Here in Czechia you can pay for online transactions with instant direct bank transfer, so cards are not really needed. This is often used for direct transfers between individuals where one generates a QR code on his phone and the other scans it.
My parents are not from the USA and don't have USA bank accounts or credit cards and have had no problems renting a car in Europe or anywhere else they went. I really don't get what you mean. I don't see why you specifically need an American card and not just a credit card from any modern country.
Eu banks typically use a MasterCard or Visa partnership for their credit cards. The EU bank might issue the credit card to their customer, but the actual payment processor is an american company. If MasterCard/visa starts blocking certain payments, then there's nothing that the EU bank can do about it.
You can know which payment processor your bank's credit cards uses by the presence of a small logo on the front of the card. 2 overlapping red and orange circles = mastercard network.
As for car rental companies, Hertz has some wonderfully twisted logic on their Belgian site where they say that they accept debet payments from any eu bank card, as long as the card has the visa or Mastercard logo. In other words, they only accept Mastercard or Visa payments, not eu debet payments.
I mean if you don't understand things you should ask, not assume others are in the wrong. Yeah it would be pretty stupid to be forced to have US accounts to rent cars in Europe, luckily we're not THAT stupid.
VISA and MasterCard are practically a monopoly on credit card circuits, your parents' cards may be issued by a local bank but there's a 95% chance they've got one of these two companies' logo printed on them, and out of every payment they make, these AMERICAN companies get 2% (blah blah cashback, blah blah terms and conditions), because they are made on their circuits!
You may also have debit cards that DON'T have those logos, but debit cards can't be used for car rentals.
I did ask. Specifically I asked what you were talking about. All you really had to say was Visa and MasterCard are USA companies that handle card transactions. If you had clarified that initially you wouldn't be getting downvoted to hell.
If you have an account in any European bank, you can pay by bank transfer or SEPA in basically any European business, and often it's their favourite way to do it because there is no commission. I don't know country by country, but in Germany the standard for payment system is Girocard which is German payment processing, and the cards usually come equipped with both it and some American standard like visa and mastercard, but a lot of people opt out, if they don't care about payment outside of Europe.
Any car rental worth it's salt in Europe will accept some form of SEPA, but also, renting a car is not an essential part of people's lives here, so it's not even something people care about that much
but also, renting a car is not an essential part of people’s lives here
It may not be part of your life, but I've done it hundreds of time as a travelling tech (plus a few as a tourist), and I've had times when airports with hundreds/thousands of rental cars had trouble satisfying demand, so it seems there are others with the same need.
And no, they don't accept SEPA, although terms vary by country, and if they do they require a safety deposit that can go from a few hundred euros to the thousands, not exactly practical.
How is a deposit not practical? Unless they require it in cash that has to then at the end be picked up at the pickup point (which would be crazy)? A rental company is taking a huge risk by renting cars to any random person with a driving license. It's the same reason they don't typically rent to people below 25 (or without a higher deposit).
It's really only unpractical if you don't have enough money on your account to afford the deposit, but then why are you renting cars? Otherwise you just pay a bit more the first time and then get that money deposited back on your account when you return the car. There's basically no difference in the end other than a bigger number the first time, and if you wreck the car or something, you will lose the deposit through your credit card too.
Being traveling tech is absolutely not usual occupancy, so it doesn't change what I said. But if you work in Europe and traveling around, and moving around instruments is part of your job, you should have a company card anyway for it, so again, it doesn't really matter for the rest of Europeans.
What I'm trying to convey, that even though you will have some incompetence without American run banking systems, unless you're in a very specific operation, like needing to rent a car at an airport for example, you wouldn't be severely inconvenient.
I'm saying it as a refugee from a country that (for justifiable reasons) is getting some negativity around, and being born there I'm deemed not actually a good person in advance, and it took me a lot of time to convince various governments that I'm not a dangerous exemplar of my race. The time I spent without access to international banking systems like Visa weren't debilitating, even though inconvenient at times.
I think you are making too sweeping of a statement here. Maybe this is the case for car rentals you encounter / have access to but the response should show that's not the case everywhere in the EU. I rented a car without a credit card over 5 years ago where I'm from. You do pay a deposit that I suppose a credit card would normally insure for, but the option exists. Either way, if a car rental requires a credit card, I would not even consider renting with them. That's ridiculous.
Look, if you go to mom and pop's car rental, sure, they can accept hens as payment if they like. If you use car rentals the most common way, as a supplement for airport travel, you rent one in your city, you use it to go to the airport, return it, fly to your destination, rent another car at the airport, do your things, go back, repeat. At those locations you'll only have the big names, AVIS, Hertz, Europcar... Those are mostly credit-card or corporate account exclusive. And corporate accounts are expensive, at my former company we had a bunch of people travelling constantly and it still wasn't economically advantageous, apparently.
Debit Cards – Accepted in many countries, but restrictions apply (see below)
In some countries, only credit cards are accepted—unless you've prepaid online with a debit card.
If you prepaid your rental with a debit card, you must bring the same card to the counter, along with a valid credit card for the deposit.
Your card must be in the name of the main driver, and valid for the entire duration of the rental.
Your debit card is now welcome at Hertz in Europe.
Here at Hertz we like to make renting a car personal. You decide what to drive and where to drive, and now you can choose how to pay.
We welcome debit cards across our European locations. We want your journey with us to be easy, so giving you options on how to pay puts you in the driving seat. No complicated processes – a simple deposit that works the same for credit cards as debit cards. Go your own way. Pay your own way.
:::
You never said your statement was just about airport car rentals. Over here that is very likely not the most common usage of rentals (and certainly if you exclude business travel and holidays), since airports are far between, but car rentals are all over the place, far away from those airports. You rent cars over here if you dont own a car and need transportation. Or if you have to move a large amount of items you rent a van.
Besides, you can simply take the bus or train from any airport to a real car rental which should be close by in any major city. Of course if you go do it in a business hub you will find scams for the average person. Does that sacrifice a little bit of convenience, sure. But if you buy all your water from street vendors at a tourist attraction we dont claim water is expensive.
I can see you are simply from a very different world, that of business travel, which is why your perspective is so different.
EDIT: And no, I didn't use a mom and pop shop, I used the biggest car renter in my country (Netherlands) with over 130 locations.
in Poland we have something similar! we have BLIK and it generates a code for you that the other person taps into their terminal/you tap into an online purchase window, then it tells you to confirm again in the app and there you go, paid
there's also BLIK phone transfers, you just need the other person's phone number and (provided they have their bank linked to their phone number ofc) you can send money to their account that way
i haven't paid attention to it recently but when this was being introduced they also added a cheeky "this transaction only took you 30s ;)" at the end lol
I live in a country where it has become in a sense illegal not to be listed at an address. If you are not listed at an address, the government flags you as a missing person. If that happens, the banks lock you out of government ID, which is necessary to do basically any type of online banking, and if you have any funds behind an electronic ID wall, you won't be able to access them.
Recently visited a country where cash is very much preferred and it was such a breath of fresh air. I thought it would be annoying to have to keep up with the spare change and what not but it was fine and actually felt pretty good. I've since started using cash a lot more at home.
I recently had a trip to Japan and had more mixed opinions about it. Mainly because they have a large variety of coins and oh boy do you end up with a lot of them.
Coinage is the single reason why I'm tipped over the edge to prefer card. I HATE dealing with change.
I wish there was a card that was closer to cash where the money is stored on the physical card not offsite but that seems like a nightmare in itself... Idk
We actually had that here for a while, called Chipknip. You could store money on it which you would need top off once it was spent. It disappeared when nfc debet cards became the standard though.
It kind of is, but I love the 500 yen coin anyway. It's the 2nd most valuable common coin in the world (I think) after the 5 Swiss franc, (or at least it is for now as the yen continues to tank, currently worth about $3 USD whereas 10 years ago it was $4 and 15 years ago was over $6). It makes your change jar actually worth decent money (imagine if filling up a 2 liter bottle was worth a couple thousand bucks instead of a few hundred) and it's kinda fun to have a small change pouch in your pocket worth more than a hundred bucks.
