"Most of us are already moving toward a cashless society -- not because we care about the crime-fighting, but because the stuff is darned inconvenient."
What on earth are they talking about? Why do people keep saying cash is inconvenient, as if saying it makes it true? It is, in my experience, extremely convenient. It is the most convenient form of payment, person to person. I owe money to my friend. Do you have a pay-pass terminal? Oh you don't. Let's just log into our bank accounts. Let me make sure I got your BSB number and account number right. etc.
I want to give some money to the homeless beggar. Excuse me, do you have your bank details?
Here in NZ it is literally easier to pay people via bank transfer. If I want cash I have to get a $20 out of an ATM. If I owe someone $5, I then have to get $20 out and spend some to break the $20. Or I can get their bank account, enter it into my banks phone app and bam in seconds the money is transferred, next time I have their account saved. But it wasn't that hard because they had a banking app on their phone and knew how to send it to me in an SMS.
Commonwealth Bank in Australia lets you transfer money with just a mobile phone number. I literally open the app, authenticate with Touch ID, select someone from my contacts and it just works (depending on their bank and if they have their mobile number associated).
I think even the amount to transfer and who to transfer to should be automated. The app should just know who visited the restaurant and the menu would already have the prices. You just choose what to order/buy and it's charged, just like on Amazon etc. Once we abolish tips everything will become automatic!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but do you mean basically ordering your food on your phone?
That destroys the human element, which is a big part of the restaurant/hospitality experience.
There are products out there that let you order through a tablet at your table, and also apps that let staff use an iphone instead of a notepad, but it takes away a large part of the experience.
It's fine for places like McDonald's (who now have touch screen ordering in some countries, like New Zealand and Australia), but if I went to Bouchon Bistro, I wouldn't want to be ordering through a tablet.
Well, I wouldn't mind if most restaurants had robots instead of waiters and digital food ordering (like tablet on a table). Human element I usually need is people I came with, not waiting staff, I don't remember when I had any useful input from them (they don't know my taste and their goal is different from mine). Nice looking smiling human per hall, who can come up to our table once and ask if everything's ok would be enough. Maybe in top fancy restaurants it's not the case, but 90% of restaurants aren't in that category where I live.
That McDonald's style kiosk ordering takes away the human element I can understand, but I don't see why would that be the case if the waitstaff is using a digital notepad instead of a paper one (I'm talking about something like a Noteslate).
> Why do people keep saying cash is inconvenient, as if saying it makes it true?
I know I enjoy arguing about whether the cash I have is too large for the other party to conveniently make change for. I especially enjoy my wallet bulging with coins and wads of paper. I love the thought of having the week's grocery money ready to be lost and stolen - or even better, carrying my whole pay packet about until I can put it somewhere safe.
Why are you sitting on piles of cash (digital or otherwise) such that NIRP would hurt you? It's much more sensible to keep your long-term savings in non-cash vehicles. And your short-term, liquid holdings (rainy day savings fund) doesn't need to be so large that a -1% interest rate will hurt a lot.
I made a coin holder out of index cards and duct tape that fits in half my wallet and holds 24 coins. I can always either pay with exact change or minimize the number of coins I receive in change,
I routinely dip into the spouse's in-vehicle change-hoard tray to refill it, because apparently some people can't be arsed to fish a penny out of a giant pile of coins when their drive-through total is $X.01, and would rather dump $0.99 in coins into it--never to be spent--instead.
In theory, you should never need more than four $0.01 coins, never more than one $0.05 coin, no more than two $0.10 coins, and not more than three $0.25 coins, per cash transaction. If you have those 10 coins, you can always provide exact change. If you do not have those exact ten, you can always spend some of your coins, such that you get fewer than nine coins in your change. In practice, I need more coin slots, because I am spending coins that do not originate from my own transactions, and need to spend as many small coins as is possible, rather than maintaining an efficient working set of coins in my wallet.
If no one else is filling up a change jar at home, your coin holder only needs to hold ten coins (in the US). It will fit in the same space as a paper note folded in half.
Well I'm glad at least a few people on HN still appreciate the finer things cash provides! Try worrying about muggers with other forms of payment!
What's interesting to me is how far ahead some poorer societies are than us in the cash department. Such as in Africa. They have gone all mobile payments and eschew the local currencies.
Criminal can drain your whole account (plus credit limit) by applying force to you. They can only have whatever you are currently carrying n case of cash.
