems so unsanitary to handle physical cash, especially in places like restaurants that deals with serving food to customers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency
  • stavros 2y ago
    Well, you know, win on the germ front, lose on the independence front.
    • porphyra 2y ago
      Somehow I don't agree that it is a good idea to succumb the entire population to a known disease vector and encumber society with the massive administration and physical costs of dealing with cash, just to spite a bogeyman that's "stealing your independence".
      • stavros 2y ago
        It's all fun and games and bogeymen until you get hit with capital controls and you're limited to 70 EUR/day cash withdrawals. The happy path is great until it's not. You can think "it won't happen to me" all you want, but that doesn't mean it won't.
        • brainwad 2y ago
          How will cash help against capital controls, exactly? Unless you are poor, you never have more than a tiny fraction of your wealth in cash anyway. So when capital controls are declared, you will still be screwed.
          • 2y ago
• tail_exchange 2y ago
  Just yesterday I went to a coffee shop that had a big sign saying they didn't accept cash. Seems to become more common as time passes.
  • whitehexagon 2y ago
    My local coffee shop wont accept cards or digital payments, and they do it to help keep cash in society. We are too lazy with cards, but I guess it prevents another 'Northern Rock' style bank run, what's the point of rushing to take your cash out during the next financial crisis if you cant spend it. Already EUR cash transactions are limited to 1000. I often wonder how long before a bank account and smart phone become a legal requirement.
• stavros 2y ago
  I really hate paying by credit card (I don't like asking the bank for permission to spend my own money), but it's so convenient that I can't bring myself to carry cash any more. I have a really nice small wallet that I can store a few notes in, but I need a compartment for < 5 EUR's worth of change to make it perfect. That's literally the entire reason I pay by card nowadays, I just don't like carrying coins.
  • mixmastamyk 2y ago
    We put coins in a small bowl and take it to a change machine once in a while.
    • stavros 2y ago
      I do too, but I have loose pockets in the summer and carrying change in them until I get home is a bit of a hassle.
  • Molitor5901 2y ago
    I hate it too and limit my credit card to use to online transactions because of the fraud protections.
    • stavros 2y ago
      That's good, I'm going to switch to cash from now on. I think a bit of inconvenience isn't a huge price to pay for a vote for autonomy.
  • zzo38computer 2y ago
    I do not have any credit cards, and I prefer to deal with cash as much as possible. When I am going out to buy something, I will take the money with me; I am OK with carrying coins. Even if anonymous payment is available, I will still prefer to deal with cash.
    • stavros 2y ago
      What do you do when you go out to a restaurant, café, pub, etc?
• jpnguyen 2y ago
  Japan has tap payments for public transit and restaurants for decades, while simultaneously being very cash driven. Will be interesting to see how the cash meta evolves with different countries and cultures.
  • TheChaplain 2y ago
    Afaik drug deals are often done cash, so as long as that market exist cash won't disappear I believe.
    • vundercind 2y ago
      Big ones, yeah, I bet. Venmo’s huge for the “retail” side. See John Mulaney’s bit in his recent post-rehab standup about (paraphrasing) being confused what all these straight-laced people are doing on his drug payment platform.
  • livueta 2y ago
    An interesting facet of this that makes me feel somewhat more charitable to cashless payments in that context is that it's very easy to perform cashless payments in Japan pseudoanonymously, in that you can buy an IC card from a vending machine, load it with cash, and use it for payments all without explicit links to your KYC'd banking identity. Sure, if you attracted individualized security state attention they could probably pull security camera footage and figure it out, but that approach doesn't scale into turnkey tyrrany; sort of how like $5 wrench cryptanalysis doesn't prevent widespread strong cryptography fundamentally altering the envelope of what kinds of automated, at-scale privacy abuses are possible. This is a fairly stark contrast with the West, where pseudoanonymous cashless payments basically don't exist. The closest thing (stuff like xmr aside, where the chance you can use it to buy a coffee is very low) are prepaid visa gift cards, but the UX on these is terrible for a lot of reasons and so aren't anywhere close to the practical usability of cash-charged IC cards in Japan.
