5 ms·

Why I have to buy doughnuts with cash

26 points by hhs 1y ago

yawpitch 1y ago
http://archive.today/yfel5 http://archive.today/yfel5 Kind of ironic this particular article is behind a paywall.
k310 1y ago
I fully expect the crypto troika of Vance, Musk and Thiel to outlaw cash and to mandate crypto. Of their choice. And I'm not being snide.
- pols45 1y ago
  They are young and stupid. They don't know enough history. They don't know how the story of John Law ended.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- hamhock666 1y ago
  Why would they do that? Is this just spam?
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    Surveillance. It’s more difficult to track cash transactions, more difficult to assess tax on them.
    - selcuka 1y ago
      Why crypto? Can't they outlaw cash and mandate credit/debit cards?
      - TimorousBestie 1y ago
        It’s not an exclusive or, they already have most payment processors tapped. People who refuse to use credit now may choose to use crypto later, so pushing crypto probably increases surveillance coverage.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  I think many overestimate their ability to create legislative change that will outlast the lifespan of an executive order. This is a party that couldn't repeal the ACA when they had control of all three branches. The ACA, flawed as it is, took hard work, discipline, nuance. What we have now are leaders who spend their days venting culture war fumes on Twitter. The timing of retiring supreme court justices may fall in their lap, which is lasting, but again that's not due to anything they've achieved.
brudgers 1y ago
It's not the banking system. It's that cash is the simplest thing that might work. No declined cards. No network delays. No broken electronics. No waiting on transactions to clear. ...And even better, it segments the market against people who want demand more than doughnuts for dollars.
- throwaway422432 1y ago
  Exactly. For example, pulling in to buy petrol because they're displayed price is good. You don't know how much you have available in the transaction account, but you have cash.
  - lmm 1y ago
    Huh? I know my bank balance (it's right there on my phone) much more easily than counting up how much cash is in my wallet.
    - throwaway422432 1y ago
      I don't do banking on my phone, and non-US currency where you can see what you have from the colour of the visible portion of the notes without opening the wallet. Also unlike a phone I won't get fined for looking at my wallet while stopped at the lights.
  - bapak 1y ago
    Kinda funny, I use my credit card for daily transactions because I know it's never declined. On the other hand, I might not have enough cash on me at all times.
    - tylerflick 1y ago
      Why not both? Why limit your financial vessels?
      - bapak 1y ago
graton 1y ago
I use cash so I don't feel pressured to tip when buying donuts
fracus 1y ago
This reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke.. "I bought a donut and they gave me a receipt for the donut; I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut."
- bombcar 1y ago
  You gotta expense that donut.
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  Yes for small purchase and "usual day to day" item maybe its worthless to keep track for that but for big purchase like car payment,house mortgage etc. its good to have it immutable track record so if any problem occurs its easy to show why I own the thing
  - fracus 1y ago
    woosh. That has to be an AI bot.
- ghtbircshotbe 1y ago
  And the thermal receipt paper is supposed to give you cancer too.
charleshwang 1y ago
As a former resident of Maryland, it's sort of funny seeing Carlson's Donuts & Thai Kitchen mentioned in the Financial Times and thereby Hacker News. A little disappointing it was not really about their donuts though... Are they the same owners of Carlson's Donuts in Severn? They are also cash only.
chasing 1y ago
Crypto is a psycho solution to payment complexities. It'd be like putting an Indian scammer call center in charge of the telephone network because there are some dropped calls. Or electing a guy who spent a career committing fraud at every turn President because the price of eggs went up a bit. Or solving the problems of the American healthcare system by putting a guy in charge who... Oh, wait. We're definitely going to do the crypto thing. Dammit.
plantain 1y ago
>For its doughnuts, the shop takes only green cotton notes from the Federal Reserve. >The proximate reason is obvious. If it were to accept credit cards, Carlson’s would have to pay an interchange fee to a network, for the privilege of selling doughnuts. These fees run roughly between one and two per cent, sometimes higher, particularly for smaller retailers like Carlson’s. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. We all know this is to avoid tax, right? Why are we pretending otherwise? They take card for everything else. This is just some tax-free pocket money for the owner.
- selcuka 1y ago
  > We all know this is to avoid tax, right? Of course. More correctly, to evade tax.
- jldugger 1y ago
  See, I thought it was because cash only businesses are a great way to launder money, ie actually pay taxes on illegal money so you can spend it freely in the banking system.
- jancsika 1y ago
  Retail card processors often charge a flat fee per swipe/tap/whatever in addition to the 1-2% percentage mentioned above. E.g., a five cent flat fee doesn't matter on a $20 lunch, but it's over 3% of a sale for a single $1.60 donut. Perhaps more importantly, consider the following design document for donut transaction software a la Mitch Hedberg: "I'll just give you the money. You give me the donut. End of transaction."[1] Cash achieves this out of the box. You could have John Carmack and a billion dollars seed money and your cc terminal would still need to be rebooted in the middle of a transaction on at least a bi-weekly basis. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPq0-8dyl8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPq0-8dyl8I
  - xethos 1y ago
    And to really drive home your point, > a five cent flat fee doesn't matter on a $20 lunch, but it's over 3% of a sale for a single $1.60 donut. Now do the math for profit instead of revenue
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
fnordpiglet 1y ago
These hot takes always ignore the actual reason for fees on credit card transactions. It’s not because of the complexity or avarice of the payment system providers, it’s because the card networks offer insurance and repudiation of false payments. Each layer of the payment network carries loss liability for different types of fraud in the system. Stablecoins like cash or other cash transfer schemes don’t offer any form of reputation of transactions for any reason. If you lose your money to theft, to a fraudulent merchant, whatever, the money is gone. This being said, the interchange structure -is- inefficient as there’s been a lot of middle men accumulated over the years. A simpler interchange could be achieved with much lower fees for the merchant and higher rewards for the consumer. Only a major processor like stripe to accomplish this but they are too absorbed with stable coin malarkey
- nothrabannosir 1y ago
  > the card networks offer insurance and repudiation of false payments. *They force the participating banks to offer... You think MasterCard or Visa hand over a single dime to you? When you issue a chargeback, the money comes from the merchant bank, not from the network. Quite the opposite: the payment network penalizes the merchant bank with an additional chargeback fee. > It’s not because of the complexity or avarice of the payment system providers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3wP1nlg6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3wP1nlg6U 50% profit margin This is not a competitive market.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
jldugger 1y ago
fascinatingly also available on msn without a paywall: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/topstories/why-i-have-to-buy-doughnuts-with-cash/ar-AA1OfDMX https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/topstories/why-i-have-to-buy...
amlozano 1y ago
This boarders on self-promotion but I'd like to say, "Bitcoin fixes this". We're launching Bitcoin payments available to every Square point of sale with 0% transaction fees for next year. 1% after that. Available Nov 10th. [https://squareup.com/us/en/releases#bitcoin https://squareup.com/us/en/releases#bitcoin] My sincere hope is it catches on and helps out small business. The difference in fees can really add up, and with near instant settlement to dollars on the backend, the merchant doesn't even need to hold or think about Bitcoin unless they want to. The fine article talks about stablecoins, but in my biased opinion those are much more complicated than Bitcoin to deal with right now.

