Cashless society disadvantages

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tepples
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Cashless society disadvantages

Post by tepples »

In [url=https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=232246#p232246]this post[/url], Pokun wrote:In Sweden you can do most things from home using internet services, but the few times you really need to go to a bank is a pain, and most bank offices don't even handle cash anymore.
The decline of cash is not without problems, however.

Friction when setting up accounts
Someone cannot use Internet services at home to set up Internet services at home for the first time.

Inability for minors and recent secondary graduates to participate in the economy
Banks require the primary holder of an account to be an adult and show government ID. This means that a parent must do all of a child or teen's spending on the child or teen's behalf. In addition, a recent graduate from high school[1] may not already have government ID. Someone not interested in learning to drive or whose parents don't drive may have little opportunity to obtain an ID, as some countries do not issue non-driver IDs for domestic use. Though U.S. states issue non-driver IDs, conversation with a British citizen in the Cireclinlin chat server on Discord revealed that Britain issues only driver's licenses and passports, and a passport is expensive.

Friction when accepting payments
Cashless payments require a connection to the Internet. This usually requires the buyer to own and carry an Internet-connected device unless the seller has a chip card reader. In addition, either the seller or buyer must subscribe to Internet access, and even if a buyer subscribes to home Internet, a buyer must often open a second subscription with a cellular ISP in order to make payments away from home. Card payment processors tend to take a 30 cent transaction fee plus 3 percent of the total, raising prices for everyone and making small transactions impractical; hence a $5 minimum purchase at some merchants. Furthermore, banks and payment facilitators tend to make person-to-person remittances more difficult than with established merchants. Ostensibly this is to curb tax fraud and terrorism financing. But it interferes with birthday or Christmas gifts, a child or teen's allowance, or payment for occasional odd jobs that are not large or often enough to justify the annual fee for a full-scale merchant account.

Deplatforming by payment processors
PayPal has in the past terminated the ability of emulator developers to receive money. This is why, for example, NO$NES developer Martin Korth no longer takes PayPal. Nor do microblog hosts that espouse "free speech", that is, a policy whose ban on hate speech[2] applies only to incitement to violence. Credit card networks such as Visa are also known for deplatforming in some cases.

Citations for these are available on request.


[1] Or whatever a particular country calls its counterpart to high school. In the United States, "high school" is four years of secondary education from roughly ages 14 to 18.
[2] "Hate speech" is speech promoting bias against an ethnicity, gender, or disability.


Edited for clarity in February 2024: use "child or teen"
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Bregalad
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by Bregalad »

Well personally I still use cash most of the time and I don't see myself stop anytime soon.

As for emulator authors not allowed to have paypal accounts, this seems like it could be easily circumvented, for example you use your pseudonym for the emulator and your real name for the paypal account.
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Sumez
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by Sumez »

Debit and credit cards most often do not require internet connections and have been widespread for ~35 years.

Similar to Pokun's experiences, it is extremely rare to see any types of cash at all around here. Pretty much the only time I've had cash has been from family members who don't know what else to get my for christmas, and I always end up holding on to that money for years because I'm literally never in any situation where I need, or even could have any use for, cash money.

It's kinda weird visiting other countries, especially places like Germany or the US where a lot of people still swear by cash.
tepples
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by tepples »

Sumez wrote:Debit and credit cards most often do not require internet connections
Though the buyer doesn't need one, the seller does, particularly now that many card issuers have stopped embossing the digits for use with old-fashioned imprinters.
Sumez wrote:Similar to Pokun's experiences, it is extremely rare to see any types of cash at all around here.
Do you have yard sales or garage sales or rummage sales? I have yet to see one in my neck of the United States that accepts debit or credit cards, largely because of the fee per transaction.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Stores, cafés and restaurants, especially in the centre or in malls, have begun refusing cash some years ago. It's almost impossible to pay your rent or other bills in cash.

I grew up in a family of market dealers so cash is in my nature, but society here is pretty cash-free at large, championed by the store clerks' union as well as the banks. Visiting Germany or Austria feels at home where cash is still a norm.

As a market dealer (which i still work as sometimes because of the family farm), your net income is partly in cash, especially when you're touring countryside markets where people still use cash much more frequently than in the cities - people go to the ATM prior to visiting the fair. You might as well use it directly once registered, except that sometimes you can't.

Getting your income into your bank is more fiddly than it should be these days. If you're over some fairly low threshold, you need to sit in an interview or fill out a lengthy form (i guess the intention is to protect against money laundering, but mostly i think banks are saving on minimizing staff), so you want to do it as seldom as possible. Bigger firms don't have this problem, but you do if your personal economy and private company economy is the same.