Well you can have the same restrictions applied in the app as an ATM.
Or claim to.
I take your point though. The inconvenience to the mugger to force you to travel to an ATM may be much greater than making you send a larger amount with your phone. After all, with physical cash it was very believable you didn't have more money that can be extracted. Now that you can move more, the mugger can force you to move more.
BUT then you can reverse it later. Unless you can argue that the mugger would be more likely to kill you afterwards than before, as a result of the sum. But then you could have the reversals happen anyway, and the muggers would know that's the default. All that remains is proving it was a mugging... all the transactions could be reversed based on that (we are not talking about bitcoins here, but systems of credit so the mugger might go into debt if they spent the money already). The idea of banks etc. instead of bitcoin actually helps in a libertarian type system because the money can be yanked back and the mugger doesn't want the inconvenience of never having a bank account. Plus if his other property is all interconnected, then crime really won't pay, and there would be less need for incarceration. We just have to somehow have fair systems of proving it was really a mugging. Maybe along the lines of the DMCA... someone could claim a mugging and then you'd have some time to respond, both sides would present evidence, and there would be a global reputation for both true and false claims of mugging.
Anyway I think in practice there have been less muggings now that cash is digital in Africa.
There is a reason crypto-currencies are still growing in popularity. You might have electronic convenience and decentralization convenience at the same time.
First off, Walmart will wire up to $50 for $5 domestic, not $25.
Second, what's the point of sending $1 to much of the world, where it isn't legal tender?
Third, "cashless" in this context means domestic use. Even if we were all cashless tomorrow, you'll still have to pay transfer fees to put $1 into an overseas account. Plus, the bank on the other side may charge to accept that transfer - mine does.
Fourth, the failure rate for sending $1 through the postal system has to be pretty low, because it's hard to detect a single bill in an envelope. A high failure rate would mean that every letter would be opened up, just in case there's cash. That level of tampering is easily detected. (Of course, sending cash overseas is different, as international letters stand out, and perhaps might more often contain cash. But I have send cash to South Africa and it got there just fine.)
If we instead talk about sending $1 inside the US then it's $0.49 for the stamp and $0.07 for the envelope ... for what may be door-to-door delivery.
What other system can beat that price? (I think Bitcoin's transaction fee is slightly less, but not significantly so.)
Does that mean domestic bank transfers between accounts aren't free in the US? I suppose that would explain why cheques are still in use.
I've never paid for a bank transfer within Europe, even when the transfer crosses national borders. I've always just assumed that to be one of the basic ideas of a banking system.
Here in my Western European country, national transfers done over the Internet are paid, unless both accounts belong to the same bank; they cost around .5€-1€. They're free at the ATM, though; it's clearly a convenience fee, not a cost.
Further examples: I have a bank account in Germany and UK and neither charge me for bank transfers. I haven't even heard of a bank account that charges for transfers in Germany.
US is pretty unique and backwards in this regard. International wire transfer in EU is either something like eur 0.20 or free, depending on how bank structures its fees (the internal txn processing cost to bank is somewhere between 0.005 - 0.02 depending on volumes).
I open up my Swish App (owned/operated by big Swedish banks), enter my friends phone number (either manually or via my contacts) and then enter the amount and a message, totally free and significantly more convenient than cash, which I basically never carry.
I can even pay the kids selling strawberries by the roadside via Swish.
Then again, Sweden is in the forefront of the cashless society at the moment, for better or worse.
Let me expand on that, Swish is currently free for sending a transaction between two persons.
Accepting Swish-payments for merchants, companies, organizations and associations is not free however. The last time I checked (a couple of months back) - Swish was more expensive than handling credit cards in general.
In this thread I have seen dozens of comments about muggers and knife wielding assailants at ATM machines. In my 40+ years on the planet, including living in NYC and DC and traveling to dozens of third world countries, I have been mugged exactly once, in 1989. I was able to get away without giving up any money.
Meanwhile, the number of times that an electronic account that I hold funds in has been unexpectedly lower than expected due to error, misunderstanding, or fraud, is at least 100 or more.
Cash is convenient in some ways, not so much in others. It's convenient for making small purchases and keeping the transaction anonymous. On the other hand, it's inconvenient when you want to be able to prove a transaction [my bank paid a deposit into your bank] and also inconvenient for large transactions.
