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| Cashless Australia |
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| tszaboo:
My problem wouldn't be a global disaster scenario, but a personal one. Imagine, that you own the tax office and the bank. It's overdue, you lost jour job or other tragedy happened, health issue, sick family member. Say, your balance is 0. Your credit is 0 because you couldn't pay the last one. You are selling your furniture, to get some money, to be able to buy food. You sell your sofa. By the time you get to the store to buy some food, the tax office liberated the money from your account, because you owned them. With cash, you have the control to buy food first (and not die) and pay for mortgage, utility bill or outstanding invoices later. Nowadays, you cannot open nameless account. Maybe there will be cards that are not linked to your personal account, like prepaid debit cards. 0 is a strange number. Going from 1 to 2 is a 100% increment, going from 0 to 1 is infinite. |
| Halcyon:
It's funny you should actually post about this. I was just talking about this today with a friend. I could count on two hands the number of times I've actually used cash over the past 5-10 years, whether it be small amounts for something like a coffee or thousands of dollars for something larger. Everything for me is paid via debit card (backed by Visa and Mastercard, but offers no credit facility). NFC has taken over as the primary card type (followed by chip-based cards). Magstripe is almost never used any more (and in many cases, terminals will refuse magstripe payments or have it disabled altogether). Almost all newer style pinpads don't have a magnetic reader any more. Just about every card has NFC, Chip and Magstripe by default. As a consumer, it usually costs me nothing to use a card for everything. Some stores will charge a fee (which is a card processing fee passed down from the merchant) that is usually 0.25 to 0.50% of the total payment amount but not all stores pass that on. This fee is only charged if I select the "Credit" option on the card machine, otherwise I can press "Savings" and it's completely free everywhere. For me, it all comes out of the same pool of money, the only difference is how the payment gets routed. An example of where this might be different is if you had 1 card, but a credit account attached to your normal savings/transaction account. Pressing "Credit" would use the credit side of things where as pressing "Savings" (or far less commonly "Cheque") would pull the money from another one of your accounts. Likewise, money transfers here between accounts or even intrabank transfers (via your internet banking portal or a smartphone app) are instantaneous and completely free. Then on top of that, there is an application available for iOS and Android devices called Beem It which allows for instant payments for up to $2000 per day (or $10,000 per 30 days). I use it when someone pays for dinner and I want to transfer my share of the bill. Just on cheques briefly, they are almost never used in Australia any more. I think I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've handled a cheque and all of them have been more than 10 years ago. As for security, just like anything, if you look after your things and are mindful of personal security and the security of your mail, you won't get scammed or skimmed. Treat payment methods like you (should) treat your passwords, although most banks here will reverse unauthorised transactions, or if they can't, refund small amounts at their cost, without any questions asked. For me, cashless works reliably and securely every single time. Even when networks go down, payments are honoured. |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: NANDBlog on March 09, 2021, 08:11:59 am ---My problem wouldn't be a global disaster scenario, but a personal one. Imagine, that you own the tax office and the bank. It's overdue, you lost jour job or other tragedy happened, health issue, sick family member. Say, your balance is 0. Your credit is 0 because you couldn't pay the last one. You are selling your furniture, to get some money, to be able to buy food. You sell your sofa. By the time you get to the store to buy some food, the tax office liberated the money from your account, because you owned them. --- End quote --- That is why you have multiple bank accounts at multiple banks. One ingoing account, one outgoing account and don't take a mortgage from a bank where you also have a bankaccount you actively use. In the NL this setup works until a judge grants a debt collector the right to claim your assets in which case you can't sell anything anyway. --- Quote from: HwAoRrDk on March 09, 2021, 04:19:42 am ---Even in here in the 21st century, in first-world countries, there are still significant proportions of the population that have no access to electronic payment methods or even banking facilities full stop. Those with very bad credit, immigrants, the homeless, etc. Take away their ability to trade with cash and you take away the ability for them to live their lives independently. --- End quote --- Over here shops are obliged to accept (small) cash payments by law and I assume this will be the case everywhere else. However there are also countries where you can't pay expensive items using cash. The limit may be as low a few k euro as part of anti-money laundring regulations. |
| Stray Electron:
In the US and many other countries, the drug trade will ensure that cash will remains King* for a long time to come! Drugs and other underground economies are another BIG reason that the US and other governments are stublely trying to force a switch to a cashless economy. For the benefit of the ones of you that aren't in the US and aren't familiar with their idioms, there is a saying in business that "Cash is King". Meaning that it's acceptable or even preferred in most transactions. |
| cdev:
--- Quote from: Stray Electron on March 09, 2021, 01:23:55 pm --- In the US and many other countries, the drug trade will ensure that cash will remains King* for a long time to come! Drugs and other underground economies are another BIG reason that the US and other governments are stublely trying to force a switch to a cashless economy. For the benefit of the ones of you that aren't in the US and aren't familiar with their idioms, there is a saying in business that "Cash is King". Meaning that it's acceptable or even preferred in most transactions. --- End quote --- Did you read Norbert Haering's series https://norberthaering.de on the Indian demonetization actually being caused by a cabal of big US companies? This seems quite possible.. They just drool over the free money they will get from all this.... regulation.. If people have no choice.. Its kind of like that now with corona virus.. people have no choice but to transact and interact online. This is why the privacy rules should be enhanced. Frankly, I would like to see much mkore online prvacy and I would also like to see the huge firms broken up. No part of them should be too big to fail. Also, there is a need for more privacy online. The user tracking is going to spiral out of control, I can see it going that way. It will become like George Orwell's 1984 but worse. Peoples devices will become a surveillance nightmare. There will be no freedom as the corporations become able to manipulate peoples lives in every possible way. They will have incredible power to get what they want. Politics will become more and more corrupt with no means of control by the public. At least that uis where I think this is taking us. As an American I don't think this coulntry can afford all the decisions that are being made for corporations. IMHO People are naive and gullible and dont realize what the mega corporations are planning for them. They don't have even the foggiest clue. |
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