  • kredd 2y ago
    Japan’s government is also pushing towards cashless society right now. Younger generations are accepting it as well. My friends at PayPay and similar companies are pretty set on increasing their userbases YoY. I live in Canada, and honestly, nobody in any of my circles carry cash. The only use cases I can think of ate casinos and drugs. All the comments about “privacy, freedom and etc.” sounds like noise, and highly unlikely for younger people to even care about.
• acadapter 2y ago
  The bad feeling I get from cashless is "what if some future political conflict will lower the status of my ethnicity to such a low position, so I'll be denied buying food and nobody will care?" or some similar scenario.
  • JadeNB 2y ago
    > The bad feeling I get from cashless is "what if some future political conflict will lower the status of my ethnicity to such a low position, so I'll be denied buying food and nobody will care?" or some similar scenario. I don't mean to be obtuse, but how would cash solve this? If someone is bigoted against you and won't take cash from you, or marks up the price or engages in some other less obvious manipulation, and you're not in a position to rely on law enforcement, then what can you do about it?
    • arresin 2y ago
      Huh? With cashless you can’t spend at all if your account is frozen.
      • brainwad 2y ago
        So the alternative is, what, you can spend whatever is left in your wallet, but the rest of your money is still frozen? The difference from maintaing physical cash seems very marginal. Or are you suggesting we all pull all our money out of bank accounts and store it in cash under the bed, just in case one day we get unpersoned? The costs of doing that vastly outweight the expected benefits.
        • causal 2y ago
          This is a strawman argument: You've setup a scenario where cash isn't very beneficial, and then show why it's not beneficial. Before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, women could only use cash. Sure it would have been way cooler if they weren't discriminated against, but many women still only survived because of the cash option, and none of them would have said "Well since I might run out of money anyway go ahead and make it impossible for me to use what I have".
• CamperBob2 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • pasabagi 2y ago
    It's often pretty hard to do public protest without breaking some kind of law, even if you do everything you're supposed to. I'm not a fan of the truckers (the loud horns were totally infuriating) but the fundamental problem was that the police didn't want to move them on, not that they were breaking the law.
    • throw0101b 2y ago
      > It's often pretty hard to do public protest without breaking some kind of law, even if you do everything you're supposed to. All movements start small, and if you want to have your movement be a success it involves bringing more and more people over to your point of view / side. One can be disruptive in that you hold a rally or march to raise awareness, and be seen (in numbers) by folks on the street. Marches / parades are disruptive to traffic but if you've planned it and told people about it then they can plan around it. One can also go in, cause some trouble, and then disperse so that you get in the news but also do not piss of non-involved people. But being disruptive so that you piss people off is a way to not get more people onto your side of your movement. It is a way to inhibit further involvement of the public towards your side. A movement must be aware of how its actions are perceived by non-members of the movement. Just because you interpret things a certain way does not mean that the general public won't view you as a jackass: > “It’s a sign of independence,” he said. “I look at it as a rebel sign. In the biker community, a lot of people have the Confederate flag because we’re rebels.” > But to many, the flag is a racist symbol and a disturbing reminder of the U.S. Confederacy’s fight to preserve slavery. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced their display at the Ottawa protest, saying his government wouldn’t give in to “racist flags.” * https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/freedom-convoy-supporter-says-confederate-flag-on-his-truck-a-rebel-sign-1.6227288 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/freedom-convoy-supporter-says-... I don't know which "biker community" this guy is talking about, but as a motorcyclist I don't view the Confederate flag positively.
• frellus 2y ago
  Same is happening aggressively in Japan. It's quite sad.
  • KTallguy 2y ago
    There are a lot of cashless options but many places still only take cash. There’s a bakery in building that opened right when COVID started and they’re strictly cash only. Whenever friends and relatives visit they’re always stunned.
• singpolyma3 2y ago
  Sleepwalking is hardly fast enough. It's embarrassing that people are still forced to use cash in current year.
