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USA Today Tech Columnist: Millennials Will Live To See a Cashless World (usatoday.com)
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."
His column is addressed to the mayor of Philadelphia, who this week signed a bill that bans cashless stores. Mr. Mayor. It's happening all over the world, and not just from Amazon. We are going cashless. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly for millennials. Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green. Selected merchants are into it now... USA Today's Charisse Jones discovered that cash purchases were down to 30 percent of all retail transactions as of last year compared to 40 percent in 2012. Millennials, she noted here this week, are saying no to cash, with 21 percent of those 23- to 34 years old saying that most of their transactions were in cash in 2016....
Mobile pay is still a sliver of overall retail sales, but it's definitely on the rise. Target, a long holdout, just added Apple Pay to one of its options, following in the footsteps of Best Buy, CVS, Costco and other retail giants who now accept payment via iPhone. The big, lone holdout right now is Walmart, the No. 1 retailer. It does have its own mobile pay app, that links bank payments to QR codes. And Mr. Mayor, good news for you. Walmart still accepts cash, too.
But for how long?
His column is addressed to the mayor of Philadelphia, who this week signed a bill that bans cashless stores. Mr. Mayor. It's happening all over the world, and not just from Amazon. We are going cashless. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly for millennials. Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green. Selected merchants are into it now... USA Today's Charisse Jones discovered that cash purchases were down to 30 percent of all retail transactions as of last year compared to 40 percent in 2012. Millennials, she noted here this week, are saying no to cash, with 21 percent of those 23- to 34 years old saying that most of their transactions were in cash in 2016....
Mobile pay is still a sliver of overall retail sales, but it's definitely on the rise. Target, a long holdout, just added Apple Pay to one of its options, following in the footsteps of Best Buy, CVS, Costco and other retail giants who now accept payment via iPhone. The big, lone holdout right now is Walmart, the No. 1 retailer. It does have its own mobile pay app, that links bank payments to QR codes. And Mr. Mayor, good news for you. Walmart still accepts cash, too.
But for how long?
Unlike this crappy columnist I am a millennial with a good paying job with no debt and money in my pocket.
I go out of my way to use cash and avoid credit cards.
The day we have a cashless society is the day the cloud atlas economy takes hold. (i.e you are required to spend a certain amount of money a week on consumption and probably negative interest rates and financial fees as punishment if you don't)
That or the world will migrate to Bitcoin I suppose...
There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction. I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...you poor bastards. Hope you enjoy total surveillance.
Sure... but that's only because Earth's temperature is going to increase exponentially, and soon it'll be too hot to print money anymore. Thank god I'm old and won't be around much fucking longer anyway. I don't envy them. Good luck, kids... that's all I'm saying.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
It's also important to note that governments want this, too. They used to just have visibility on big number transactions but once all cash is gone, they'll be able to monitor every transaction, no matter how small. The concept of anonymous transactions and spending privacy will be soon be over.
Reminds me of the following Ted talk - when you make the transaction frictionless, they've found you spend more
When money isn’t real: the $10,000 experiment | Adam Carroll | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VB39Jo8mAQ
The cashless society is only of interest to that portion of the population with absolutely nothing to hide. And I donâ(TM)t trust those people even a little bit.
No way to buy some mushrooms or hash... no hiding your hotel tryst from your spouse... no way to hide your alcohol abuse from your insurance company... if there isnâ(TM)t something you want to hide from prying eyes youâ(TM)re living life wrong.
Everyone only sees the world they want to see. I became a landlord a few years ago. It opened my eyes to the amount and types of people who don't or can't get debit or credit cards and that's ignoring all of the people who can't handling having a credit line. I would have otherwise never learned this type of information about people and would have continually falsely believed people had access to the same resources I had. How many random people do you go around asking about their financial history?