Plus it's gold colored so you can collect a pile and feel like a pirate
Yeah but at least the lack of heft feels like the trash it is. US pennies are worth shit but want to pretend they're real coins. Also the 1 yen weighs exactly 1 g and floats on water.
Having visited Greece (well, Corfu) a number of times, and as much as I love the place and the people, the primary reason they prefer cash is because they're not big fans of paying taxes.
Didn't they go through a whole thing where other countries were imposing shit on them to force repayments of national debt? Maybe understandable then that tax evasion is popular if a lot of what is paid in taxes isn't going towards improvements to your own country.
Well this means that there is still a payment provider doing the barcode system. This payment provider could still block certain vendors. It works excellently to protect the privacy of the buyer, though.
That's different from bank transfers, and, in the US, debit cards are weird permutations of credit cards, they either have a Visa or MasterCard logo and the fee structure is different from credit cards but not zero (maybe? It's changed a bunch and the fees are usually hidden from customers)
The fees just straight up don't exist for customers now. They havent for decades.
Its even illegal to charge one at all if your bank has a few billion in assets.
So at worse a company might pass their processing fees onto their customers.
But banks can't charge you one and most companies don't either. It's just a cost of doing business.
So only the poorest shittiest banks, and the shittiest companies charge one. That or small businesses that can't afford to eat the 2.5 to 3% that's common.
But functionally debt cards are just a free service as far as the consumer is concerned.
You obviously don't have a debit card. It's not "a permutation" of a credit card and they don't come from visa or MasterCard. You're talking about a credit line through your bank. I own a debit card. From my bank. With only my bank as the issuer. It takes money directly from my bank account when I use it. No creditor involved. It's a money transfer straight from my bank account to the retailer I use it at. Millions of people have them.
I mean, we could all decide to not use credit cards and Apple Pay... But that's too inconvenient. Oh, well, I guess we'll continue being little bitches.
(Just got back from a trip to a cash-heavy country. It's possible.)
me using cash whenever possible (i really do) and even trying to influence my friends and family to do so isn't gonna do shit in the face of several million rational people, let alone several million Americans lol
if i want reasonable payment systems i need to emigrate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i really like the city i live in though. actually it's a lot more cash-friendly than most of the US fortunately
Bank transfers here take 3 days typically. And that's business days, so add another one if it's after 4:30 pm, also Saturday, Sunday, and holidays don't count.
That's what it was like here not so long ago. It can occasionally still take that long if you're sending money to another bank. Same for weekends and holidays. We still seem to get by just fine?
That's too much delay and too insecure for businesses around here.
Many don't even take checks for pretty much the same reasons (they are basically the same system, but entrenched): There's no guarantee that the person paying actually has the money for the business to later receive it.
Because the US still does not have instant, or near instant bank transfers. ACH bank transfers cost money per transaction, on the order of 0.30-0.50 per transaction, and can much higher for larger transactions.
The US is just incredibly, and uniquely behind when it becomes to accessible payments. This is the reason why "FinTech" such as Cash app, PayPal, and Venmo, in addition to credit cards, are popular - they literally just don't have the infrastructure in place for you to pay back a friend after they pay for a meal.
Every other developed, and even some developing countries, have had fee free instant payments, for the better half of a decade.
The UK/Hong Kong have Faster Payment System (FPS). Europe has SEPA, and most countries mandate that transfers cannot charge fees. Australia has Osko. India has Immediate Payments Service.
I read horror stories of USians paying rent by writing cheques or mailing cash to avoid bank transfer fees and subsequently stressing out about fraud. This is just insane to everyone else, who just pays via instant bank transfers.
We do have Zelle. It's just no one knows about it for some reason. I pay my rent this way. It's also less convenient since people have to actively sign up for it with their bank and many don't, so I do cashapp my friends.
Zelle isn’t available to download anymore (as least, on ios.) My landlord kept suggesting it for me to pay rent, and that’s how I discovered that it’s disappeared from the App Store.
I started setting up a bank transfer instead, but even that required precise coordination that we couldn’t get to work. I’d have to add his account to my online bank, wait for it to send two “microtransfers” of less than a dollar, then confirm the amounts on my end. Between our schedules and the fact I don’t know when the microtransations happen, we keep missing the chance to verify the numbers before the bank withdraws the microtransfers. Such a pain in the ass.
I ended up paying rent through Apple pay instead, which I still feel weird about. But I don’t have a checkbook (who does these days?) and it’s cheaper than a cashier’s check, so…
Yeah there used to be an app but now it's integrated into your banking app, so I guess yours hasnt adopted it. I go into my bank's app and have the option for them to issue a check by mail from my account, or use Zelle. It's no good for online purchases but I've paid an electrician that way before.
Yep, my landlord kept telling me to use Zelle through my banking app, but I use a small local credit union (and have zero interest in changing that. Credit unions ftw.) So I gotta do what I gotta do.
Or, there could just be an instant payment thing that's run by the federal bank. Brazil created Pix, which is essentially an instant payment processor that makes transferring money piss easy, and it works 24/7 regardless of date and the money arrives in less than five seconds. It's managed by the Central Bank too, and every bank that operates in the country is connected to it.
Lack of a publicly run & managed solution like in other countries.
Pix in Brazil for example is created & managed by the Central Bank of Brazil to enable general purpose instant payments between anyone: individuals, businesses, the government, etc.
In the US, the federal government won't take such initiative, leaving the private sector to coordinate on their own, which is pretty much like herding cats.
Network technology adoption & upgrades are voluntary, heterogenous, & slow.
For transfers between banks, we can only assume the lowest common denominator of technology networks with longer settlement times.
For instant digital payment, we end up with a patchwork of privately run services wrapping over these legacy payment systems (ACH, payment card networks) like Zelle, PayPal, Venmo.
Zelle (like Pix, which was inspired by Zelle) enables fairly instant transfers between bank accounts, but only between participating banks.
Since it's a money transfer & not a credit card payment, it lacks fraud payment protection much like EU counterparts.
This surprises scam victims who've come to expect the same protections as credit cards.
I avoid bank transfers whenever possible. If someone fraudulently charges something to your credit card it's trivial to dispute the charge and get it fixed before you ever suffer any financial impact. If they fraudulently transfer money out of your checking account and your mortgage payment and a bunch of other payments bounce before you catch it, it can be a real nightmare.
That's what a debit card is, and plenty of people use them.
Many people are idiots, though. They'll use a credit card and pay interest all the time, rather than have the money to buy that TV or whatever before buying the damn thing.
I use a credit card to take advantage of the warped system, though. It gives me several benefits and costs nothing extra because I pay it off in full every month. All my purchases come with a year of reimbursement if stolen, a year of warranty past the manufacturer warranty, and cash back points. I have gotten thousands of dollars over the years for using a CC. Free money.
Ive never paid for a bank transfer, and we have zelle which works. The reason is Interchange fees for credit cards are high (like 3%) and not capped, banks offer high rewards, sign on bonuses, travel perks etc. using a combination of interchange fees and interest paid. People are drawn to these even if they are losing money in the end due to paying so much interest (people are not financially literate). On the other hand high earners who are smart want to use credit cards for these perks, so alot of high earners will not shop at a place if a credit card is no available, essentially banks, VISA, and high earning yuppies have created a wealth redistribution system that preys on people who take on debt.
I've literally bought stuff on a Sunday afternoon in Spain, when the whole country is having a collective shutdown and no businesses are open, with zero problems. (Edit: last time was between different banks, too)
We're talking big things, like cars and motorbikes, because for normal stuff we just use Bizum, which is also really quick.
And you do that so much that you actively complain about the slow banking process? I can't remember ever needing any money to be transferred right this instant, other than the rare delivery pizza treat. Sounds like you're pretty well off if that's such a common occurrence.
Also digital purchases, I don't want to wait a day for a download. Hell, even with regular orders, I don't want to have to deal with having to plan my order in advance around the weekend just so my stuff arrives on the next available shipping date.
So yeah, unless it's instant it's not really an alternative, it's a downgrade.
I wonder where that puritan far right "women's rights" advocacy group is now that Twitter is generating CSAM and non consensual AI generated material, or maybe the purpose was always to punch down on independent artists.