On the other hand, "convenience" is a contrived reason to favor cashless transactions. As if the whole purpose in life is to reduce friction from our lives. It's not. Oh, it frees your time up to do other things. As if people didn't have enough time. The main thing lacking for most people when it comes to time is time management and allocation. That is, people who might save an hour's time by automating activities don't go out and spend that hour productively. Likely they'll find something else that'll use up their time.
So, we have people who work in industries which are automating jobs away [say Uber, or even supermarket automation, HFT, etc.] but who on the other hand want authentic hand made or bespoke items. Why not go for the mass produced item from Walmart they helped get produced and are more "convenient"?
There's a lot of... judgement? projecting? something else? in this comment.
> As if the whole purpose in life is to reduce friction from our lives. It's not.
Purpose? No. But it does feel really good not to have friction with silly things in your everyday life.
> That is, people who might save an hour's time by automating activities don't go out and spend that hour productively. Likely they'll find something else that'll use up their time.
Why do you say so? What's objectively productive? Doing nothing with the extra time may be actually a productive / useful solution. If your day is full, just removing stress from life is great.
> we have people who work in industries which are automating jobs away [say Uber, or even supermarket automation, HFT, etc.] but who on the other hand want authentic hand made or bespoke items
Do they? Some probably. But generalising like that over whole industry's lifestyle is silly. Even if you do see those items, maybe they just buy something cool they like, which is simply not what's mass produced and stocked at Walmart.
I feel like you're trying to criticise lifestyles of other people, but don't see a real reason for it.
> I feel like you're trying to criticise lifestyles of other people, but don't see a real reason for it.
I feel like you are reading way too much into it. You say less friction "feels really good", but don't address his point that maybe less friction is not actually good. There are many areas of life where this is demonstrably true. Take road widths, for example. If we "reduce friction", we end up with wider and straighter roads which have shown to cause people to drive faster and results in more fatalities (i read this on the internet somewhere). Sometimes friction keeps us grounded.
I found nothing offensive about the parent comment, and have noticed similar things.
All it is is commentary [and irony], not judgement. It's not wrong or right, but it does have consequences on the human condition. Some positive, some negative.
For example, human inter-relationships are full of "friction". For some people not having friction would be ideal, for others a relationship without friction is no relationship at all.
And I think that can extend into the physical world. Maybe I'd like to remove the friction of having to wipe after going to the toilet --but it's also a good reminder we're still part animal. So it is when we actually have to drive or cook for ourselves. We're not just commanding people or things to do the bidding for us -we have to face the "dirty work" whether it's having another human do it for us or ourselves. But automation removes this mirror.
The "reason" for it is that we could lose touch with our own humanity. It all becomes abstracted --it's a transaction, the human labor (or lack of it) are not even considered any more. I know this might sound like it's coming from a luddite, but it's not. It's just observation and it may or may not have import in the future, if we keep going this route.
The inevitability of friction is one part of the human condition, and the drive to eliminate it is another. What separates humans from animals is that we can evolve intellectually by amassing tools and knowledge over generations about what causes friction and what we can do to eliminate it. But eliminating friction just means we get to work on harder problems, like how to leave this planet. So you never truly eliminate it, you just change its nature.
I found myself nodding along in a agreement with mc32's post. I usually stop by the ATM around Dawn, it's just one of those errands I enjoy. Not to mention the minimal possible tracking ability by aggregating payment history info. Small businesses that I frequent also seem to appreciate cash, which is plus.
I've done it all in cash in the past. It's not "hard". It's only thought of as inconvenient because we've been raised to think so. Now, some of those things are no longer easy due to incumbent "automation" [automatic deposit, for example]. I have had cash jobs in the past. It's not a "game changer" It removes friction, yes, but it's not in the same league as curing disease, bringing about equality or reducing pollution, etc. --the big things that matter in improving life.
There are many, many apps out there to facilitate many things, to reduce friction. You know the two that matter most to me [other than telephony]? Navigation (maps) and Yelp (or similar) [finding food, entertainment]. Most other things can wait till I get to the office or get back home. I detest the idea of being electronically "tethered" into always on attention.
No, the convenience is real and doing those things manually consumes time. Heck, I have a small cheque sitting on my desk for weeks because it's not quite worth enough to take half an hour out of my day to take it to the bank.