The metric they're measuring is total cash transactions. That's doesn't include enough information to be useful. Is that 30% of the population only using cash or 1% only using cash and 29% sometimes using it? Perhaps that 70% are only buying a couple things at a time over and over where as the 30% cash purchases are buying two weeks worth of items at a time. Perhaps the majority of the cashless transaction are in cities. Etc... People will fill in the missing details with whatever they prefer to assume which makes all further claims dangerous to make decisions on.
Personally I use cash at toll booths, bi-weekly on Craigslist, paying a friend / splitting costs, when the card readers aren't working, and when any total ends up matching an exact bill such as a $20. And sometimes I randomly pay in two dollar bills to screw with people.
What about all the same aged millennials who will still be under the poverty line, and will still be underserved by banks and credit card companies?
Can't believe I'm saying this, but: check your privilege.
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
I really like remote places. I have been to a lot of them (Pitcairn Island, Cape Horn, the Austral Islands of French Polynesia, Palmyra Atoll, the Cook islands, etc.)
There are still a lot of places that don't have cell service. The Internet (where it is available) can be very spotty. Sites like "microsoft.com" and "google.com" cannot be reliably located online (DNS errors.)
These places deal in cold, hard cash.
I did a deal in Uruguay that involved tens of thousands of dollars. The deal was all cash. Each side counted out hundred dollar bills in $1000 increments and grouped them in stacks of $10,000. All the money got counted twice. The transaction was completely legal. The U.S. $100 dollar bill is the genuine coin of the realm in Uruguay and Argentina. I don't care who you are, nobody is going to trust your smart phone for much over -maybe- $1000,
I brought back (and declared) piles of hundred dollar bills through U.S. customs. The scrutiny was intense. But I got to keep my money.
As far as the article goes, yeah, in metropolitan first world areas cash is less and less useful.
Just as an aside, another remote place I like is Death Valley in California. Too bad every year somebody dies because they think that their smart phone will save them when they have gone too far into the back country unprepared. But...hey...at least they didn't need cash!
Sad story.
Talk about what the banks don't want you to even think about: Use of Credit and Debit cards adds an enormous additional cost to the merchant and, ultimately, to the consumer -- usually just shy of 5%. The conversion to cashless isn't being done to help the citizen, that is for sure. Help the consumer out of their money and their privacy? Of course. Control the consumer? Absolutely. And the dumber than dumb Millennial generation can't put two brain cells together to figure it out. Cui bono?
As long as drug dealers want to avoid having to explain all those five hundred dollar transactions done between 2:00 am and 5:00 am.
Why does this columnist seem so damn smug about the prospect of losing a convenient payment option that has no middleman taking a cut?
Here's how you predict things correctly:
1. Start with things as they are
2. Predict they will change only a little.
That's how you get correct predictions. Nobody wants to publish them though.
The big changes that would be interesting enough to publish in an article are too few. You won't guess them.
Let's see you buy an 8-ball of crystal meth with a credit card or Apple Pay. You think Robert Kraft is slapping down his Discover Card when he goes to the Chinese rub'n'tug to get his egg roll dipped in sweet and sour?
Do you think that when the human trafficking owner of that Chinese rub'n'tug sells access to Donald Trump that they're taking credit card payments?
Fuck no. There somebody, somewhere, with a wad of currency. As it will ever be.
And no, I'm not making any of the above up:
https://nymag.com/intelligence...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Millennials can't buy everything they want without cash and I doubt that the intolerance precludes those purchases will leave as quickly as the availability to be 100% cashless arrives.
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Gen X is the last generation that remembers what it was to live disconnected, and when we die out, nobody will know better.
Your CC comes with a new political code of conduct.
Any gov assistance program gets a new long no buy list.
No gambling, no drugs, no alcohol, no smoking.
A bank account will be needed.
Detection of illegal migrants and other criminals trying to use a fake ID.
Social media use gets linked back to a cashless account and all spending is tracked.