They are actively pushing against every attempt to stop Twitter and it's owner Mask producing child pornography and non-consentually showing it to the users. That's where they are right now.
We now have the technological means to make online payments better in many ways for both customers and vendors. We just need to move away from one of the biggest American exports, middlemen.
At least in Denmark, paying cash was shown to be more expensive, due to the cost of money transportation services and the fee banks charge to provide bills and coins for the change in the register.
Also the stores can’t do any analytics on purchasing patterns on you when paying cash. So all in all they prefer credit cards or registering for membership programs for payments.
Note I recently had to do some gymnastics to split a purchase over 'credit cards' because I had received a few modest gift cards. I suspect that's an even more common case, since people want to completely use up a received gift card and that's all but impossible without splitting. Even if I have 10s of thousands of available limit, a gift card means I'm trying to spend like $50 or $100 out of a card.
I HATE gift cards. Kiddo got one for Nintendo. We have a hacked switch! Can't even use it.
Have a Home Depot one that says "invalid" or whatever wording, won't let me use it.
Basically buying a piece of plastic, they take your money and tell you to fuck off. No one's going to take them to court for $50, so it's win-win all around for them.
Interesting, usually when I get into something that expensive, they don't even want to accept credit cards. I think most I got someone to take as a credit card transaction was about $6,000. They'll only take check or certified check, or if a car then of course they really want you to borrow through whatever they have partnered with.
unfortunately, was for a lawyer. paid it off in two months, but didn't quite have $10k i cash in my pocket. it wasn't for a DUI, i don't drink lmao. thats the most common reason for lawyers i've heard.
No. In Sweden, 99% of all payments are cahsless. Most stores don't even take cash anymore.
We still have plenty of (digital) options for payment in addition to Visa/Mastercard.
In my view, it's actually the opposite. The more digital paymenst are used, the higher the incentive to create a competing payment solution. Swish and Klarna are taking over more and more here.
In Canada we have Interac E-transfer for transferring funds from our standard chequing accounts to private businesses or people we're buying things off of. We also have "virtual credit cards" that are just a CC number with an exp date and CVV that we can use for online purchases and that money comes out of our regular back account without the need for a credit account.
Most people still have and use Credit Cards but we are far less reliant on them here. Most of them time if someone has one it's for the perks that card gives, like cash back on purchases or points for rewards like gift cards, tools, vacations, etc.
We also have "virtual credit cards" that are just a CC number with an exp date and CVV that we can use for online purchases and that money comes out of our regular back account without the need for a credit account.
That's a new one for me. I didn't realize in some countries you can't use a debit card on Amazon. To be clear, I'm not talking about an ATM card, I'm talking about a debit card with a Visa or MasterCard logo.
There are digital payment schemes that would be completely anonymous for the vast majority of consumers, like GNU Taler. Support an implementation of it in your country. Cash is dying because of how inconvenient it is, we must build something that has the convenience of digital payments while also preserving privacy, there's no other way.
That would be ideal, but the people in office and their corporate overlords want to know every single breath we take. It will be hard to gain that right and easy to lose it.
Right, there's no permanent solution to this issue while the working class is not in control of the state, because ultimately it's the state which sets the value of fiat currency. If we win the fight to get a Taler-like system recognized as an official one, it would be as difficult to get rid of it as it is to ban cash right now.
I have no trust in the system whatsoever, which is why I wouldn't talk to police. And I have seen that video and easily over a hundred police interrogation videos. It astonishes me how readily people talk to police and say shit that would have landed them in jail even if they were not involved in the crime they were discussing. As an autistic person, the interrogation videos with commentary and breakdowns have helped more with understanding social situations than most of what my parents ever told me.
Edit: interestingly enough, the best example of what to do when interrogated by police on YouTube from an actually guilty guy called Rocky Rambo Wei Nam Kam. When interrogated and asked about the murder, his responses are basically 'I don't want to talk about it' and 'I have nothing to say', when asked about irrelevant questions he was curt and dismissive in much of his answers.
It's mostly a middle man to outsource payments. The stire doesn't care if it's on credit or not. You can pay directly with a bank account through Klarna, at least with the major Swedish banks.
This is still a digital transaction that has to go through a third party. Whoever runs this kind of barcode kiosk system would still wield the exact same kind of power that Mastercard and Visa do.
They do, but people also do a lot of bank transfers. Which is essentially a cash payment. But if you don't have a local bank account and app, or the Wise app, then credit cards work just fine most places.
Albania is the only place I've seen that has zero trust in anything but cash, but that's because their socialist era was so restrictive that after that regime fell, people were wholly unable to understand how basic things like banks or economics works. A single pyramid scheme basically crashed the government in 1996-97. It's a fascinating story about how much learning a society has to do to change from an oppressive regime to something else.
The EU caps interchange fees iirc so its not as profitable for VISA. We did the same for debit cards in the USA which is why credit cards became even more pushed
I wish I could pay in cash for online purchases from Amazon. Amazon has such a privacy nightmare that I cannot even hide or delete my purchase history. I know deleting the history doesn't remove the trait or nullify anything, but the fact that it remains visible on your account is stupid. There are purchases that I dont want anyone looking at my account to know and sometimes I just like clearing it. I don't care for shit I bought back in 2018 anymore.
I nearly universally refuse to use a debit card and use a credit card for everything and then pay it off every month. The system is broken, but this is the best use of the system.
The biggest flaw is baked into the system... credit cards generally make everything cost a little bit more because vendors bake the processing fees into their sale prices. You may get a small percentage of your expenditures back from your credit card, but not nearly as much as the mark-up you've paid. The effect is a tax on yourself and everyone else. The tax is worse on those who don't use credit cards because they don't even get a partial refund.
The law used to be that you could offer a cash discount, but you couldn't charge extra for using a credit card. That law changed and now many places are adding a surcharge if you use a credit card. You might note, however, that prices didn't go down 3-5% everywhere. So now the retailers are double-dipping... they have the credit card fees baked into their pricing and then they're having those who use credit cards pay the fee explicitly.
I still think there are solid cases for using credit over debit if you are able to pay the bill in full every month to avoid any interest and late fees.
Ah, I thought you were talking about a flaw in an individual using credit cards, but your issue is the systemic problems it causes.
Ignoring the externalities, an individual is better off using a credit card to get back points and have protections offered by the cards. However, you are right that by doing so, we perpetuate the larger problem.
That being said, I think every financial transaction has a "cost" associated with it. Even for bank tranfers/checks or cash there is a cost to process that transaction (cash increases risk of theft, need to move money, etc. bank transfers still require infrastructure to process). It'd be interesting to know if the cost for credit cards is actually that much more than the hidden costs of handling things like cash.
@ontariobay in Brazil there is the PIX, it is an instant payment between almost any bank account, in the first year it was introduced you could use it to pay for almost anything, online or in person, it usually approves in less than a second and there is no fee.
In Brazil you can use a central bank system called pix. Everyone with a bank account has it. You can send money to any phone number registered on pix and everyone accepts it.
All banks support it so people can use it anywhere with anyone. Also we support a system like Japan with barcode but since pix people are using it less
Singapore has PayNow, Thailand has PromptPay, India has UPI... Just US/EU still struggling to get out from grip of mastercard/visa. Tho after Trump nonsense Eau is trying, but UK is not even trying.
Norway has an app called Vipps, released by the national bank. When first introduced it was primarily aimed towards payment from person to person, linked to phone numbers. But most online vendors accept it as a form of payment too.
I forgot my wallet while at the grocery store the other day, and using what little charm I have I managed to get the cashier to pay for me, and I Vippsed him the money owed.
There is this herbal thing that the fda was trying to shut down in a fact free reefer madness esque type campaign, kratom, that endangered drug company profits by amongst other things allowing people to wean themselves off opioids by taking the edge of withdrawals with it. Big business.
Anyway after failing because people in the west organized to defend their rights, the FDA leaned on the credit card companies to not process their transactions. The companies found some out of the country vendor that was willing to process them before long but for a short bit people had to use electronic checks. Which banks are funny about, no one knows how untrustworthy banks are like other banks I figure.
But idk the vendor, the visa and mastercard both work on this. But I've heard of the government doing this a couple of times since, and some private church group doing it to steam to get them to remove some game or something.