You should look into a bank that has a good App. I use BECU and they have feature on their app where I can deposit the check with a couple snaps of my camera.
In Canada all you need to send someone money from your bank is their email address (and you supply a question they should be able to answer). Actually quite an impressively well designed system, considering it's been around for at least a decade now (first one I have a record of having sent was in nov 2005).
With Venmo/Square Cash, I find myself paying people via app more than anything. Forgot your wallet at lunch? Splitting up bar tabs? Our landlord wants a single check, and paying my roommate rent via Venmo removes all the pain of handing him a check (he was terrible at depositing them) without needing to carry around a few hundred dollars in cash every month. These apps have been available for years, and it's easy to get it set up to pay/deposit directly to/from a bank account, which makes transactions free. Cash is no longer the most convenient way to give friends money for me.
I'm also waiting for panhandlers to figure out Square is free, assuming they have a smartphone. "Sorry, no cash" stops being the end of the interaction if they start taking credit.
Electronic payment is nice because you don't have to make change. Paying a friend with PayPal means I don't have to round up $18 to $20, because I've only got twenties and my friend has no ones. It also means I don't have to closely watch cashiers as they count change.
You however have to closely watch PayPal. Try to pay to a product or service from former USSR countries; then weeks later suddenly get your account suspended. Or not.
Do you like taking chances like that? Cash saves you here.
We live in a world where people from all over the world live together. I work with people who are from France, Germany, Spain,but also from Russia, South Korea, China, Israel, South Africa. We might go for a dinner one night, then I have to send them some money - I'm genuinely worried paypal might block my account for sending them money "as a precaution". Seriously, cash is million times better.
I very rarely have cash on me. I don't encounter beggars and just shout a friend a drink or movie if I owe anything. Bulk of my purchases are contactless (PayWave in AU) at bars, shops, etc. Haven't been to an ATM in almost a year which strikes me as pretty convenient!
You haven't been to argentina then. Money is an inconvenience every single day. Handling change, and having to have dozens of bills in your wallet all the time is a hassle. Visiting an ATM every couple of days, or running short of cash and being unable to pay for anything.
Cash has other inconveniences cards dont have , and viceversa.
Argentina is a living proof that cash is the king.
Until very recently, as a visitor you will be losing 30% of value if you withdraw funds from ATM or pay with card, as opposed to bringing USD cash and exchanging it on street.
From my point of view, the major inconveniences of cash are having to predict how much you'll need on hand to cover expenses, and having to go out of your way to replenish your holdings when it's likely to be insufficient.
I use contactless card payments for pretty much everything except coffee these days.
I think it's two things: firstly, I've been conditioned not to use card payments for low-value transactions; and secondly, forking over actual currency for coffee makes the cost more "real" in a way that helps me to limit my consumption.
If the amount of a person-to-person payment is not a multiple of $20 then cash is useless, because that is all ATMs give out and my peer group doesn't consider using it for any other reason.
Open Venmo or Squarse Cash, type name (gets auto completed), type amount, done. Works regardless of whether your preceding set of transactions has left with exactly the right number of bills of each denomination.
I disagree, except for the single case of paying your friend, it's more convenient everywhere else.
Here in New Zealand, the only places that don't take cards are small stalls at farmers markets (most of them take cards now), and some taxis (which is more to do with them trying to avoid tax and being generally dodgy, any good taxis take card).
I have the bank account details of all my friends saved, and I can just open up my banks app and send them money, and it arrives within an hour into their account for all but 1 bank.
I agree, but of course the people who argue against cash on convenience argue on the grounds that using cash you have to carry around different denominations, risk losing it etc.
My belief is that the biggest weakness of a solution is generally a side-effect of its greatest strength, in this case the need to carry around cash in different amounts and risk losing it, having it stolen are necessary in order to have something so easy to exchange among people.
I haven't actually had actual cash in my wallet since before Christmas. Every store takes credit or debit. I can email money to people I owe money to. Cash is darn inconvenient.
Giving money to homeless people is just about the only thing in your list I can't do.
We also have contact-less payments with both credit or debit so it's even faster for low cost purchase. Need a coffee from starbucks? Just tap your credit card and go. But the time you put the wallet back in your pocket it's authorized.
Swedish and Norwegian banks have apps that focus on person-to-person transfers. Most of them will let you transfer money by adding your VISA card and using the recipients phone number. Vipps, developed by Norway's largest bank, has gotten 1,5M users in 1 year (approx. 5M are living in Norway). There are complementary apps from other banks and financial institutions as well.