Cash gave a person the spending power to enjoy freedoms away from big gov and the politics of a bank, CC. A cashless world returns all spending to a bank, CC.
Buy the wrong book? The wrong comment on an ISP account linked to your a cashless account?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
My prediction in the not too distant future the use of credit cards for transactions will be greatly diminished. Instead people will use bank tied "push" payment systems for electronic payment without transaction fees.
Cash will still be widely used and smartphone based payment systems (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, ad nausea) will be phased out entirely.
A cashless society gives TOTAL control to government. If this happens it will be eventually be abused.The other day it became known that the Trump administration has been tracking journalists. Should Trump seize even more power, how hard it is to imagine he might freeze the assets of those journalists from "fake news" outlets as he likes to call them. Just one very easily imagined scenario where this could be abused. Next election Right Wing Christians take control? Maybe they will prevent funds from being transferred to pay for abortion. I could go on and on but the abuse is easy to imagine yourself. And that's not even considering the tracking power of a cashless society.
Finally, Uncle Sam will be getting in on all that unreported allowance action.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I will give this guy the benefit of doubt and just label him naive.
There are so many reasons for having cash, from simple convenience to privacy. I like the fact that I can literally throw money on the counter/table if I am in a hurry (has happened a few times in my life).
Also, it will be the end of most beggars, I believe, as I cannot see them accepting card payments soon (Thank you kind Ma'am, would you like a receipt?). Similarly for sellers of The Big Issue (a UK magazine sold by homeless people). A lot of other charity will be stopped dead in its tracks when people cannot just grab some money and give it in a quick transaction. What about the big tanks in the airports where people can leave money for charities, can anybody imagine those replaced with card readers? Me neither.
As other have said, we are walking into the ultimate surveillance society where no transaction goes unregistered, which obviously is the card companies', the tax man's, the police's, the intelligence communities' and the government's wet dream.
Just say NO!
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Dear United States. New Zealand has had EFTPOS for years and years. Stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale. It is not a credit card, in that it is attached to your bank account. Getting out cash is now quite rare. It isn't strictly cashless; we still have cash, but the overwhelming majority of point of sale transactions are performed by EFTPOS. There is a small fee to the merchant for each transaction, but not the silly percentage based approach used by the credit card people. So entrenched is EFTPOS that we have rejected the 'paywave' system which sought to undermine it and reintroduce abhorrent transaction fees just for the 'convenience' of not entering your pin number.
As soon as "cashless" becomes a reality, police won't have to lift a finger to arrest anyone accused of a crime. They'll just turn off his phone. The suspect will turn himself in to avoid starvation.
That's the good part of police states. Petty crime virtually disappears. The bad part is that the definition of "crime" expands so far as to encompass anyone who does something the rulers don't like. We're already seeing people being denied financial services like Paypal, Patreon, and even bank accounts simply because they speak their opinions in public. It's a new, terrifying level of control and since corporations control it instead of government, it's doing a nice job of boiling the frog.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Was chatting to a hotel manager the other day about Expedia. She told me they often wait up to 3 months after the customer has been and gone to get paid for the stay.
I live in Norway. I haven't touched cash in about 4 years - and that was on a trip to America. Hand on my heart I havent been in a single situation where cash was required. We still keep 500 kroner (60 dollars?) in a drawer for home emergencies - but we've never had to use it. MY 2 year old daughter will never see cash. Even in her birthday cards - she has a bank account and when the time comes for her to spend money she'll have a mobile phone.
Because in the future due the fall of western society the economy will return to barter.
I frequently give some spare change to the homeless or the sub-saharans that are selling tissues at the traffic circles. They likely don't even have a presence in the digital world and probably can't get one...
Yes and now. Whilst it would end the bankruns of popular memory, the 2008 crisis saw more subtle versions where banks were refused access to the interbank market with equally disastrous consequences.
The end of cash has been announced for decades, basically every time some cashless payment system becomes popular. Credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, you name it.
