I'll always remember the time when the tourist town of Ely, Minnesota, USA had it's single fiber internet cable cut. Pretty much all the groups there trying to rent canoes, equipment, hotels, etc with corporate cards weren't able to do it. We were lucky our group brought cash.
A society depending entirely on corporations for currency function is incredibly fragile in addition to corporate payment services being rent seeking, privacy invading, transaction morality deciding monsters. At least in the USA.
Governments should definitely be regulating and requiring those offering paid goods and services to accept cash. And not just for paying debts.
One thing I really love that Japan got right was the creation of e-money systems that are anonymous (you can get a Suica for 20,000 yen without any registration information), work offline (you don't need network at-payment, nor does the terminal), and are easily accessible (you can get them at any train station, you can charge them at any ATM or convenience store with cash). In contrast, a debit/credit card usually requires a lot more pain to get onboarded with. The closest thing is probably those silly visa prepaid cards you can buy, but they require a little work to use regularly.
The paragraph about the inconvenience of cash resonates with me. It’s a pain to manage and easy to lose or get stolen. At least if I drop my wallet full of cards, in a couple of calls any fraudulent transactions will be voided and the cards turned useless, but stolen cash is just gone.
That’s not to discount its upsides but its downsides shouldn’t be handwaived away either.
I got irritated with the profusion of "no cash accepted" signs a few years back and started making a point of always carrying cash, to use whenever practical. I don't take it to an extreme, but I also don't want to live in a world where every transaction is trackable and all commerce is regulated by Visa, Mastercard, Apple, or Google.
Budgeting with the data trail of a card is significantly easier if you have a lot of transactions.
It's also generally cheaper due to cashback and other incentives.
Other than that I've always found the idea that cash is "inconvenient" a bit of a child-like argument. Okay, yeah, you have to count some coins, you also have to brush your teeth and use a knife and fork instead of your hands, come on.
Australian here, like the author. Apple Pay (and equivalents) work _everywhere_ here, including at the tiniest market stalls, and for the smallest purchases. I stopped carrying my wallet the moment my driver licence was available on my phone, the last piece of plastic I was mandated to carry around.
While the paranoid nerd in me might occasionally wonder about all my spending being tracked, watching someone fumble with magic pieces of ~paper~ plastic and metal in a supermarket now looks as quaint to me as someone taking their pig to market to exchange for some eggs and bread.
The article and none of the comments mention rewards yet, which are the biggest reason to use cards!
Credit card processors charge large fees on transactions, which is a huge tax on just about... everything.
You can make a lot of that tax back via rewards. And not every card user has a good rewards-paying card - it's usually the more rich that do - so rewards function as a wealth transfer from the less rich to the more rich.
Very few stores have lower prices for cash, and processors try to ban that via their contracts when they can. If you pay with cash you pay the higher price to cover the credit card fees anyway, so you're just subsidizing the rewards earners. Might as well recoup some of that yourself.
> So why do I continue using cards? For the same reason you probably do: convenience.
Quite the opposite: when using some electronic payment method, I better make careful notes of each transaction so that I can detect whether some fraud happened (which happens for basically every method of digital payment). On the other hand, for cash this is much less necessary.
The main problem I have with cash is that we don't have denominations large enough to buy much these days thanks to inflation. The $100 is the new $20, but ATMs won't serve $100s. I buy gas for my car, it's at least $35 right there. Groceries run $80-$120 every trip now. I don't know if revaluation is possible, but we need it.
I'm not worried about dirty cash as compared to every purchase being tracked and all the fees for using services like Venmo or whatever exchange service du jour, and they all apply their petty moralizing. It's not the way forward if you value freedom and privacy.
> I always get a chuckle from people saying you shouldn’t use loyalty cards in grocery stores and the like… when they pay with credit cards!
Stores aren't allowed to use credit cards to track purchases or to link customers to loyalty programs. That's why you need to use a separate loyalty card, or a store-branded credit card.
How milquetoast... "Young people want to pay with cash more, and there might be interesting reasons for that, but ehh cards are convenient and cash is gross so still no cash for me!" What's the point of this?
First, cash makes me really think about what I'm buying. It doesn't poke you the same way when you tap a card... which is obviously one of the main reasons they want you do use cards. When I use cash, I am reminded of when I didn't have a lot, which keeps me from spending without thought.
