Canada is not nearly as cashless as the article makes it out to be, it is amusing how much the article ignores the rest of the world.
The people hit by cashless are not the poor ones, but old people who have trouble learning to do things a new way. This also applies to communication with hospitals and docters which also is done online today in Denmark. So the cash problem is not special.
Cashless is better for the homeless as it is much harder to rob money from a cashless person. Digital payments can be traced (it took a few years for robbers in Denmark to learn this).
Banks in Denmark are required by law to give you a simple account and debit card. Governments pay out money by transfering them to your bank account. You tell the goverment which bank account you want to receive money on, like a default shipping address.
We have a very good domestic version of paypal which makes it very easy to pay other people (just type in their phone number and you can send them money). So it is easier to pay friends using this system than to use cash!
By using a check and filling in the note properly you can create a legal requirement that a service or product be delivered on payment (which is different from asking for your money back from a bank or card company through their resolution procedure), if you need to go to court.
I'm sure there's a grandma out there using checks at the grocery store, but it's quite rare. And except for very small grocery purchases ($1-5) cash is pretty rare too.
Japan seems like the most culturally cash based (and China the least) place I've been. Europe and US are in the middle. South America may still be fairly cash based, but I haven't visited recently.
Payment via bank transfer is also a contract, the dispute resolution is no different. I don't see how a promise note on a piece of paper somehow protects you better than an electronic transfer that is visible to you, the other party, the bank, and to authorities.
So for example, log20220804.txt
At the very least, use four digit years, not 22 for 2022.
> ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.
The format is yyyy-mm-dd.
It boggles my mind how checks are still so prevalent. When we have tools like Venmo, Zelle, ACH Transfers, Apple Pay etc.
The few times I've had to use a check (and a cashiers check at that) its been to sign a new lease on an apartment and it is one of the most nerve-racking days I have.
I would absolutely prefer to transact exclusively through digital transfers of any kind.
Someone living in San Francisco excitedly! told me just 1-3 years ago that they could now use some 'photograph your check' feature on their mobile - not 100% sure where the checks were used, but said person was not used to using checks where they came from.. sounds kinda widespread.
Not in my neighborhood. Only half of the self-checkout machines take cash and there is often a long line for the ones that take cash while some of the ones that only take cards sit unused.
I have had many experiences with ATM's and ATM networks being offline. Card processors being DDoS'd while I was trying to buy something at the store. Card terminals being hacked and "offline for maintenance". Card terminals offline but nobody knows why. Many of the card terminals here are dirty and won't read the chip. It is not my card, many people have these problems. I have to explain how to clean the readers to the clerks and their managers. When traveling cross-country this is not just an inconvenience, it is a road-trip stopper unless one has cash. Cash does not go offline.
3 days ago I had to help a friend that was stuck at the store with no cash and their card was not working. Their account was fine but the card system was offline for unknown reasons. I gave them cash and we were on our way. Now they know to keep cash on them.
Adding to this is the way ACH/wire transfers work gives me exactly zero confidence in the banking system. Sure, I might be able to eventually get my money back. Banks have the security of a high-school locker sitting in a dark alley as very little information about me is required to empty an account with zero interaction on my part. This information is leaked by online websites from every sector all the time. I just use banks as a small caching/broker system for online transactions and I watch my accounts like a hawk. If banks want to hold more money they need to entirely redesign that system and I know I am definitely not alone in this way of thinking and it isn't just people age 50+. Many in the hacker communities that work for banks are also aware of their vulnerabilities. I was part of that community when I worked for a bank.
Banking in the US is like going back in time 20 years. Even when I flew through Dallas and LAX during the height of COVID I had to hand my credit card over for someone to swipe, then pickup a pen that thousands of others had touched to sign a piece of paper. I've been tapping to pay exclusively for years and forgot about all that ancient stuff.
Most developed countries I'm familiar with made cheap/free wire transfers the most fundamental banking product decades ago. The change was driven by the banks, because handling checks was expensive and there was too much fraud involved. The US never made the change, probably because there were too many banks that could not agree on anything. That doesn't matter much anymore, because online card payments and ACH transfers (which are technically not wire transfers) are prevalent.
Another thing that contributes to the perception of backwardness is that American credit card issuers never adopted chip and PIN like the rest of the developed world. Elsewhere, banks wanted to reduce fraud and accepted the need to remember PINs as a small price for that. In the US, banks could afford more fraud due to higher fees, and they chose convenience instead. But today, cards have chips without a PIN anyway, and swiping is used mostly as a rare fallback mechanism. And apps such as Apple Pay and Google Pay (or whatever it's called this week) are quickly removing the need for physical cards.
It's really not.
Just the other day, I had to pay for gas at a station that still used swipe rather than chip, and then ate at an outdoor café where I had to give my card to the server, who took it away and brought back a sheet to sign and a pen.
A lot of places are updating to handle chip and tap-to-pay, which is great, but until swipe entry is completely obsoleted and non-portable terminals for restaurants are banned by the payment processors, there will still be some who hold on because that's what they have and what they know.
Bring your own pen. It is presumed that you bring around a few essentials.
Edit: on the other hand (pun unintended), some operations of electronic money transfer here require people signing on tablets through pens that are of common use and will more hardly be replaced by an owned item.
Much of the western world is near-digital at this point.
I handwrite things so rarely these days that my handwriting has reverted back to year 6 level.
Don't blame it on the "West". I have rights to blame my rage on the "west". There are no rights to blame what you are not forced to (in this case, e.g. that you abandoned doing math and solving through state-of-the-art "wits hand stick and surface").
Nonetheless, we were talking about signatures.
> «Essentials»
With «essentials» of course I meant something that you carry around because you know you may need it owing to the environment - not a absolute personal need (as in "I will take notes"), but a relative contextual need (as in "either I bring mine or I will have to share").
We're still working on that idea :(
In the south such as South Africa a lot of people have some form of bank card (apart from the people on the very bottom of society). As such those people on the bottom are affected by being cashless, because for example people might no longer carry around cash to hand out to the needy on street corners etc.
I think 70% of transactions are electronic these days.
I remember buying a house and receiving about 3 notices of rampant wire fraud when you send closing costs. Realtors or even worse title organizations and crappy security meant you needed to double, triple check the wire details, because once you send that money - it's gone.
Instead of that silly game, I went to bank, got a draft made out to the title company, and stay with me here hand delivered the check. No worries if some Russian criminal org stole my money or if they go it in the end.
You could do the same, except with your bank on the phone while the title agency reads out wire instructions. Hell, you could bring your banker.
Will they pay me back if the money is sent to the wrong place? Probably not.
Well, that's on them. Lots of valuable comments get flagged.
You have a point though. If snobbery and walking in eggshells is what's valued here, why waste my time?
I am always amazed at how often people in the US mention cheques. NZ retailers moved away from cheques in the 90s due to their massive fraudulent use case (back when cheques were common, so was chequebook theft). The last banks that would accept cheques stopped doing so in 2020, IIRC.
You can use cash, but few people do. Parking machines have tap n pay. I really only need cash when the kids are having a bake sale or disco at school.
But as part of that shift, the Government owned bank ensures that anyone can have a bank account with no fees, no matter how spotty your previous track record.
Works for us. But I don't think we'll ever go cashless, there's no real desire to do so from anyone other than the people who have to pay to make the cash.