I bought my latest laptop with saved up cash, though. :P
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by tepples »

Japan has 100-yen shops, Britain has pound shops, and USA has dollar stores. Sweden has Bubbeltian, a chain of 10-kronor stores. How much does the shop see of that when a card is used?
Stores, cafés and restaurants, especially in the centre or in malls, have begun refusing cash some years ago.
In such stores, how does someone pay for an order that totals 5 SEK (about 0.55 USD)? In the USA, which still uses cash for small transactions, a buyer can pay for a 50 cent purchase at a garage sale with two quarter dollar coins. But with a card, the bank will probably want about 0.30 USD or 3 SEK of that as its transaction fee. And a minor is unlikely to have a card to begin with.
If you're over some fairly low threshold, you need to sit in an interview or fill out a lengthy form (i guess the intention is to protect against money laundering, but mostly i think banks are saving on minimizing staff)
The United States requires a bank to file a Currency Transaction Report when an account holder deposits or withdraws over 10,000 USD (about 90,000 SEK) in cash during one business day. Wikipedia's article about CTRs in the USA implies that the bank's software fills out most of the CTR electronically nowadays. Is the threshold in Sweden significantly lower than that? "Customer due diligence" on the English-language version of Sweden's Finance Inspection site implies that the reporting threshold is closer to 15,000 EUR or about 150,000 SEK.
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Sumez
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by Sumez »

tepples wrote: Though the buyer doesn't need one, the seller does, particularly now that many card issuers have stopped embossing the digits for use with old-fashioned imprinters.
Although you can geat cheap modern solutions (like iZettle) that use internet connection, these things have been widely used long before the internet took hold. I'm not sure how they work, but I think they have a phone line or something. Either way, every single store in this entire country rely on them. I'm not sure what the supposed disadvantage is.
Do you have yard sales or garage sales or rummage sales? I have yet to see one in my neck of the United States that accepts debit or credit cards, largely because of the fee per transaction.
Yeah those will usually accept cash, but there are still a lot that refuse to take it. Nowadays no one would even consider going to a market like that without an app for mobile payments.
Consider the alternative - you go with no idea what you'll end up buying if anything at all. Do you take out $10? $50? Or maybe $500 in case you come across something like a Dodonpachi arcade PCB? And what do you do with that cash if you didn't find what you were looking for?
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gauauu
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by gauauu »

Sumez wrote: Consider the alternative - you go with no idea what you'll end up buying if anything at all. Do you take out $10? $50? Or maybe $500 in case you come across something like a Dodonpachi arcade PCB? And what do you do with that cash if you didn't find what you were looking for?
Most of the debate about these things ends up being silly, because the cultures are so different overall.

For example, your arguments make little sense to American culture. On saturdays during garage sale season, I go out with whatever cash is in my wallet (anywhere from $5 to $200), or if I know that my wallet is empty, I'll restock with a few hundred dollars. Normally garage sales are about cleaning out your junk, so everything is usually priced very cheaply. If you find something expensive, you can usually just ask the seller to hold it for you while you run to the ATM. This all makes sense because people here are comfortable with cash.
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Bregalad
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by Bregalad »

FrankenGraphics wrote:Stores, cafés and restaurants, especially in the centre or in malls, have begun refusing cash some years ago. It's almost impossible to pay your rent or other bills in cash.
Oh I didn't mention it, but bills are the only thing I pay online, as paying them by cash requires to go to the post office but only elderly people does it that way. For the rest, I always use cash and I hope we'll continue to do so as I see few advantages in switching to an electronic form of payment. (Basically this increase charges for the seller, and he'll report them to the customer).
I grew up in a family of market dealers so cash is in my nature
What do you mean by "market dealer" ? Something where you sell fruits or the like at the market ? Here "dealer" is a word used for people seeling drugs.
For example, your arguments make little sense to American culture. On saturdays during garage sale season, I go out with whatever cash is in my wallet (anywhere from $5 to $200), or if I know that my wallet is empty, I'll restock with a few hundred dollars. Normally garage sales are about cleaning out your junk, so everything is usually priced very cheaply. If you find something expensive, you can usually just ask the seller to hold it for you while you run to the ATM. This all makes sense because people here are comfortable with cash.
Same here, but I still had one misadventure where I was out cycling and stopped at a bar to have a beer. But my wallet was empty and there was no ATM around so I had to pay by card for ~$5 - the waiter scolded me but still accepted it.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by FrankenGraphics »

tepples wrote:[...] and USA has dollar stores. Sweden has Bubbeltian, a chain of 10-kronor stores.
There were a few franchises like these; göfabtian was one, but i haven't seen one that is true to the concept since maybe 2004, if memory serves me correctly. I remember that the school i went to at that time had a partnership with one of the local banks to provide every student with maestro bank cards (limited mastercards).

