memes

Cash isn’t much use for making purchases online, which is also where an ever increasing amount of spending is done.

There’s no coin or note slot on my laptop, and contrary to the internet’s advice throwing money at my screen doesn’t seem to work either.

I used to be a big proponent of cash but with the bulk of my financial activity happening online now I can’t help it feeling a bit redundant.

Just saw a sign in my bakery today begging people to pay by card because getting small coins from the bank is hard and expensive.

TBF here in Belgium Bancontact has a local monopoly (about 1 % flat fee, no fixed cost per transaction; that seems fair and intuitively cheaper than holding, insuring, depositing cash, dealing with employees skimming off the top, of the time lost counting bills).

Also the government heavily incentivizes electronic payments because those can't be pocketed without paying VAT. That's a MONUMENTAL amount of tax fraud being chipped at by the progressive disappearance of cash.

Honestly there should be governmental electronic cash with the same advantages as cash, i.e. no fees & no traceability.

Re: credit card companies: you're right, and you're not the first to say it.

South East Asia is pissed off at them and their fees too. Starting in Thailand (but spreading) their big banks got together and made a QR code system for instant sending of money (similar to what Australia did with PayID which obfuscated bank account numbers with your own phone or email address, and stacked with Osko, a fast transfer system to bypass the slow (days) bank to bank transfers).

You will see street vendors with food carts with a QR code on it. You want to buy something? You order, they say the price, you scan the code, send the money, show your phone, get your food.

(You can have codes with the payment amount already in it, like in a bill, but since this is just a food cart on a sidewalk, they just have one generic "pay me" code)

Because they are bank to bank, it's all fee-free.

And yes, in the USA you have Venmo and similar, which has other issues, I think.

In the Philippines so many people use pay-as-you-go and prepaid phone plans, and load up their account with credit, they've gone further. People could gift credit to other people for a long time. Now, you can actually pay for things with your phone credit there. (GCash, which confused me for a Google product for a while). There's only two mobile/cellular phone companies in the country (all the rest are resellers), so it has some monopoly issues. But what it means is since everyone has a phone (doesn't have to be a smart phone. A nokia style dumb phone is fine), you don't need cash or to pay VISA/MC.

Cash is garbage. Using cash electronically is good.

Using credit card companies is dubious.

Here in at least the state of California (not sure if this is country wide) those bank "convenience" fees are limited to no more than $1.50 by law.

If only there was some way of federating spending in a way that would make private credit card companies obsolete. I'm still confused how no one sees any future in block chain and just say "it's all a scam".

Electronic is faster, more convenient, safer, easier to track, and doesn't need a stupid purse to carry around.

Haven't touched cash since 2020, couldn't be happier.