  • arresin 2y ago
    Why is cash embarrassing for you?
    • singpolyma3 2y ago
      Clunky, annoying, inconvenient, borderline useless. Cash only place is a good way to lose my business, especially since the odds I have cash on me are close to zero. Also one of the most expensive options for me as a consumer since I have to use my time to find an ABM, pay the ABM fee, etc. Also one of the most expensive options for me as a merchant, since I have to physically go to a bank and jump through hoops to deposit it.
      • friend_and_foe 2y ago
        I'm the opposite. And I live in an opposite world. Cash is the only way I pay in person. I have a prepaid card and amazon gift cards for online purchases. If I'm in a store, I have cash. If you don't take cash you don't get my business. I live in an area where many of not most businesses have a cash discount or outright don't take cards. I closed my bank account a while back. To me, it's embarrassing that there are places that call themselves businesses that don't take money.
• Magi604 2y ago
  I feel like it would be easy to just mandate stores to have to allow for cash transactions. It seems simple to enforce too, just walk into a store and try and by something with cash. If not, report/fine. As a Canadian, I also feel like there are so many more pressing issues right now, like housing, employment, inflation, immigration. Does this cash/cashless issue somehow affect one of these things?
  • vasco 2y ago
    They take away your freedom in one area X, and when they want to take away your freedom in another area Y you go, "it's ok, we have bigger problems like X".
    • causal 2y ago
      Well said. Not to mention the absurd implication that the housing crisis would somehow be helped by neglecting this issue.
  • throw0101b 2y ago
    > I feel like it would be easy to just mandate stores to have to allow for cash transactions. While cards have fees, cash has overhead too: you need to go to the bank for deposits, make sure you have enough change, worry about people walking in robbing your till (thus traumatizing staff), keeping a balance (to reduce 'shrinkage' from employees). Yes, it is "easy" to mandate it, but that is adding a 'regulatory burden' to business owners.
    • sbarre 2y ago
      It's also problematic for the thousands of solo micro-businesses that operate in markets and pop-ups now (i.e. Etsy IRL). Most of them have a phone and a Square dongle, and that's it. Asking all those one-person shops and merchants to start carrying around a float and writing out paper receipts (or having some kind of battery-powered till+printer) is a pretty big burden.
      • 2y ago
• ShakataGaNai 2y ago
  This is happening in a lot of places, just a few days ago I went to a restaurant (California) that had a sign up front saying "We are now Cashless" and touting why this is better for the staff. https://imgur.com/a/uDA8E4A https://imgur.com/a/uDA8E4A I predominately use credit for everything because its easier, faster, etc. But the 3% fees since time immemorial is screwed up. We need a better standard for payment that is digital but cash equivalent, aka not paying for the payment convenience.
  • veidelis 2y ago
    If I, for example, would have been a regular guest in that place and they would go cashless, I would politely let the owner know that I won't be visiting them until they accept cash payments again.
• pelorat 2y ago
  > Payments Canada, found that a majority of respondents were worried about the prospect of cashless stores and want to maintain the option to use cash — which is free from bank fees I mean, that is the problem right there. We don't generally have that problem in Europe because we don't rely on credit cards. Here's there no extra fee for using Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Pay with cash, your card, NFC... it's all the same. Stop using credit cards might be a good step for the USA. I don't know much about Canada to be honest and how it works over there, and if it's CC centric like the USA.
  • gary_0 2y ago
    There's a debit card system in Canada called Interac that should be free, but depending on the bank and account type, the bank will give you a very limited number of transactions per month (like 10 or 20). After that, every time you use your card you get charged a significant fee. Canadians get ridiculously nickel-and-dimed by banks, telecoms, retail, etc, compared to most other countries, which is part of why our cost of living is ridiculously high.
    • xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
      This is weird. I've never been charged a fee for using Interac. Sure, there are accounts for which you are discouraged from transacting daily, but this is true in the United States as well, in my experience. No one is being forced to use an inappropriate account type as a daily driver. Most accounts have a minimum balance requirement, which is usually pretty low, to avoid any fees. ATM fees on the other hand are a different story. In other words, it's trivial to maintain an account and use Interac for... everything. I know of many folks who do not even have, and have never had, a credit card.