Aren't here any equivalents in the US? Any particular reasons why apps like cash.me don't get adopted?
Why do people keep saying talking in person is inconvenient, as if saying it makes it true? It is, in my experience, extremely convenient. It is the most convenient form of communication, person to person. I want to talk to my friend. Do you have a phone? Oh you don't. Let me make sure I got your phone number right. etc.
When that is the case you can use electronic payment. But they are not mutually exclusive. Electronic payment can coexist with cash. The fact that electronic transfers are convenient for large purchases does not negate the convenience of cash for small person to person transactions.
People are making the argument that because electronic payment is convenient for large transactions, therefore cash is inconvenient in all cases. This is a falsehood. They are both convenient in different cases.
In a way, convenience is in the eye of the bearer.
To me, it's much more convenient to have transactions over and done with by the time I leave the store, rather than ending up with an unauditable monthly statement that could have extra or missing charges.
(Never mind the whole commercial surveillance angle. I've actually made it a point to go back to cash at various places I'd gotten lazy with. Hitting the ATM every week is a small price for participating in society's most popular mix network)
Cash is inconvenient for small purchases. I hate dealing with coins. I wish they would finally kill the 1 and 2 (and maybe even 5) cent coins in the Eurozone.
It's very inconvenient to have to pay the bill at a Asian restaurant that doesn't have a credit card reader nor an ATM when you have less cash than you thought you did. But they're giving Venmo a reason to exist, so someone's winning.
I probably make about 1 cash transaction a month, usually at some old joints or clubs that have no way to take cards, although even at clubs I can now increasingly pay with my card via NFC, it's so painless and seamless.
I tend not to give homeless people money in general, I rather do it via an institution or buy them what they need. If they say they need some money for food I'll go shop with them if I have time. But I've indeed also walked to an ATM at various times, which are fortunately all over the place in my city. Even if I had cash I'd always be a bit conflicted to give... On the one hand I've spoken to various (ex) homeless people and they advised me not to give, not be naive for my sake and their sake (read: drug addiction, better dealt with by an institution which are pretty solid in my city). On the other hand, I've loved ones with homelessness in their past who've rebounded by the grace of complete strangers' help, including financial help, and didn't ever use drugs but were really down n out and on the street. You never know which of the two you're dealing with.
But let's be real, helping homeless people isn't exactly a daily use case. If it was something you do frequently enough, there'd be way better ways to do it than giving away random small bits of cash.
Everything else, digital is more convenient. For example if I have dinner with a buddy, on the way back home I'll grab my phone, open my banking app, click his address which is automatically saved from the first time I used it, type in the amount and press send. It's virtually the same as grabbing my wallet, calculating the tokens I owe him and handing it to him. Payments are literally like messaging for me, but you're sending digital value tokens instead of digital speech. Yes it's hella convenient to do digital messaging of money.
The thing about digital payment's that's more convenient is that I don't rely on carrying a specific denomination of cash with me, or rely on being in physical proximity to the payee. Need to send $500? Well I'd never carry that kind of cash, so that's an ATM trip for me, and then a trip to the guy I owe it to. Digital money is more convenient here.
Payments in stores? Both I and the cashier need to do basic calculations with the tokens using cash, and again I have to carry enough on me. Turns out digital cash is easier and faster. I have my card out by the time it's my turn in the queue, I let the cashier scan, then I hold my card next to a little NFC scanner and I start walking away. In some older places I put in a 4 digit pin, even so it's faster than cash. That's convenience for me.
Don't get me started on online payments, which are btw causing physical store bankruptcies left and right. I see it all around me, I've got friends who buy their entire wardrobe online, their phone online, their groceries online etc etc. I'm not much of an online shopper myself, but even so I rarely use cash and the reason is convenience.
What on earth are they talking about? Why do people keep saying cash is inconvenient, as if saying it makes it true? It is, in my experience, extremely convenient. It is the most convenient form of payment, person to person. I owe money to my friend. Do you have a pay-pass terminal? Oh you don't. Let's just log into our bank accounts. Let me make sure I got your BSB number and account number right. etc.
I want to give some money to the homeless beggar. Excuse me, do you have your bank details?
Cash is king for a reason: Convenience.