Next, its a hallmark of the middle class to spend money that you don't have. Myself and some other people pay their cards off every month but that isn't the norm. Many people keep a balance... I do not want to be one of those people. When you use cash, its stupidly easy to know if you have the money or not.
Its also easier to do social activities when you have cash. Need to split a tab, here's the money. I'll buy the next round, heres the cash.
Also, it may just be me but keeping a decent stack of bills is like a little pat on the back for the hard work. Its a reminder that hard work pays off, which I can see when I buy a coffee, or some bread or something.
Reasons why I don't like cash: family members tend to treat my wallet like an ATM.
Lastly, if you want to make some people feel good (e.g. servers, bartenders, etc) tip them with $2 bills
I was surprised to know recently that, in France apparently, there are quite a lot of shops that don't accept cash. I thought it was going to be the other way around: shops stipulating "cash only". In my country, there are actually regulations mandating the acceptance of cash (unless it's an unmanned booth or certain vendoring machines, if I remember correctly).
Cash is honestly the worst. I've boycotted cash only places most of my life and have never carried cash as an adult. It was may e the best we could do in history but it serves no purpose now.
One additional feature for paying in cash, is from the business side - a lot of small businesses declare only a part of what's paid in cash, and the rest is kept 'tax free'.
While it breaks the law, I kind of feel sympathetic to it, given how much the law tends to advantage big companies.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 52.3 ms ] threadGets some of the advantages - not all.
A society depending entirely on corporations for currency function is incredibly fragile in addition to corporate payment services being rent seeking, privacy invading, transaction morality deciding monsters. At least in the USA.
Governments should definitely be regulating and requiring those offering paid goods and services to accept cash. And not just for paying debts.
That’s not to discount its upsides but its downsides shouldn’t be handwaived away either.
It's also generally cheaper due to cashback and other incentives.
Other than that I've always found the idea that cash is "inconvenient" a bit of a child-like argument. Okay, yeah, you have to count some coins, you also have to brush your teeth and use a knife and fork instead of your hands, come on.
While the paranoid nerd in me might occasionally wonder about all my spending being tracked, watching someone fumble with magic pieces of ~paper~ plastic and metal in a supermarket now looks as quaint to me as someone taking their pig to market to exchange for some eggs and bread.
Credit card processors charge large fees on transactions, which is a huge tax on just about... everything.
You can make a lot of that tax back via rewards. And not every card user has a good rewards-paying card - it's usually the more rich that do - so rewards function as a wealth transfer from the less rich to the more rich.
Very few stores have lower prices for cash, and processors try to ban that via their contracts when they can. If you pay with cash you pay the higher price to cover the credit card fees anyway, so you're just subsidizing the rewards earners. Might as well recoup some of that yourself.
Quite the opposite: when using some electronic payment method, I better make careful notes of each transaction so that I can detect whether some fraud happened (which happens for basically every method of digital payment). On the other hand, for cash this is much less necessary.
1. Put all of your purchases on the travel rewards card
2. Pay it off in full every month, no exceptions
I'm not worried about dirty cash as compared to every purchase being tracked and all the fees for using services like Venmo or whatever exchange service du jour, and they all apply their petty moralizing. It's not the way forward if you value freedom and privacy.
Stores aren't allowed to use credit cards to track purchases or to link customers to loyalty programs. That's why you need to use a separate loyalty card, or a store-branded credit card.
First, cash makes me really think about what I'm buying. It doesn't poke you the same way when you tap a card... which is obviously one of the main reasons they want you do use cards. When I use cash, I am reminded of when I didn't have a lot, which keeps me from spending without thought.
Next, its a hallmark of the middle class to spend money that you don't have. Myself and some other people pay their cards off every month but that isn't the norm. Many people keep a balance... I do not want to be one of those people. When you use cash, its stupidly easy to know if you have the money or not.
Its also easier to do social activities when you have cash. Need to split a tab, here's the money. I'll buy the next round, heres the cash.
Also, it may just be me but keeping a decent stack of bills is like a little pat on the back for the hard work. Its a reminder that hard work pays off, which I can see when I buy a coffee, or some bread or something.
Reasons why I don't like cash: family members tend to treat my wallet like an ATM.
Lastly, if you want to make some people feel good (e.g. servers, bartenders, etc) tip them with $2 bills
While it breaks the law, I kind of feel sympathetic to it, given how much the law tends to advantage big companies.