      • gary_0 2y ago
        This is mostly a problem that affects poorer people, I suspect. I know people living paycheck-to-paycheck, who can't leave thousands of dollars lying around in their checking account, who are hesitant to use Interac because of the fees. Also, most people don't go to the trouble to shop around banks looking for a better deal.
• wvenable 2y ago
  A little context for Americans: Canada implemented chip and pin debit cards across the country in the 90s. Pretty much overnight, paying by check(cheque) disappeared and nearly all businesses took debit cards. So Canadians have been used to paying by card for decades now. COVID put the nail in the coffin of any remaining cash-only businesses.
  • basisword 2y ago
    This is the case in a lot of countries too. I don't think I've used cash at all in 4-5 years and rarely in the last 10 years.
  • localfirst 2y ago
    coincidentally during this time Canadian government has announced draconian ordinance to freeze bank accounts of citizens it deems unruly, destroy their credit history, call in loan payments. Not only that new ordinances to stifle online speech it deems hateful retroactively meaning if you wrote nasty things about say Defense minister Sajjan that instructed special forces to rescue Afghan Sikhs during fall of Kabul leaving Canadians stranded, you could very well find yourself homeless in Canada. Very scary and a big reason why Canadians young and old are creating US bank accounts and earning US dollars.
  • purpleidea 2y ago
    Canadian here, lots of business only take cash. We care about our privacy, although it's rare to find say a grocery store or gas station that doesn't accept cards too.
    • wvenable 2y ago
      I haven't shopped at a cash-only business in years now. The last time was the little snack stands at parks but post-COVID even those take cards now.
• smarm52 2y ago
  The comments and the article don't mention the positives of "cash"; Physical currency. And really, it's more trouble than it's worth. The number one benefit of going full cashless is just controlling inflation. It's MUCH easier to regulate supply if the supply isn't physical. Also it's expensive to make and expensive to maintain for little real benefit. And to solve the problem of vulnerable people not having economic access: Make accepting government cards required; It's the same argument for cash, but doesn't run into the difficulties of physical currency. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press.
  • _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    Weren't the Chinese playing with two types of virtual currency? One that goes down in value quickly over time? So you get paid 'savings' and 'spending cash'. Government cards often have complex requirements associated with them, for example what can be purchased. Some of the older processing specs only allow for a small number of purchased item classifications to be passed. Under those as long as someone purchased 20 approved items they could purchase whatever they wanted after that because the spec allowed 20 item specific segments.
  • akira2501 2y ago
    > The number one benefit of going full cashless is just controlling inflation. It's MUCH easier to regulate supply if the supply isn't physical. To what extent is inflation influenced by the physical money supply? Isn't it just banks that control it at their discount window?
    • jillesvangurp 2y ago
      Not much at all. Most money has been just numbers on some ledger for a long time. And what people call money is just written promises on a piece of paper. The gold standard where those pieces of paper could be exchanged for that is also history at this point. And people physically moving lots of gold around as a means of payment of course stopped being a thing centuries ago.
  • shrimp_emoji 2y ago
• JTbane 2y ago
  My take (as an American) on the one reason why cashless sucks: exorbitant transaction fees. 3% plus 50 cents is ridiculous, it should be like 0.1% at most for payment processor infrastructure.
  • brainwad 2y ago
    You Americans get a lot of it back via card reward programs (or, if your credit is bad, via lower interest rates). In Europe the CC fees are limited to 0.3%, but there is also basically no cashback.