26 points by hhs 1y ago

http://archive.today/yfel5 http://archive.today/yfel5 Kind of ironic this particular article is behind a paywall.

k310 1y ago

I fully expect the crypto troika of Vance, Musk and Thiel to outlaw cash and to mandate crypto. Of their choice. And I'm not being snide.

pols45 1y ago
They are young and stupid. They don't know enough history. They don't know how the story of John Law ended.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
hamhock666 1y ago
Why would they do that? Is this just spam?
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  Surveillance. It’s more difficult to track cash transactions, more difficult to assess tax on them.
  - selcuka 1y ago
    Why crypto? Can't they outlaw cash and mandate credit/debit cards?
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      It’s not an exclusive or, they already have most payment processors tapped. People who refuse to use credit now may choose to use crypto later, so pushing crypto probably increases surveillance coverage.
add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
I think many overestimate their ability to create legislative change that will outlast the lifespan of an executive order. This is a party that couldn't repeal the ACA when they had control of all three branches. The ACA, flawed as it is, took hard work, discipline, nuance. What we have now are leaders who spend their days venting culture war fumes on Twitter. The timing of retiring supreme court justices may fall in their lap, which is lasting, but again that's not due to anything they've achieved.

brudgers 1y ago

It's not the banking system. It's that cash is the simplest thing that might work. No declined cards. No network delays. No broken electronics. No waiting on transactions to clear. ...And even better, it segments the market against people who want demand more than doughnuts for dollars.

throwaway422432 1y ago
Exactly. For example, pulling in to buy petrol because they're displayed price is good. You don't know how much you have available in the transaction account, but you have cash.
- lmm 1y ago
  Huh? I know my bank balance (it's right there on my phone) much more easily than counting up how much cash is in my wallet.
  - throwaway422432 1y ago
    I don't do banking on my phone, and non-US currency where you can see what you have from the colour of the visible portion of the notes without opening the wallet. Also unlike a phone I won't get fined for looking at my wallet while stopped at the lights.
- bapak 1y ago
  Kinda funny, I use my credit card for daily transactions because I know it's never declined. On the other hand, I might not have enough cash on me at all times.
  - tylerflick 1y ago
    Why not both? Why limit your financial vessels?
    - bapak 1y ago

graton 1y ago

I use cash so I don't feel pressured to tip when buying donuts

fracus 1y ago

This reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke.. "I bought a donut and they gave me a receipt for the donut; I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut."