Won't happen. Cash is still the easiest, most convenient payment for both small everyday transactions and private-to-private exchanges. It already has disappeared from most large purchases - people buying a house or a car on cash have become so rare that they're newsworthy. But in all other areas, change is much more slow than all the news articles claim.
Change will continue to happen, but cash won't disappear anytime soon.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Cash is still useful in Sweden!
Have you ever lost or had your wallet stolen? You need to save a little bit of cash for expenses just in case.
Happened to me a couple years ago, I had my card skimmed just before Midsommar. The new one obviously didn't arrive in 2 working days and I needed to buy all the celebration necessities.
I don't understand why people think I want to stop by a bank/ATM every once in a while. With cashless, I go there twice a year and feel both trips are a waste of time.
15 years ago, I had to stop by the Elec office to pay my monthly bill. I though it was asasine then that I had to not only pay for my time but also the teller to... what basically amounted to paper shuffling and database entries.
Cashless saves me a TON of time and money; and not just at the check out counter. I got better things to do with my time... like doze off in my backyard.
And we pay middlemen for everything and everywhere. That cashier, elec company teller, toll booth collector, parking attendant, water meter readers, lawn services sales guy, L1 customer support, etc. These are all labor units that are no different than any middleman.
PS: And I fully support Philadelphia's accept cash initiative. Because some members of our society can't go cashless for whatever reasons. And I believe it is the responsibility of any incorporated authority to provide for all of its resident's needs. This is on top of the legalities that cash is the tender for debt in the US. Don't like those points; go set up shop in an unincorporated area.
And here I am planning to hit the bank so I have cash on hand for getting lunches. This really strikes me as someone living in their own affluent cultural bubble and confusing 'millennials' with 'their immediate peer group'.
I like cash. I like privacy. Don't force all to use CCs.
If some millenials -and others- are happy to share their buy patterns with the Visas and Mastercards of the world, it's your business. Just don't force us into your stupid quest to rid the world of cash.
sure, i like how easy it is to pay with my card, it's my prefered way of paying for stuff.
i don't want to pay with my phone, anything involving money has no place on my phone.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
It is an old law; it says dollars MUST be accepted for all debts. The only work around is to NOT allow the debt in the 1st place in advance; kind of a word game but the courts if they have any common sense will rule that cash can not be forbidden.
You can keep the requirement for cash... but you'll get profiled as being a shady person with something to hide. You'll have troubles as the teenager struggles to do basic math and operate a cash register.
We DO need to KILL nickles and pennies. probably just move everything into 1/10 . don't think biz doesn't round $ like crazy already. POINT: lincoln killed the 1/2 penny which today is worth over 10 cents! But then we don't need to ban... we can make stuff a pain in the ass and people will act like they are in pain to have to handle literally worthless coins...
Being broke and unemployed sucks, but it is a cashless lifestyle.
I am positive that all these stories are bought and paid for by publicists working for credit card companies and similar big financial firms.
Imagine the woody any such company gets when it contemplates getting a few percent cut of EVERY transaction BY LAW. Right now every real dollar bill spent anywhere in the company ROBS the credit card companies of their ~2% transaction cut. They want that money. It's a lot.
Americans and foreigners visiting the US should all be required to pay a 2% sales tax to some rich companies whenever they buy anything. That's just right and proper. This is what this is about, pure and simple. All discussion of security or convenience or even the absurd claims of cost reduction are smoke to obscure the real reason for this.
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."
That's because he is rich or at least relatively so and clueless about how lots of people actually live. Poor people don't get this option. Credit cards don't work well in remote areas without network connections. Good luck doing a Venmo in the middle of Alaska. Something like 15% of Americans don't have bank accounts or credit cards or debit cards and many cannot get them under reasonable terms even if they wanted to. Cash isn't going away any time soon and this guy is an idiot if he really believes it will.
Because after the rent on their TriBeCa studio and their student loans, millennials don’t have any money.