I googled and found one store named bubbeltian in borgholm, they've been closed since october but will reopen around easter 2019. We do have the franchise named dollar store here but their pricing may differ from the US? Prices vary a lot and are sometimes just below what you'd expect of an ordinary supermarket.

Anyway, super markets and franchises tend to have a better card transaction deal than small private stores.

iZettle is similar but their charge depends on your total monthly sales.
Swish (most popular pay by phone service here) will vary depending on your local bank office, but most banks allow for small businesses to process payments free of charge until you reach some threshold and get flagged in the system, at which point they may prompt you to upgrade to a pro subscription.

I think the franchises, however, just calculate that the small purchases are outweighed by the phenomenon that people tend to shop both more often and for more money when they don't see bills dissapear from their wallet. Plus there's a subscription fee for for the service of money transport and bank deposit, and cash-less counter registers are cheaper to buy in bulk.
Is the threshold in Sweden significantly lower than that? "Customer due diligence" on the English-language version of Sweden's Finance Inspection site implies that the reporting threshold is closer to 15,000 EUR or about 150,000 SEK.
These are the rules imposed on banks by finansinspektionen, but nothing stops a bank from being stricter. My bank allows for deposits or withdrawals without the extra processes up to 10.000 SEK, but i've heard people complain about thresholds even lower than that, as low as 1.000 SEK even.

Add to it that some banks will add fixed rate fees or refuse cash handling under their own defined circumstances, or just deny the service outright.
Bregalad wrote:What do you mean by "market dealer" ? Something where you sell fruits or the like at the market ? Here "dealer" is a word used for people seeling drugs.
Yes, fruit at the market and the like. Or in my case, hardy perennials for your garden.
Rahsennor
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by Rahsennor »

Ah, tepples. Never change.

We still have cash here, thank goodness. Hasn't stopped the banks (and everyone else, really) from closing branches like they're going out of style and refusing to provide basic services except via the internet... which for 90% of the country's landmass stops working whenever a cloud passes overhead, if it ever worked at all. :roll:
M_Tee
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by M_Tee »

The Korean government incentivizes the use of cards by deducting one's spending against income taxes due come tax season. Each year, citizens can request a form from their bank that gives totals spent in a number of categories: general commerce, traditional markets, transportation, and one more, I think.

Although it is still possible to receive these tax write-offs through cash spending, it requires a the issuance of a special card from the tax office, and merchants are required to have the technology on-hand to utilize these.

It seems this system was implemented to motivate customers to demand their transactions be on-the-books, thus pressuring merchants to actually report them honestly and pay the due taxes on them.

Anyway, just background as to why I transitioned from using primarily cash to nearly exclusively card. Although I keep emergency cash on me in case of card failure, loss, etc. I haven't actually used cash to pay for something in a very long time.
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koitsu
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by koitsu »

Don't any of you cashless or near-cashless folks have concerns over banks and/or corporations that manage said devices disabling your access, or something erroneous happening digitally? Speaking for myself: I'm wary of putting my entire financial well-being into an exclusive digital medium.

Two examples I've seen:

a) Albeit not quite the same thing as a bank doing it, is PayPal just suddenly deciding to reject your access to your account/disable people's cards, for whatever reason they see fit (sometimes political!),

b) Financial transaction system back-ends being completely down -- and by completely I mean 100%. Here's a recent example, and an even more recent one. Not every vendor has access to multiple transaction providers (in fact, I would say most companies/places of sale in the US only do transactions through one).

In general I think everyone's views are going to be slightly different given their geographic location. Things here in the US are not quite like that of the EU countries or east Asian countries, nor vice-versa. I think this plays a bigger role than what's been alluded so far.
Oziphantom
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by Oziphantom »

I think this also comes down to the country. The US is backwards and under an iron fist of the payment companies. In AUS PayWave/PayPass is a system set up for auto payments below $50 or so. We also have BPay. I do kind of get odd looks when I use cash in some places, but everything will take and handle cash, it is illegal for them to not, but there are some stores that don't take cash due to crime which is pardoned by the police. However there are quite a few "Cash Only" stores, mainly in Sydney at the Asian restaurants as the underpaid Asian students have been known to skim cards/take details..

It hurts the Church though, which might really put the breaks on in the US https://au.news.yahoo.com/churchs-tap-g ... 35601.html
M_Tee
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Re: Cashless society disadvantages

Post by M_Tee »

"What if holder of my money doesn't give me my money" is no different of an argument now than it was in the 1800s when it was "trust bank vs mayonnaise jar of cash." But having lived in the US and experienced American banks' predatory practices, I'd say a mayonnaise jar is the better option. :)

I trust either my bank to have my money or the government to insure the bank. I keep emergency cash if bank is temporarily unavailable. There's essentially no paypal here. Even private transactions are handled with instant transfers via online banking, which are feeless.
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