Yeah it hits the opiate receptors, not directly though. It hits the kappa, and hits delta ones sideways. In effect it's like codeine, 1/10 morphine strength, but the half life is shorter, a couple of hours, and it is unpleasant after getting a certain amount. But it doesn't by itself hurt you or any organ system or do any damage to the body. In SE Asia where it's native, this relative of the coffee tree is used by locals that chew it's leaves.
It is rather pleasant but very mild, a poor substitute for opiates, but it will cure withdrawals, and you don't need a permission slip from a doctor to get it, or to buy overpriced medication like suboxone that without insurance can be super overpriced if you can't get on a discount deal of some kind I hear, I've never been on it. But also no medical record of being a junkie either.
This kinda requires having a heavily consolidated convenience store industry with a lot of locations. Japan has both of these the US not so much. Urban sprawl, a physically larger country, and a culture of not using convenience stores as much kinda make this hard. Also said stores would likely need to register AML and KYC controls.
True. This is one thing we still need to buy in person, and can't have delivered, so gas stations exist even in the smallest towns.
The other place, of course, is grocery stores. I can pay in cash at the self-checkout in Walmart, and the machines scan barcodes. So, that's another option.
Maybe. The lines in my local post office are always long but they do exist. I can't come up with an easy way for the Comstock act to prohibit it being used for adult material but then again I don't work for the "Heritage" Foundation.
Then again Congress likes it's puritannical laws and would need to create such a service.
At first, I was only thinking about the ubiquity of post offices and that they already reach rural areas. But the government aspect does add a bit more too. Feels like it's official to use government currency in a government building instead of a local convenience store.
Honestly this type of transaction seems like it could easily be an automated kiosk. Scan barcode / QR code. Insert cash. Get receipt. Employees nearby to help if needed. Done
It also requires not being dominated by people who think lack of options is a feature they can exploit and would happily destroy society if it meant that whatever was left was more dependent on them (partially to profit from it, partially to hold the keys to control who can access it and how).
Presumably they in fact use a payment processor rather than interacting directly with the business' bank, and that payment processor if it's not something like MasterCard anyway, will still have huge power.
I only used them and don't know how it's arranged internally lol. I also don't know any instances of convenience stores refusing to do business due to moral reasons. R18 magazines are sold directly in convenience stores, so there's that.
For more questionable stuff, people just buy virtual currency on e.g. DMM. It's like gift cards or Steam balance.
Natural monopolies should be nationalised. Network effects tend to be a significant characteristic of natural monopolies (my opinion).
Payment infrastructure is critical for national security. Just the way cash is.
This is why imo, there should be a nationalised institution competing against private institutions like these.
the nationalised institution must be owned by the state.
its operations however must be organized as a consumer coop, where cardholders of this payment network are member owners. This would prevent the top down bureaucracy, corruption and inefficiencies that plague state owned corps.
You can even do this in Uniqlo when not in Japan. Make an online purchase, pay in store within 1 hour, and then it's like you made an in-store purchase (with all the benefits).
I don't exclusively use cash but I won't buy from any business that won't let me use cash if I choose to. I also do basically zero online shopping for this reason.
That's really cool as an alternative, that said I do genuinely enjoy the fact I don't need to use cash.
I'm pretty privacy conscious but gotta say - even with all the data scraping that no doubt happens - the convenience is very worth it. At the very least if the majority of your transactions are NFC/contactless/android pay/whatever. I don't buy much stuff online so most of mine are in person and not having to remember a card and/or cash each time I go out to the store is so nice.
I honestly don't remember the last time I carried around either cash or a debit/credit card and idk what would have to happen to make me consider it.
electronic money can be taken away in an instant, by hackers, by your bank, by your government. You can lose access to your phone and other means of proving it's you to use it. Cash is still cash, and having enough to get through an emergency is important.
If in the US, you want enough to bail your loved ones out of jail too, there are obscene fees involved for paying electronically.
Yeah for sure. Police in the us will steal your physical cash if they can find it too, where they can't really steal your bank money, not with the so called civil asset forfeiture.
Do not keep all your eggs in one basket. If you have any eggs to put in baskets in the first place.
That is why the idea of cryptocurrency has caught on, a medium of exchange outside the control of government, that could be accessed electronically anywhere, but anonymous if you know what you are doing. No court orders to freeze your accounts. Obviously there are so many scammers into crypto it's a nightmare but the idea, and bitcoin so far working if horribly environmentally destructive for no good reason, is still a seductive idea. A libertarian's wet dream.
I like how Visa/Master Card are shutting "indecent" games down, but have no fucking issues with twitter generating CSAM.
It's never an issue when the criminal is rich.
It's a crime if you're poor and a fine if you're rich and all'at.
Well, in this case, isn't Valve the "criminal"?
No, it's the small indi devs, if vida tried to have a Microsoft game delisted there would be lawyers involved.
Here in Czechia you can pay for online transactions with instant direct bank transfer, so cards are not really needed. This is often used for direct transfers between individuals where one generates a QR code on his phone and the other scans it.
That's because Europe has SEPA, which are used in the EU.
Europeans mind can't comprehend the issues of american banks.
They are so bad, it doesn't make any sense.
Still need an American credit card to rent a car tho
No you don't? What are you talking about?
Car rentals almost exclusively accept payment by credit card, unless you have a corporate account that is billed periodically.
I'm sure you can find an exception but please let's not fly off to nitpick land.
My parents are not from the USA and don't have USA bank accounts or credit cards and have had no problems renting a car in Europe or anywhere else they went. I really don't get what you mean. I don't see why you specifically need an American card and not just a credit card from any modern country.
Eu banks typically use a MasterCard or Visa partnership for their credit cards. The EU bank might issue the credit card to their customer, but the actual payment processor is an american company. If MasterCard/visa starts blocking certain payments, then there's nothing that the EU bank can do about it.
You can know which payment processor your bank's credit cards uses by the presence of a small logo on the front of the card. 2 overlapping red and orange circles = mastercard network.
As for car rental companies, Hertz has some wonderfully twisted logic on their Belgian site where they say that they accept debet payments from any eu bank card, as long as the card has the visa or Mastercard logo. In other words, they only accept Mastercard or Visa payments, not eu debet payments.
I mean if you don't understand things you should ask, not assume others are in the wrong. Yeah it would be pretty stupid to be forced to have US accounts to rent cars in Europe, luckily we're not THAT stupid.
VISA and MasterCard are practically a monopoly on credit card circuits, your parents' cards may be issued by a local bank but there's a 95% chance they've got one of these two companies' logo printed on them, and out of every payment they make, these AMERICAN companies get 2% (blah blah cashback, blah blah terms and conditions), because they are made on their circuits!
You may also have debit cards that DON'T have those logos, but debit cards can't be used for car rentals.
If you don't believe this is an issue, here, read about how Francesca Albanese, despite being an Italian citizen living in Europe, can't own credit cards or open bank accounts, a punishment imposed on her by the US for reporting the Gaza genocide for the UN.
I did ask. Specifically I asked what you were talking about. All you really had to say was Visa and MasterCard are USA companies that handle card transactions. If you had clarified that initially you wouldn't be getting downvoted to hell.
You also shouldn't assume that, maybe if you think others don't understand something, it's actually because you're wrong
If you have an account in any European bank, you can pay by bank transfer or SEPA in basically any European business, and often it's their favourite way to do it because there is no commission. I don't know country by country, but in Germany the standard for payment system is Girocard which is German payment processing, and the cards usually come equipped with both it and some American standard like visa and mastercard, but a lot of people opt out, if they don't care about payment outside of Europe.
Any car rental worth it's salt in Europe will accept some form of SEPA, but also, renting a car is not an essential part of people's lives here, so it's not even something people care about that much
It may not be part of your life, but I've done it hundreds of time as a travelling tech (plus a few as a tourist), and I've had times when airports with hundreds/thousands of rental cars had trouble satisfying demand, so it seems there are others with the same need.
And no, they don't accept SEPA, although terms vary by country, and if they do they require a safety deposit that can go from a few hundred euros to the thousands, not exactly practical.