The middleman causing higher prices for cashless transactions does not apply. An everyday example:
We are both in the gas station and we both buy $10 at the pump. You pay cash I use my credit card,
but it only costs me $9.70 because I get a 3% rebate.
The merchant is paying 5% to the credit card company for processing the sale, but is getting benefits that compensate; for example faster transaction processing, no bounced check fees, no cash embezzlement, no worries about hold ups, an increased customer count because he accepts credit cards, higher sales per customer transaction, and more satisfied customers.
Not all benefits apply to all merchants, but enough do to make the 5% fee palatble.
Meanwhile I will be saving 3% on my purchases.
"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham
didn't know that coins were the beginning and end of cash money.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Find what the hotel costs on Expedia. Offer 10% less in cash, with a card for security/incidentals. Profit. Works nicely for smaller motels at least.
Haters going to hate, but crypto works.
..don't panic
I mean it. Illegal immigration keeps the cash economy a-hummin' along nicely in the US -- I thank illegal immigrants for helping preserve my freedom of choice (to pay cash) and privacy. And no, I'm not a coward, so I'm not bothered by the supposed negative implications of the above.
Just ignore the minor issues of the poor, who have little or no access to non-cash options, or any crank concerned about personal privacy or the inconvenient fact cash is still legal tender. Our only priority should be making businesses happy. Cash needs to remain an option because transactions cannot be tracked by government, business, or third parties. Data from cash transactions cannot be used or sold to track you and your life. Cash works when the power is out, or the Internet connection is down - depending on where you live, or travel, can be an issue. Some small businesses and service providers are cash only. As long as cash is legal tender, acceptance of cash is simply part of the cost for anyone operating a physical business, like rent, power, employee wages, inventory, etc. FYI: I use debit, PayPal, credit cards, etc. when I shop online, and usually in the real world. But, certain transactions are in cash. Tips are always left in cash - some merchants skim tip money from electronic transactions. Some purchases are better done without an electronic record - gifts for my wife for example. And, believe it or not, a few merchants still offer a cash discount.
The cashless world has an income barrier.
There are lots of people who don't have credit cards or bank accounts at all. They take their pay check to the nearest check cashing service as soon as they receive it. Some of them now allow you to do bill pay right there from your pay check. If they need to buy something online, they go to a retail store and buy an Amazon or iTunes or Visa gift card with cash, then use that to make purchases.
At best we'll reach a "cashless" society in the same way we've reached a "paperless" office.
Cash will diminish, sure. But end?
What about kids? Are they going to start getting debit cards? Or will they just not be allowed to buy anything in this brave new world?
Lot's of people don't have bank accounts. What about them?
You don't replace one technology with another unless it's better in every way.
If the new is only better in most ways, then it's only going to mostly replace the old.
Until there's something impossible, like, you know, a thunderstorm.
Hi this is your Friendly local Government.
We see You Bought A LOT Of Dildos.
Your Place Of Employment has been notified. Pervert.
...you to pay as many of those tasty transaction fees as possible
FTFY.
Have gnu, will travel.
The vending machine at works charge me an extra dime on the dollar if I use a credit card, even if I run it debit. The bar down the street insists on a $10 minimum on credit card due to banking fees. The gas station around the corner charges a higher rate for credit purchases of gasoline. These banking fees results in million if not billions in profits for banks every day. I'm over here trying to get my budget right -- I can't have the bank nicking and diming me at every corner.
As the first post proves, when cash goes out of being used, hipsters will use cash.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I mentioned alcohol abuse... but only drug use. Not abuse. Conflating one to the other is a mistake.
I'm saying a happy, balanced life is not necessarily the normal state of man. Mostly balanced, okay.
"I personally have no respect for people who don't have the courage to lose complete control of their lives for a few years." - Marc Maron
Affairs happen all the time. And the majority go undiscovered and fade into the past without terminating the relationship.
