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> 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 t

> 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.
- Magi604 2y ago
  Stores have been doing this since the dawn of...stores. Or at least when currency was first invented. There are very established processes and practices for this sort of thing. It's a cost of doing business, in the same way people pay for rent etc. for their stores.
  - thethimble 2y ago
    The fact that many such businesses have become cashless suggests that the ROI of accepting cash is not worth the cost/burden. Therefore it’s not a fundamental “cost of doing business” and instead just a mechanism to reach a subset of customers that prefer cash. I agree that mandating businesses to support cash is unnecessary regulatory burden. After all, shouldn’t it be the shopkeeper’s right to do business how they please?
  - brainwad 2y ago
    Right, but now there are more efficient systems (the aforementioned Square dongle). We usually welcome technological progress that reduces costs, why opppose it in this case? The colourful pieces of paper and specially squished lumps of metal have been obsoleted. The solution isn't to force people to keep using cash, it's to make an electronic money system that has the good properties cash has (issued and backed by the government; directly tranferable between payer and payee; mostly anonymous but theoretically traceable in case of massive theft/fraud).
    - djhn 2y ago
      Why oppose? Privacy. Freedom. Democracy. Equality.
      - brainwad 2y ago
        TBH I don't see why the market sellers should have to pay for that. Like I said, the solution is to offer a privacy/freedom/etc-preserving electronic payment system that is a real successor to cash, but still has the low costs that make businesses want to go cashless and the convenience that makes consumers want to.
        xethos 2y ago
        None of this solves the simple visual of "I'm running out of cash in my wallet, better slow spending down" I could log in to my bank online and check, I could keep a mental tally of "I spent this here and that much there, I should have this much...", but both of those are decidely more work. Furthermore, every time I switch back to cash (and my fiancee has independantly noticed), budgeting and saving gets easier. Once again, likely because of the visual and tactile nature of cash Most damning of all, guess how well credit and debit worked during the multi-day Rogers outage a few years ago. You say "That was a once in a lifetime fuck-up", I'll say "That's not the only reason or time stores haven't been able to process cards" I'm under 30, and I remember grocery stores around holiday time being unable to accept anything but cash. Electronic systems aren't actually a solution here. We have a solution, it's called cash; it does not rely on what is essentially a duopoly (Visa/MC), it does not rely on asking permission from a handful of gatekeepers (for-profit banks you'd like to transfer to/from) Credit unions aren't the solution to the latter either - you can use one, but anyone you're trying to pay is almost certainly with a bank.
        brainwad 2y ago
        Reading a number on my phone screen is a much easier way to measure how much money I have than staring into my wallet and counting up the notes and coins. It's literally a finger tap away. You are also eliding all the positive features of electronic payments, like being theft-proof, being much quicker to pay with, and being trackable for my own benefit. > for-profit banks The banks run their retail banking businesses as a loss leader for their savings accounts (the "deposit franchise"). If all the banks were mutualised transaction costs would probably go up, not down. Also, doesn't exactly the same argument apply to cash? Where do you think businesses get their cash floats from? They get them from banks.
michael_vo 2y ago
Yeah totally agree. Every form of payment comes with pros and cons. Maybe one idea is to come up with many alternative payment methods. In Africa I've read everyone pays with a phone number. In USA government gives food bank cards loaded with money. Maybe a system where anyone can load cash onto a card easily through any ATM machine.

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.

Magi604 2y ago
Stores have been doing this since the dawn of...stores. Or at least when currency was first invented. There are very established processes and practices for this sort of thing. It's a cost of doing business, in the same way people pay for rent etc. for their stores.
- thethimble 2y ago
  The fact that many such businesses have become cashless suggests that the ROI of accepting cash is not worth the cost/burden. Therefore it’s not a fundamental “cost of doing business” and instead just a mechanism to reach a subset of customers that prefer cash. I agree that mandating businesses to support cash is unnecessary regulatory burden. After all, shouldn’t it be the shopkeeper’s right to do business how they please?
- brainwad 2y ago
  Right, but now there are more efficient systems (the aforementioned Square dongle). We usually welcome technological progress that reduces costs, why opppose it in this case? The colourful pieces of paper and specially squished lumps of metal have been obsoleted. The solution isn't to force people to keep using cash, it's to make an electronic money system that has the good properties cash has (issued and backed by the government; directly tranferable between payer and payee; mostly anonymous but theoretically traceable in case of massive theft/fraud).
  - djhn 2y ago
    Why oppose? Privacy. Freedom. Democracy. Equality.
    - brainwad 2y ago
      TBH I don't see why the market sellers should have to pay for that. Like I said, the solution is to offer a privacy/freedom/etc-preserving electronic payment system that is a real successor to cash, but still has the low costs that make businesses want to go cashless and the convenience that makes consumers want to.
      - xethos 2y ago
        None of this solves the simple visual of "I'm running out of cash in my wallet, better slow spending down" I could log in to my bank online and check, I could keep a mental tally of "I spent this here and that much there, I should have this much...", but both of those are decidely more work. Furthermore, every time I switch back to cash (and my fiancee has independantly noticed), budgeting and saving gets easier. Once again, likely because of the visual and tactile nature of cash Most damning of all, guess how well credit and debit worked during the multi-day Rogers outage a few years ago. You say "That was a once in a lifetime fuck-up", I'll say "That's not the only reason or time stores haven't been able to process cards" I'm under 30, and I remember grocery stores around holiday time being unable to accept anything but cash. Electronic systems aren't actually a solution here. We have a solution, it's called cash; it does not rely on what is essentially a duopoly (Visa/MC), it does not rely on asking permission from a handful of gatekeepers (for-profit banks you'd like to transfer to/from) Credit unions aren't the solution to the latter either - you can use one, but anyone you're trying to pay is almost certainly with a bank.
        brainwad 2y ago
        Reading a number on my phone screen is a much easier way to measure how much money I have than staring into my wallet and counting up the notes and coins. It's literally a finger tap away. You are also eliding all the positive features of electronic payments, like being theft-proof, being much quicker to pay with, and being trackable for my own benefit. > for-profit banks The banks run their retail banking businesses as a loss leader for their savings accounts (the "deposit franchise"). If all the banks were mutualised transaction costs would probably go up, not down. Also, doesn't exactly the same argument apply to cash? Where do you think businesses get their cash floats from? They get them from banks.

michael_vo 2y ago

Yeah totally agree. Every form of payment comes with pros and cons. Maybe one idea is to come up with many alternative payment methods. In Africa I've read everyone pays with a phone number. In USA government gives food bank cards loaded with money. Maybe a system where anyone can load cash onto a card easily through any ATM machine.