How is a deposit not practical? Unless they require it in cash that has to then at the end be picked up at the pickup point (which would be crazy)? A rental company is taking a huge risk by renting cars to any random person with a driving license. It's the same reason they don't typically rent to people below 25 (or without a higher deposit).
It's really only unpractical if you don't have enough money on your account to afford the deposit, but then why are you renting cars? Otherwise you just pay a bit more the first time and then get that money deposited back on your account when you return the car. There's basically no difference in the end other than a bigger number the first time, and if you wreck the car or something, you will lose the deposit through your credit card too.
Being traveling tech is absolutely not usual occupancy, so it doesn't change what I said. But if you work in Europe and traveling around, and moving around instruments is part of your job, you should have a company card anyway for it, so again, it doesn't really matter for the rest of Europeans.
What I'm trying to convey, that even though you will have some incompetence without American run banking systems, unless you're in a very specific operation, like needing to rent a car at an airport for example, you wouldn't be severely inconvenient.
I'm saying it as a refugee from a country that (for justifiable reasons) is getting some negativity around, and being born there I'm deemed not actually a good person in advance, and it took me a lot of time to convince various governments that I'm not a dangerous exemplar of my race. The time I spent without access to international banking systems like Visa weren't debilitating, even though inconvenient at times.
I've literally rented cars in Greece using cash.
They do require some form of identification for obvious reasons, but that is about it.
None of the rental places required credit cards.
I think you are making too sweeping of a statement here. Maybe this is the case for car rentals you encounter / have access to but the response should show that's not the case everywhere in the EU. I rented a car without a credit card over 5 years ago where I'm from. You do pay a deposit that I suppose a credit card would normally insure for, but the option exists. Either way, if a car rental requires a credit card, I would not even consider renting with them. That's ridiculous.
Look, if you go to mom and pop's car rental, sure, they can accept hens as payment if they like. If you use car rentals the most common way, as a supplement for airport travel, you rent one in your city, you use it to go to the airport, return it, fly to your destination, rent another car at the airport, do your things, go back, repeat. At those locations you'll only have the big names, AVIS, Hertz, Europcar... Those are mostly credit-card or corporate account exclusive. And corporate accounts are expensive, at my former company we had a bunch of people travelling constantly and it still wasn't economically advantageous, apparently.
Also, you are just wrong about the big names you mentioned:
::: spoiler spoiler Europcar
AVIS
Hertz
You never said your statement was just about airport car rentals. Over here that is very likely not the most common usage of rentals (and certainly if you exclude business travel and holidays), since airports are far between, but car rentals are all over the place, far away from those airports. You rent cars over here if you dont own a car and need transportation. Or if you have to move a large amount of items you rent a van.
Besides, you can simply take the bus or train from any airport to a real car rental which should be close by in any major city. Of course if you go do it in a business hub you will find scams for the average person. Does that sacrifice a little bit of convenience, sure. But if you buy all your water from street vendors at a tourist attraction we dont claim water is expensive.
I can see you are simply from a very different world, that of business travel, which is why your perspective is so different.
EDIT: And no, I didn't use a mom and pop shop, I used the biggest car renter in my country (Netherlands) with over 130 locations.
in Poland we have something similar! we have BLIK and it generates a code for you that the other person taps into their terminal/you tap into an online purchase window, then it tells you to confirm again in the app and there you go, paid
there's also BLIK phone transfers, you just need the other person's phone number and (provided they have their bank linked to their phone number ofc) you can send money to their account that way
i haven't paid attention to it recently but when this was being introduced they also added a cheeky "this transaction only took you 30s ;)" at the end lol
We can also buy paysafecards in convenience stores, and these are actually anonymous, unlike Blik.
Also if for some reason you really have to use cash, PaysafeCards are still an option.
Just grab one from a nearest vendor and the code on the reciept is tied to a balance starting with the amount on the card.
I live in a country where it has become in a sense illegal not to be listed at an address. If you are not listed at an address, the government flags you as a missing person. If that happens, the banks lock you out of government ID, which is necessary to do basically any type of online banking, and if you have any funds behind an electronic ID wall, you won't be able to access them.
Wtf is the point of all that? Sounds like it just makes the life of homeless people harder for no reason
That is the point. You must either be a land owner or pay rent to one.
Which country?
Lots of European countries have mandatory registration. It makes administration a lot easier.
Sounds like Sweden. They are like that.
Always amazed by how much oppression people can put up with.
Recently visited a country where cash is very much preferred and it was such a breath of fresh air. I thought it would be annoying to have to keep up with the spare change and what not but it was fine and actually felt pretty good. I've since started using cash a lot more at home.
I recently had a trip to Japan and had more mixed opinions about it. Mainly because they have a large variety of coins and oh boy do you end up with a lot of them.
Coinage is the single reason why I'm tipped over the edge to prefer card. I HATE dealing with change.
I wish there was a card that was closer to cash where the money is stored on the physical card not offsite but that seems like a nightmare in itself... Idk
We actually had that here for a while, called Chipknip. You could store money on it which you would need top off once it was spent. It disappeared when nfc debet cards became the standard though.
Ohh I gotta read about that now!
at least you have a choice wherever you live, use less card my pal
Apple pay?
You just need more practice with the Japan Coin Simulator ;)
https://wendal.itch.io/japanese-money-simulator
Theoretically the most coins you should ever have is 15:
4x 1 yen
1x 5 yen
4x 10 yen
1x 50 yen
4x 100 yen
1x 500 yen
Is 15 supposed to be not a lot?
It kind of is, but I love the 500 yen coin anyway. It's the 2nd most valuable common coin in the world (I think) after the 5 Swiss franc, (or at least it is for now as the yen continues to tank, currently worth about $3 USD whereas 10 years ago it was $4 and 15 years ago was over $6). It makes your change jar actually worth decent money (imagine if filling up a 2 liter bottle was worth a couple thousand bucks instead of a few hundred) and it's kinda fun to have a small change pouch in your pocket worth more than a hundred bucks.
Plus it's gold colored so you can collect a pile and feel like a pirate
The pirate argument got me.
On the flip side they also have the very low value 1 yen coin which feels like a cheap board game coin when you have it in your hand
Yeah but at least the lack of heft feels like the trash it is. US pennies are worth shit but want to pretend they're real coins. Also the 1 yen weighs exactly 1 g and floats on water.
Which country was it?
Greece
Having visited Greece (well, Corfu) a number of times, and as much as I love the place and the people, the primary reason they prefer cash is because they're not big fans of paying taxes.
Didn't they go through a whole thing where other countries were imposing shit on them to force repayments of national debt? Maybe understandable then that tax evasion is popular if a lot of what is paid in taxes isn't going towards improvements to your own country.
Well if they dislike taxes, they probably hate transaction fees even more.
It might have had something to do with people waiting in line to withdraw 60 euros too.
Well this means that there is still a payment provider doing the barcode system. This payment provider could still block certain vendors. It works excellently to protect the privacy of the buyer, though.
I still don't know why USians don't simply use bank transfers. Uses neither cash nor credit cards, perfectly easy.
Our banks make it a pain in the ass and I don't know any stores that would accept it
It's hard to use a debit card?
That's different from bank transfers, and, in the US, debit cards are weird permutations of credit cards, they either have a Visa or MasterCard logo and the fee structure is different from credit cards but not zero (maybe? It's changed a bunch and the fees are usually hidden from customers)
The fees just straight up don't exist for customers now. They havent for decades.
Its even illegal to charge one at all if your bank has a few billion in assets.
So at worse a company might pass their processing fees onto their customers.
But banks can't charge you one and most companies don't either. It's just a cost of doing business.
So only the poorest shittiest banks, and the shittiest companies charge one. That or small businesses that can't afford to eat the 2.5 to 3% that's common.
But functionally debt cards are just a free service as far as the consumer is concerned.
You obviously don't have a debit card. It's not "a permutation" of a credit card and they don't come from visa or MasterCard. You're talking about a credit line through your bank. I own a debit card. From my bank. With only my bank as the issuer. It takes money directly from my bank account when I use it. No creditor involved. It's a money transfer straight from my bank account to the retailer I use it at. Millions of people have them.
we have zero say in what payment methods are available to us
companies and banks decide and we're just their little bitches
I mean, we could all decide to not use credit cards and Apple Pay... But that's too inconvenient. Oh, well, I guess we'll continue being little bitches.