Given that nothing seems to stem the tide of infidelity, it seems to me that the cashless society would cause a rise in the divorces.
In most cases, businesses are forced into the status quo. You can't run a hotel business and hope to not accept guests through such middlemen. That's how the consumers shop.
is a very important check on unfettered government power, and it thrives on cash.
Nothing good can come of this, and people pushing it (for their own self-interested motives) should be shunned.
...there's a power outage, or internet goes down, or banks start fleecing business owners with inflated fees, etc..
Also, as long as people still have the option to use cash relatively conveniently, we won't be so susceptible to hyper-exploitative practices by banks & credit card companies that'd make the big telecoms monopolies blush. You know they're just waiting for the opportunity, don't you?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
This columnist/blog writer is such an obvious twit, either beyond stupid or in league with the money masters --- what a load of tripe!
This is a bit off-topic. But until it's all cashless ...
I use my card for purchases that will improve my social credit rating, and cash for everything else. For example, I pay cash for alcohol and use a card when I but fresh healthy food. Sure, it takes a little longer to split the transaction if I'm buying both at the same time, but I think it's worth it.
If you can afford to, then keep $200 in cash on you at all times. That's enough to get a cheap room and to buy transportation in an emergency, or if your credit card processing system goes down. I also keep a couple rolls of quarters and a bunch of $1 bills in my emergency bag in my car because they are the most common vending machine denominations.
You never know ...
in the form of various rewards programs and cashback. I also get the option to dispute most transactions (thanks to US Law, YMMV in your country though). I'm also not liable for unauthorized charges.
As for the businesses taking my credit cards, they get to sell me more crap (my kid has a copy of my card with her name on it for use in college and yeah, she's spent more on it then I'd probably budget her if I gave her cash, she's got a 4.0 despite getting sick as a dog last year, I can't complain). And it effectively lets a company issue credit without the need to do collections.
I think it mostly works for folks in good financial shape. Where it becomes nasty is if you're not in good financial shape. Then the sharks circle with 30%+ APRs and they sell your debt to each other and use our legal system to garnish wages. But all that's fixable with some more regulation and some pro-working class legislation like what Bernie Sander's is proposing.
Speaking of Bernie, I think Credit Cards are a good example of something that works well in the context of Democratic Socialism and Mixed Market Capitalism. e.g. something that we can leave the bulk of it up to private industry while regulating it enough to prevent abuses.
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So when everyone else has perished, the Millennial world will be a cashless world
and would have loved cashless. Every store I worked at had been robbed at least once while I worked there. I avoided it by sheer dumb luck. The owner of one chain used to keep their lobby's open 24/7 until somebody got pistol whipped. They didn't close them until the cops got fed up and said they'd press negligence charges on the owner the next time somebody got hurt.
What I'm saying is cash isn't free to a business. There are costs involved. The businesses dropping cash aren't doing it to be hip or because they drunk kool-aid. They're doing it because the costs are now higher than the alternatives.
And if it bother's you that much just do Postal Banking with government issued cards. Have the gov't issue gift card like devices if being traced bugs you. But I've said this before, being tracked should be low on your list of worries in a world like ours. If you're American you've got Health Care, jobs, climate change and the 8 wars we're fighting. Tracking is a symptom of oppression, not the cause. Focus on the systemic issues that oppress you.
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India did a major shake up to it's paper currency because they couldn't get folks to pay their taxes. It was bad enough that it was retarding the country's growth and modernization efforts.
You can still have spending privacy for small transactions (think under $10k) with various cash cards. What'll go away is hiding large amounts of money from the tax man in cash. As somebody who gets paid his salary electronically and pays every dime of taxes I say "Good".
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the current system is kind of fucked up. If you're wealthy you've got basically zero chance of getting arrested for a little hash & shrooms. Being white helps too.