• motohagiography 2y ago
  for businesses with slim margins, card and processing fees above whole percentage points are basically a private tax. the problem with cashlessness (and over-regulation and surveillance in general) is it mainly punishes normal people for a lack of enthusiasm in their compliance while ignoring (therefore rewarding) the total scofflaws. the economic and cultural effects of this are negative for everyone outside the funded or socialized sector. the loss of legit businesses has come up in backyard conversations for years about how many of the neighbourhood retail storefront businesses are just money laundering fronts. it drives up rents for legit businesses, discourages entrepreneurialism, and turns highstreets into homogenous globalized airport strip malls without local character. the dominance of laundering and other criminal activity is the direct effect of over regulation that sets high compliance bars for any new business, and so entrepreneurs (mainly 1st gen immigrants) switch away from the legit economy into grey and black markets to survive, while legit ones are forced out. black markets need prohibition and arbitrary regulation to exist, and all of canada's regulatory nonsense is exclusively creating conditions for those markets. the cities are starting to resemble 3rd world economies where political parties fund themselves through kickbacks from tolerating the black markets created by their own absurd policies, while preying on anyone trying to make their own way. the solution is to roll back the regulatory culture to let new legit businesses have their natural advantage on criminal ones. any further moves toward cashlessness only empower the black market.
• coldblues 2y ago
  It's frightening how many HN users will trade their freedom for just a bit of convenience. The dystopia is closer than you think. At the very least I hope the lurkers reading these comments are just shaking their heads in frustration and moving on to another post.
• jt2190 2y ago
  I think it’s more constructive to think about what risks are borne by each party in a transaction, how much it costs to take on each risk, and which party is better equipped to manage each risk. Then you can construct the thing that people actually want, and that thing is almost certainly not cash as we think of it today. For example, if I order something and pay cash, I’m taking on very different risks than if I pay with a credit card. Similarly the risks to my privacy are very different with each one. Maybe we need a third option that sits somewhere between the two.
• xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
  The comments here are truly bizarre. It seems like a few commenters here feel that this is an opportunity to derail on-topic discussion in order to forward some political agenda. The truth is Canada is already a cashless society. Cities, rural areas, farmers markets, country fairs... I haven't carried cash for years and I can't remember the last time I needed to. Earlier this year I went on a vacation to a remote tropical island and took out cash only to discover that nowhere even accepted cash! I was stunned.
  • bongo1000 2y ago
    [dead]
• Waterluvian 2y ago
  I haven’t carried cash in at least 7 years in Ontario.
• standardUser 2y ago
  I used to be vehemently opposed to going cashless (as a society) because then how would I buy illegal drugs? But crypto seems plenty mature to handle that problem now and I'm running out of arguments for why physical currency is essential.
  • BJones12 2y ago
    Because, through intention or error, a government or bank can lock out your accounts, leaving you penniless to pay bills or buy food.
    • standardUser 2y ago
      That presumes a household already has a large physical cash reserve, which I imagine few do. Besides, if you do want to store value, there are plenty of options like gold and silver and... crypto.
• kleancc 2y ago
  [flagged]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• banish-m4 2y ago
  And panopticon surveillance and control over every move you make in life by corporations, small businesses, and governments. Want to tip the cashier or give money to the homeless window washer? No. Also, AI social credit and precrime are just a nightmare away.
  • causal 2y ago
    These are worst-case scenarios worth considering, but IMO an obvious one not being discussed enough: credit cards are great if you're wealthy, horrible if you're poor. Between fees, absurd penalties for missed payments, and horrible rates if you don't have great credit- credit cards fleece the most vulnerable in our society while granting sweet perks to those with plenty. Cash is a poor person's best way to opt-out.
• hypeatei 2y ago
  I see a lot of people saying that cash increases freedom because the government / banks / card companies can't instantly shut off access. But, if you're being targeted and don't already have massive cash reserves, you're not going to be able to pull out cash from your account anyway. If the authorities want you sanctioned and oppressed, they will use a method that transcends any specific technology or tangible item: the justice system.
• pharos29 2y ago
  [dead]
• aryehof 2y ago
  How times change. Not a single comment mentions Bitcoin, and its potential in affecting the march towards a no-cash, centrally tracked and taxed, society. Perhaps its legacy will be more about portraying human nature that largely saw it as an opportunity for scams, schemes, greed, speculation, money laundering, and other nefarious activities.
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