(Just got back from a trip to a cash-heavy country. It's possible.)
Change begins with oneself.
Much like The Godfather, you insist upon yourself
what...what does that even mean?
they don’t know but they think it sounds important
not a family guy fan?
me using cash whenever possible (i really do) and even trying to influence my friends and family to do so isn't gonna do shit in the face of several million rational people, let alone several million Americans lol
if i want reasonable payment systems i need to emigrate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i really like the city i live in though. actually it's a lot more cash-friendly than most of the US fortunately
Always amazed by how much oppression people can put up with.
bread and circuses
indeed
Bank transfers here take 3 days typically. And that's business days, so add another one if it's after 4:30 pm, also Saturday, Sunday, and holidays don't count.
That's what it was like here not so long ago. It can occasionally still take that long if you're sending money to another bank. Same for weekends and holidays. We still seem to get by just fine?
That's too much delay and too insecure for businesses around here.
Many don't even take checks for pretty much the same reasons (they are basically the same system, but entrenched): There's no guarantee that the person paying actually has the money for the business to later receive it.
Banks and other financial institutions invest our money during the float (the period of time between deposit and the money showing up in the account).
recently found out most banks in the US are not government owned and charge transfer fees for each transfer (up to $40ish for wells fargo)
among many other predatory schemes, yes.
land of the free
What do you mean "most?" There's a government-owned bank here? That would be news to me
Always amazed by how much oppression people can put up with.
Because the US still does not have instant, or near instant bank transfers. ACH bank transfers cost money per transaction, on the order of 0.30-0.50 per transaction, and can much higher for larger transactions.
The US is just incredibly, and uniquely behind when it becomes to accessible payments. This is the reason why "FinTech" such as Cash app, PayPal, and Venmo, in addition to credit cards, are popular - they literally just don't have the infrastructure in place for you to pay back a friend after they pay for a meal.
Every other developed, and even some developing countries, have had fee free instant payments, for the better half of a decade. The UK/Hong Kong have Faster Payment System (FPS). Europe has SEPA, and most countries mandate that transfers cannot charge fees. Australia has Osko. India has Immediate Payments Service.
I read horror stories of USians paying rent by writing cheques or mailing cash to avoid bank transfer fees and subsequently stressing out about fraud. This is just insane to everyone else, who just pays via instant bank transfers.
We do have Zelle. It's just no one knows about it for some reason. I pay my rent this way. It's also less convenient since people have to actively sign up for it with their bank and many don't, so I do cashapp my friends.
Zelle isn’t available to download anymore (as least, on ios.) My landlord kept suggesting it for me to pay rent, and that’s how I discovered that it’s disappeared from the App Store.
I started setting up a bank transfer instead, but even that required precise coordination that we couldn’t get to work. I’d have to add his account to my online bank, wait for it to send two “microtransfers” of less than a dollar, then confirm the amounts on my end. Between our schedules and the fact I don’t know when the microtransations happen, we keep missing the chance to verify the numbers before the bank withdraws the microtransfers. Such a pain in the ass.
I ended up paying rent through Apple pay instead, which I still feel weird about. But I don’t have a checkbook (who does these days?) and it’s cheaper than a cashier’s check, so…
Zella isnt downloadable because it's integrated into the banking system now. It's not a separate thing.
It's literally just a direct transfer now. Straight from your banking app.
Yeah there used to be an app but now it's integrated into your banking app, so I guess yours hasnt adopted it. I go into my bank's app and have the option for them to issue a check by mail from my account, or use Zelle. It's no good for online purchases but I've paid an electrician that way before.
Yep, my landlord kept telling me to use Zelle through my banking app, but I use a small local credit union (and have zero interest in changing that. Credit unions ftw.) So I gotta do what I gotta do.
If your credit union still hasn't implemented Zelle, you should probably switch to one that's actually competent.
Or, there could just be an instant payment thing that's run by the federal bank. Brazil created Pix, which is essentially an instant payment processor that makes transferring money piss easy, and it works 24/7 regardless of date and the money arrives in less than five seconds. It's managed by the Central Bank too, and every bank that operates in the country is connected to it.
Same in Spain with Bizum
Lack of a publicly run & managed solution like in other countries. Pix in Brazil for example is created & managed by the Central Bank of Brazil to enable general purpose instant payments between anyone: individuals, businesses, the government, etc. In the US, the federal government won't take such initiative, leaving the private sector to coordinate on their own, which is pretty much like herding cats. Network technology adoption & upgrades are voluntary, heterogenous, & slow. For transfers between banks, we can only assume the lowest common denominator of technology networks with longer settlement times.
For instant digital payment, we end up with a patchwork of privately run services wrapping over these legacy payment systems (ACH, payment card networks) like Zelle, PayPal, Venmo. Zelle (like Pix, which was inspired by Zelle) enables fairly instant transfers between bank accounts, but only between participating banks. Since it's a money transfer & not a credit card payment, it lacks fraud payment protection much like EU counterparts. This surprises scam victims who've come to expect the same protections as credit cards.
I avoid bank transfers whenever possible. If someone fraudulently charges something to your credit card it's trivial to dispute the charge and get it fixed before you ever suffer any financial impact. If they fraudulently transfer money out of your checking account and your mortgage payment and a bunch of other payments bounce before you catch it, it can be a real nightmare.
That's what a debit card is, and plenty of people use them.
Many people are idiots, though. They'll use a credit card and pay interest all the time, rather than have the money to buy that TV or whatever before buying the damn thing.
I use a credit card to take advantage of the warped system, though. It gives me several benefits and costs nothing extra because I pay it off in full every month. All my purchases come with a year of reimbursement if stolen, a year of warranty past the manufacturer warranty, and cash back points. I have gotten thousands of dollars over the years for using a CC. Free money.
We do...? All the time? That's the entire point of debt and now the growing popularity of zell.
Considering your using the term usians I expect you have a very poor understanding how we actually do things.
That's why I'm asking.
You mean debit and Zelle?
Ive never paid for a bank transfer, and we have zelle which works. The reason is Interchange fees for credit cards are high (like 3%) and not capped, banks offer high rewards, sign on bonuses, travel perks etc. using a combination of interchange fees and interest paid. People are drawn to these even if they are losing money in the end due to paying so much interest (people are not financially literate). On the other hand high earners who are smart want to use credit cards for these perks, so alot of high earners will not shop at a place if a credit card is no available, essentially banks, VISA, and high earning yuppies have created a wealth redistribution system that preys on people who take on debt.
Bank transfer is barely available as a payment method in Europe and it's slow as fuck. That's not an alternative.
Dafuq you talking about? I live in Spain and use it all the time. Usually takes about 1 minute.
Same in colombia. Even fruit vendors on the street accept bank transfers. Takes a minute or two to transfer.
WTF are you talking about, they can take up to 24 hours on weekdays, longer on weekend/holidays.
I've literally bought stuff on a Sunday afternoon in Spain, when the whole country is having a collective shutdown and no businesses are open, with zero problems. (Edit: last time was between different banks, too)
We're talking big things, like cars and motorbikes, because for normal stuff we just use Bizum, which is also really quick.
I literally just went to my bank and setup a bank transfer for Saturday, 17.01.
ok, which bank are you with?
UBS but that doesn't really matter. I also have/had accounts with Deutsch Bank, Sparkasse, Volksbank and Postbank and it's the same everywhere.
Oh no, an entire day? That's horrible. /s
What do you do that always NEEDS instant transfer?
Pretty useful when ordering food, for example ...
And you do that so much that you actively complain about the slow banking process? I can't remember ever needing any money to be transferred right this instant, other than the rare delivery pizza treat. Sounds like you're pretty well off if that's such a common occurrence.
Yeah.
Also digital purchases, I don't want to wait a day for a download. Hell, even with regular orders, I don't want to have to deal with having to plan my order in advance around the weekend just so my stuff arrives on the next available shipping date.
So yeah, unless it's instant it's not really an alternative, it's a downgrade.