Every wonder why we haven't legalized drugs? It's because drugs being illegal isn't a problem for a significant portion of the population. Hell, Nixon's people admitted that it was a political move, literally state sponsored terrorism against minorities they didn't like ("minorities" here being literal, e.g. not just race/creed/color but also political minorities).
There's a big push for drug reform thanks to the "opioid crisis". We even passed some real criminal justice reform. What changed? Middle Class, rural white men and women were getting caught up in the drug war for a change. Since they're a valuable voting block to the right wing (and the left wing already wanted to stop treating drug users like criminals) some progress happened.
I wouldn't mind seeing all of it brought out into the light. Legal taxed and regulated for the weak stuff (pot & shrooms) and treat the hard stuff (Meth, Heroine) like a disease. That's not going to happen so long as 70% of the population can use witn impunity...
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it has to be counted, moved by secured trucks to banks. You have "shrinkage" in retail & restaurant (e.g. stealing from the till or not ringing up orders, every wonder why you see your order on a screen at a fast food restaurant? it's not so they get it right...).
When I worked at a fast food joint we were allowed to be off by a certain amount on each till. It was just expected. It was a couple bucks on a $100 till IIRC, so around 2% right there. We weren't always, but I'm guessing that alone was a 1% loss.
And that's before we talk about armed robbery. I pointed this out elsewhere on the thread but cashless would be a boom to fast food and convenience store employees who often get robbed. And companies typically have to carry insurance to cover that risk. Plus there's the lost money from the robbery.
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just stop means testing welfare programs. Implement UBI. Problem solved.
Or if you have to means test stop doing it on moral grounds. You know most of the South is doing drug test laws for welfare recipients, right? No cash involved.
One last thing, nobody knows what book you bought except Amazon. All the Credit Card companies know is that you bought something from Amazon.
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completely untraceable unless you're buying dozens of them at a time. Even then they're still untraceable, but they'll stake out the area if you keep doing it in the same place. But long before they did that they'd just stake out your regular haunts and catch you there.
Credit Cards are not the Number of the Beast. They're not a perfectly traceable item. Nor do they need to be. Cops have much, much better ways to get their way.
You're right about one thing, cashless would make cops jobs easier. It would end stick ups. There'd be no point knocking over a convenience store or fast food joint if there was no cash there.
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This is a good idea. I have a google account where I'm subscribed to Tana Mongeau Buzzfeed and Logan Paul. Once in a while I'll binge on Donald Duck when I'm leaving to go out. I do my real watching over TOR only, and won't like anything unless it allows liking over TOR. ( eg: bitchute.com ). It's time to start building social credit and taking that shit seriously.
Dear United States. New Zealand has had EFTPOS for years and years.
We have EFTPOS in the United States as well. It's just very rare to see a merchant that accepts EFTPOS but not credit cards.
There is a small fee to the merchant for each transaction
Which itself is prohibitive for the 0.50 to 3.00 USD transactions at yard sales. Is there also a monthly fee for a merchant to accept EFTPOS?
U.S. banks and credit unions are part of EFTPOS networks called Interlink and Maestro. "Visa Debit" cards are on Interlink, and "Debit MasterCard" cards are on Maestro.
The pocket computer than approximately everyone carries
Just because someone carries a pocket computer doesn't mean he also subscribes to Internet access for use on that pocket computer while away from home. Currently I subscribe to cable data and do not subscribe to cellular data because switching from cable data to cellular data would cause my home use to routinely exceed the 10 GB per month mobile hotspot data cap that all major cellular ISPs impose.
Big Brother would like to thank everybody for pushing for a cashless soceity. It makes it SO MUCH EASIER to keep track of you and is more reliable than tracking your cellphones.
Remember: Big Brother is watching YOU!
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Even if they paid the same day, the aggregator (Expedia, etc) gets their cut off the top. It's more profit to the hotel if you book direct, and the price to you can be lower. You're paying a lot for the convenience of Expedia or Booking.com.