bombcar 1y ago
You gotta expense that donut.
tonyhart7 1y ago
Yes for small purchase and "usual day to day" item maybe its worthless to keep track for that but for big purchase like car payment,house mortgage etc. its good to have it immutable track record so if any problem occurs its easy to show why I own the thing
- fracus 1y ago
  woosh. That has to be an AI bot.
ghtbircshotbe 1y ago
And the thermal receipt paper is supposed to give you cancer too.

charleshwang 1y ago

As a former resident of Maryland, it's sort of funny seeing Carlson's Donuts & Thai Kitchen mentioned in the Financial Times and thereby Hacker News. A little disappointing it was not really about their donuts though... Are they the same owners of Carlson's Donuts in Severn? They are also cash only.

chasing 1y ago

Crypto is a psycho solution to payment complexities. It'd be like putting an Indian scammer call center in charge of the telephone network because there are some dropped calls. Or electing a guy who spent a career committing fraud at every turn President because the price of eggs went up a bit. Or solving the problems of the American healthcare system by putting a guy in charge who... Oh, wait. We're definitely going to do the crypto thing. Dammit.

plantain 1y ago

>For its doughnuts, the shop takes only green cotton notes from the Federal Reserve. >The proximate reason is obvious. If it were to accept credit cards, Carlson’s would have to pay an interchange fee to a network, for the privilege of selling doughnuts. These fees run roughly between one and two per cent, sometimes higher, particularly for smaller retailers like Carlson’s. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. We all know this is to avoid tax, right? Why are we pretending otherwise? They take card for everything else. This is just some tax-free pocket money for the owner.

selcuka 1y ago
> We all know this is to avoid tax, right? Of course. More correctly, to evade tax.
jldugger 1y ago
See, I thought it was because cash only businesses are a great way to launder money, ie actually pay taxes on illegal money so you can spend it freely in the banking system.
jancsika 1y ago
Retail card processors often charge a flat fee per swipe/tap/whatever in addition to the 1-2% percentage mentioned above. E.g., a five cent flat fee doesn't matter on a $20 lunch, but it's over 3% of a sale for a single $1.60 donut. Perhaps more importantly, consider the following design document for donut transaction software a la Mitch Hedberg: "I'll just give you the money. You give me the donut. End of transaction."[1] Cash achieves this out of the box. You could have John Carmack and a billion dollars seed money and your cc terminal would still need to be rebooted in the middle of a transaction on at least a bi-weekly basis. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPq0-8dyl8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPq0-8dyl8I
- xethos 1y ago
  And to really drive home your point, > a five cent flat fee doesn't matter on a $20 lunch, but it's over 3% of a sale for a single $1.60 donut. Now do the math for profit instead of revenue

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

fnordpiglet 1y ago

These hot takes always ignore the actual reason for fees on credit card transactions. It’s not because of the complexity or avarice of the payment system providers, it’s because the card networks offer insurance and repudiation of false payments. Each layer of the payment network carries loss liability for different types of fraud in the system. Stablecoins like cash or other cash transfer schemes don’t offer any form of reputation of transactions for any reason. If you lose your money to theft, to a fraudulent merchant, whatever, the money is gone. This being said, the interchange structure -is- inefficient as there’s been a lot of middle men accumulated over the years. A simpler interchange could be achieved with much lower fees for the merchant and higher rewards for the consumer. Only a major processor like stripe to accomplish this but they are too absorbed with stable coin malarkey

nothrabannosir 1y ago
> the card networks offer insurance and repudiation of false payments. *They force the participating banks to offer... You think MasterCard or Visa hand over a single dime to you? When you issue a chargeback, the money comes from the merchant bank, not from the network. Quite the opposite: the payment network penalizes the merchant bank with an additional chargeback fee. > It’s not because of the complexity or avarice of the payment system providers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3wP1nlg6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3wP1nlg6U 50% profit margin This is not a competitive market.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

jldugger 1y ago

fascinatingly also available on msn without a paywall: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/topstories/why-i-have-to-buy-doughnuts-with-cash/ar-AA1OfDMX https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/topstories/why-i-have-to-buy...

amlozano 1y ago

This boarders on self-promotion but I'd like to say, "Bitcoin fixes this". We're launching Bitcoin payments available to every Square point of sale with 0% transaction fees for next year. 1% after that. Available Nov 10th. [https://squareup.com/us/en/releases#bitcoin https://squareup.com/us/en/releases#bitcoin] My sincere hope is it catches on and helps out small business. The difference in fees can really add up, and with near instant settlement to dollars on the backend, the merchant doesn't even need to hold or think about Bitcoin unless they want to. The fine article talks about stablecoins, but in my biased opinion those are much more complicated than Bitcoin to deal with right now.