I wonder where that puritan far right "women's rights" advocacy group is now that Twitter is generating CSAM and non consensual AI generated material, or maybe the purpose was always to punch down on independent artists.
They are actively pushing against every attempt to stop Twitter and it's owner Mask producing child pornography and non-consentually showing it to the users. That's where they are right now.
That genuinely doesn't surprise me, what an absolutely reactionary organization
We now have the technological means to make online payments better in many ways for both customers and vendors. We just need to move away from one of the biggest American exports, middlemen.
How are we going to do that? What's the payment method everyone should use for now?
Visa/MasterCard is a tax in every transaction. You might not see it but it is there.
I hate that I don't get like a 2% cash discount, I get like 3%+ from credit cards so justifying cash is kind of hard
At least in Denmark, paying cash was shown to be more expensive, due to the cost of money transportation services and the fee banks charge to provide bills and coins for the change in the register.
Also the stores can’t do any analytics on purchasing patterns on you when paying cash. So all in all they prefer credit cards or registering for membership programs for payments.
If you have bad credit you don't get perks like that. So addicts, poor people, anyone trying to turn their life around. This is a regressive tax.
I consulted for a luxury brand on e-commerce for a bit and I was surprised how important credit card splitting was to their American business.
Like, people splitting a purchase across multiple cards because they were so close to the max for each.
I questioned how much time we were spending on it but they assured me it was a common use case.
Note I recently had to do some gymnastics to split a purchase over 'credit cards' because I had received a few modest gift cards. I suspect that's an even more common case, since people want to completely use up a received gift card and that's all but impossible without splitting. Even if I have 10s of thousands of available limit, a gift card means I'm trying to spend like $50 or $100 out of a card.
I HATE gift cards. Kiddo got one for Nintendo. We have a hacked switch! Can't even use it.
Have a Home Depot one that says "invalid" or whatever wording, won't let me use it.
Basically buying a piece of plastic, they take your money and tell you to fuck off. No one's going to take them to court for $50, so it's win-win all around for them.
Regift it to someone who can use it
I did this ONCE on a $10k required purchase. Never again.
Interesting, usually when I get into something that expensive, they don't even want to accept credit cards. I think most I got someone to take as a credit card transaction was about $6,000. They'll only take check or certified check, or if a car then of course they really want you to borrow through whatever they have partnered with.
unfortunately, was for a lawyer. paid it off in two months, but didn't quite have $10k i cash in my pocket. it wasn't for a DUI, i don't drink lmao. thats the most common reason for lawyers i've heard.
No. In Sweden, 99% of all payments are cahsless. Most stores don't even take cash anymore.
We still have plenty of (digital) options for payment in addition to Visa/Mastercard.
In my view, it's actually the opposite. The more digital paymenst are used, the higher the incentive to create a competing payment solution. Swish and Klarna are taking over more and more here.
In Canada we have Interac E-transfer for transferring funds from our standard chequing accounts to private businesses or people we're buying things off of. We also have "virtual credit cards" that are just a CC number with an exp date and CVV that we can use for online purchases and that money comes out of our regular back account without the need for a credit account.
Most people still have and use Credit Cards but we are far less reliant on them here. Most of them time if someone has one it's for the perks that card gives, like cash back on purchases or points for rewards like gift cards, tools, vacations, etc.
So, like, a debit card?
No, as you cannot use your debit card for online credit card interactions.
You can't use a debit card to buy things off Amazon.
That's a new one for me. I didn't realize in some countries you can't use a debit card on Amazon. To be clear, I'm not talking about an ATM card, I'm talking about a debit card with a Visa or MasterCard logo.
You absolutely can, I did so this week.
what why??
Must be a regional thing, because no such restriction exists in the US
Funny that, since I said in my OP, I'm Canadian.
Oh, so you meant "on Amazon here" rather than the overly broad and objectively incorrect "on Amazon" that you wrote.
The destruction of cash in the EU is jusy disgusting. I dont want to have to leave a paper trail for everything.
There are digital payment schemes that would be completely anonymous for the vast majority of consumers, like GNU Taler. Support an implementation of it in your country. Cash is dying because of how inconvenient it is, we must build something that has the convenience of digital payments while also preserving privacy, there's no other way.
That would be ideal, but the people in office and their corporate overlords want to know every single breath we take. It will be hard to gain that right and easy to lose it.
Right, there's no permanent solution to this issue while the working class is not in control of the state, because ultimately it's the state which sets the value of fiat currency. If we win the fight to get a Taler-like system recognized as an official one, it would be as difficult to get rid of it as it is to ban cash right now.
Could be an alibi if you ever get in major trouble, lookup the transaction, match to security footage, prove you weren't there.
I don't have to prove I wasn't there. They have to prove I was.
So if someone is lying and says you were? Mistaken identity? Easy fix if you show you weren't where the crime took place.
https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
You have a lot of trust in "the system".
I have no trust in the system whatsoever, which is why I wouldn't talk to police. And I have seen that video and easily over a hundred police interrogation videos. It astonishes me how readily people talk to police and say shit that would have landed them in jail even if they were not involved in the crime they were discussing. As an autistic person, the interrogation videos with commentary and breakdowns have helped more with understanding social situations than most of what my parents ever told me.
Edit: interestingly enough, the best example of what to do when interrogated by police on YouTube from an actually guilty guy called Rocky Rambo Wei Nam Kam. When interrogated and asked about the murder, his responses are basically 'I don't want to talk about it' and 'I have nothing to say', when asked about irrelevant questions he was curt and dismissive in much of his answers.
I thought klarna was just a payday loan basically?
It's mostly a middle man to outsource payments. The stire doesn't care if it's on credit or not. You can pay directly with a bank account through Klarna, at least with the major Swedish banks.
Oh, I never looked into it. Just thought it was one of those high interest "loans" and said fuck no.
I was thinking that I definitely knew there were some European countries that are more cashless than the US.
Wow, I had no idea you could do that in Japan, and the idea never crossed my mind.
That's a brilliant solution to online payments.
There's always money in the banana stand.
NO TOUCHING!
This is still a digital transaction that has to go through a third party. Whoever runs this kind of barcode kiosk system would still wield the exact same kind of power that Mastercard and Visa do.
Of course, but the more payment providers there are the less power each has.
Makes me wonder: how are they not have the same stronghold in Europe? They're also everywhere there as well.
They do, but people also do a lot of bank transfers. Which is essentially a cash payment. But if you don't have a local bank account and app, or the Wise app, then credit cards work just fine most places.
Albania is the only place I've seen that has zero trust in anything but cash, but that's because their socialist era was so restrictive that after that regime fell, people were wholly unable to understand how basic things like banks or economics works. A single pyramid scheme basically crashed the government in 1996-97. It's a fascinating story about how much learning a society has to do to change from an oppressive regime to something else.
In the Netherlands we have iDeal, which will be turned into an European standard soon
The EU caps interchange fees iirc so its not as profitable for VISA. We did the same for debit cards in the USA which is why credit cards became even more pushed
I wish I could pay in cash for online purchases from Amazon. Amazon has such a privacy nightmare that I cannot even hide or delete my purchase history. I know deleting the history doesn't remove the trait or nullify anything, but the fact that it remains visible on your account is stupid. There are purchases that I dont want anyone looking at my account to know and sometimes I just like clearing it. I don't care for shit I bought back in 2018 anymore.
Any better alternatives?
In the BeNeLux we have bol.com, a local alternative to amazon because amazon didn't want to comply to our laws.
I use guest account on ebay. Works fine
Ebay is paypal and super evil too.
Alternate account?
I nearly universally refuse to use a debit card and use a credit card for everything and then pay it off every month. The system is broken, but this is the best use of the system.
I used to do that. There are many flaws with it. It felt really good to kick it.
What kind of flaws?
The biggest flaw is baked into the system... credit cards generally make everything cost a little bit more because vendors bake the processing fees into their sale prices. You may get a small percentage of your expenditures back from your credit card, but not nearly as much as the mark-up you've paid. The effect is a tax on yourself and everyone else. The tax is worse on those who don't use credit cards because they don't even get a partial refund.
The law used to be that you could offer a cash discount, but you couldn't charge extra for using a credit card. That law changed and now many places are adding a surcharge if you use a credit card. You might note, however, that prices didn't go down 3-5% everywhere. So now the retailers are double-dipping... they have the credit card fees baked into their pricing and then they're having those who use credit cards pay the fee explicitly.
I still think there are solid cases for using credit over debit if you are able to pay the bill in full every month to avoid any interest and late fees.
Ah, I thought you were talking about a flaw in an individual using credit cards, but your issue is the systemic problems it causes.
Ignoring the externalities, an individual is better off using a credit card to get back points and have protections offered by the cards. However, you are right that by doing so, we perpetuate the larger problem.
That being said, I think every financial transaction has a "cost" associated with it. Even for bank tranfers/checks or cash there is a cost to process that transaction (cash increases risk of theft, need to move money, etc. bank transfers still require infrastructure to process). It'd be interesting to know if the cost for credit cards is actually that much more than the hidden costs of handling things like cash.
Maybe the cost is the interest you give up to the bank that profits off of your assets.
I answered someone else who replied to this comment with one of the flaws that I see... You say 'many' and I'd be interested in hearing the others.
@ontariobay in Brazil there is the PIX, it is an instant payment between almost any bank account, in the first year it was introduced you could use it to pay for almost anything, online or in person, it usually approves in less than a second and there is no fee.
Yes I remember reading about how US credit card companies are pissed about PIX which isn’t a surprise.
In Brazil you can use a central bank system called pix. Everyone with a bank account has it. You can send money to any phone number registered on pix and everyone accepts it.
All banks support it so people can use it anywhere with anyone. Also we support a system like Japan with barcode but since pix people are using it less
Singapore has PayNow, Thailand has PromptPay, India has UPI... Just US/EU still struggling to get out from grip of mastercard/visa. Tho after Trump nonsense Eau is trying, but UK is not even trying.
Norway has an app called Vipps, released by the national bank. When first introduced it was primarily aimed towards payment from person to person, linked to phone numbers. But most online vendors accept it as a form of payment too.
I forgot my wallet while at the grocery store the other day, and using what little charm I have I managed to get the cashier to pay for me, and I Vippsed him the money owed.
And once again I look at a Scandinavian country with envy
Same, but called mobilepay in Denmark.
There is this herbal thing that the fda was trying to shut down in a fact free reefer madness esque type campaign, kratom, that endangered drug company profits by amongst other things allowing people to wean themselves off opioids by taking the edge of withdrawals with it. Big business.
Anyway after failing because people in the west organized to defend their rights, the FDA leaned on the credit card companies to not process their transactions. The companies found some out of the country vendor that was willing to process them before long but for a short bit people had to use electronic checks. Which banks are funny about, no one knows how untrustworthy banks are like other banks I figure.
But idk the vendor, the visa and mastercard both work on this. But I've heard of the government doing this a couple of times since, and some private church group doing it to steam to get them to remove some game or something.
That's really interesting I never heard about how kratom was used like that.
Yeah it hits the opiate receptors, not directly though. It hits the kappa, and hits delta ones sideways. In effect it's like codeine, 1/10 morphine strength, but the half life is shorter, a couple of hours, and it is unpleasant after getting a certain amount. But it doesn't by itself hurt you or any organ system or do any damage to the body. In SE Asia where it's native, this relative of the coffee tree is used by locals that chew it's leaves.
It is rather pleasant but very mild, a poor substitute for opiates, but it will cure withdrawals, and you don't need a permission slip from a doctor to get it, or to buy overpriced medication like suboxone that without insurance can be super overpriced if you can't get on a discount deal of some kind I hear, I've never been on it. But also no medical record of being a junkie either.
Well you know the saying, the best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago. Live your life dude.
This kinda requires having a heavily consolidated convenience store industry with a lot of locations. Japan has both of these the US not so much. Urban sprawl, a physically larger country, and a culture of not using convenience stores as much kinda make this hard. Also said stores would likely need to register AML and KYC controls.
People do heavily use gas stations which are about the same thing
True. This is one thing we still need to buy in person, and can't have delivered, so gas stations exist even in the smallest towns.
The other place, of course, is grocery stores. I can pay in cash at the self-checkout in Walmart, and the machines scan barcodes. So, that's another option.
Would post office work better for US?
We used to have postal banking - this is a very good argument to bring it back
Maybe. The lines in my local post office are always long but they do exist. I can't come up with an easy way for the Comstock act to prohibit it being used for adult material but then again I don't work for the "Heritage" Foundation.
Then again Congress likes it's puritannical laws and would need to create such a service.
At first, I was only thinking about the ubiquity of post offices and that they already reach rural areas. But the government aspect does add a bit more too. Feels like it's official to use government currency in a government building instead of a local convenience store.
Honestly this type of transaction seems like it could easily be an automated kiosk. Scan barcode / QR code. Insert cash. Get receipt. Employees nearby to help if needed. Done
Kiosk could work, but I could see that thing being perpetually broken after a few months of (mis)use.
It also requires not being dominated by people who think lack of options is a feature they can exploit and would happily destroy society if it meant that whatever was left was more dependent on them (partially to profit from it, partially to hold the keys to control who can access it and how).
Who operates the cash kiosks?
In this case, it's the chain convenience stores (FamilyMart, 711, Lawson). They handle cash anyway and can be found nearly everywhere in Japan.
So presumably they wire the money to the online retailer. Could they refuse to do business with a particular seller?
Presumably they in fact use a payment processor rather than interacting directly with the business' bank, and that payment processor if it's not something like MasterCard anyway, will still have huge power.
I only used them and don't know how it's arranged internally lol. I also don't know any instances of convenience stores refusing to do business due to moral reasons. R18 magazines are sold directly in convenience stores, so there's that.
For more questionable stuff, people just buy virtual currency on e.g. DMM. It's like gift cards or Steam balance.
This is why imo, there should be a nationalised institution competing against private institutions like these.
You can even do this in Uniqlo when not in Japan. Make an online purchase, pay in store within 1 hour, and then it's like you made an in-store purchase (with all the benefits).
This should be higher up in relevance.
I don't exclusively use cash but I won't buy from any business that won't let me use cash if I choose to. I also do basically zero online shopping for this reason.
This is why monero exists, digital cash that works
I was going to make a joke comment about crypto but you beat me to it
That's really cool as an alternative, that said I do genuinely enjoy the fact I don't need to use cash.
I'm pretty privacy conscious but gotta say - even with all the data scraping that no doubt happens - the convenience is very worth it. At the very least if the majority of your transactions are NFC/contactless/android pay/whatever. I don't buy much stuff online so most of mine are in person and not having to remember a card and/or cash each time I go out to the store is so nice.
I honestly don't remember the last time I carried around either cash or a debit/credit card and idk what would have to happen to make me consider it.
Barcode?
Also I don't think physical cash is a desirable alternative to the convenience of electronic payment.
As someone who wants to be as untrackable as possible without arousing suspicion, yes please gimme cash for online transactions.
Privacy in currency use doesn't have to be in the form of physical cash though.
electronic money can be taken away in an instant, by hackers, by your bank, by your government. You can lose access to your phone and other means of proving it's you to use it. Cash is still cash, and having enough to get through an emergency is important.
If in the US, you want enough to bail your loved ones out of jail too, there are obscene fees involved for paying electronically.
Physical cash can be taken as well. All wealth can be stolen and all doors that function as doors can be broken into, physical or electronic.
Yeah for sure. Police in the us will steal your physical cash if they can find it too, where they can't really steal your bank money, not with the so called civil asset forfeiture.
Do not keep all your eggs in one basket. If you have any eggs to put in baskets in the first place.
That is why the idea of cryptocurrency has caught on, a medium of exchange outside the control of government, that could be accessed electronically anywhere, but anonymous if you know what you are doing. No court orders to freeze your accounts. Obviously there are so many scammers into crypto it's a nightmare but the idea, and bitcoin so far working if horribly environmentally destructive for no good reason, is still a seductive idea. A libertarian's wet dream.
Isn't Monero the crypocurrency that's actually private?
If you care about your privacy it is.
what is then?