Shops refusing to accept cash

Corona virus is one of the biggest things the world has had to face in recent times. People dying from it and people and businesses having to adapt. So you say not legal and use words like indirect discrimination because some shop told you to use your card.

Get over yourself Big gerry.

I'm not disagreeing with you but just to point out that it's illegal in many states in the US to refuse to except cash in retail outlets. It has been made illegal because cards only discriminates against poorer people in the states who don't have bank accounts.

Sum Up would be the most expensive merchant service.

Cash notes lodgements is 0.45% in banks and coins 2%. The Post Office doesn't operate business accounts

Merchant fees for debit cards can be had for as low as 0.2% and any retailer paying more than 0.4% needs to negotiate. Credit cards are 0.4% - 0.7% in most cases.

So most businesses would far prefer cards than cash because its secure and its in your bank account the next working day.

Well that's why the state is pretty keen on pushing the cashless economy. Once income goes through an account, hard to avoid taxes on it. Banks like it too, guaranteed fees.

What is odd are the few state bodies that decline cash payments because of Covid but who don't provide card payment facilities. Case of do as I say but we'll ignore it.

Well, the poster thought about it and came up with a scenario where cash would be cheaper for them than card payments IF they lodged it at the post office. So I asked if they actually use the post office for their business account or if its just a hypothetical, but not realistic. scenario.

Simple enough.

It was 20 fúcking Euro for a basic haircut, they're making more than enough money off the transaction already. They're the only barber walkable from my place so I'll stick with them but if I had a choice I'd pick somewhere that took cards just for the convenience of it (ignoring any potential tax issues the place might have), like many people would. If you refuse to take cards you will lose out in the long run as more of the cash only customers start to die out.

sorry i know that might not be the case, but that screams of tax dodging to me

I pay for everything now with my watch. I love the convenience. I've €30 in my wallet and I'd say it's been there 18 months now. Soon we'll be paying for everything with a swipe of our fingerprint. The sooner the better in my opinion.

Loads of people don't mind giving away that kind of information. When you think of how people unlock their phone with their fingerprint, or their face print. And lots of people give away their DNA to find out about their ancestry. Drawing the line at how you pay for your litre of milk in tesco is pretty arbitrary.

There might be some terrible consequences of switching to primarily using cashless transactions, but there just isn't enough evidence to stop people from doing it. I've heard claims that 5G masts will have terrible consequences for society, but I've never seen any actually evidence for those claims so we call them conspiracy theories. What makes the claims about the consequences of primarily cashless society different form a conspiracy theory?

We're already a largely cashless society. If you track how much of your expenditure is in cash as a percentage of your total expenditure, you'll find its very small - largely just corner shop purchases. If you're one of the small minority of people who still make regular large transactions in cash, don't imagine that this ensures your privacy or helps you to fly below the radar; you'll stand out because you're [i]not[/i] making the volume of card or electronic transactions that would be expected. By sticking with cash you can probably keep The Man from knowing that you like a large latte with chocolate sprinkles, but, honestly, don't rely on it to conceal much more than that.

Reminds me of my barber when I was a young fella .. had the stereo playing in the corner and a label on it to say 'For Sale £299' ... apparently it was to fool the IMRO lads going around looking for music license fees !

the reality is that as a society the Irish sort of accept a level of black market and cash in hand transactions ... even if in the long run it will affect supports and services for everyone

Oh, sure. But if their preference for cash is not driven by some pressing concern (whether that's privacy, or tax, or something else) and is no more than an arbitrary preference for paper over plastic, or whatever, then they are not especially disadvantaged by having to use plastic rather than paper; it's no more than a mild bother to them.

This kind of development happens all the time. I might at one time have preferred not to have to carry (or pay for) a mobile phone, but the virtual disappearance of payphones eventually left me with no choice. As a student I travelled extensively (and cheaply) in Europe on long-distance night trains; very few of these services run now. Etc, etc.

So, yeah. If enough people prefer cards to cash - and "people' here includes not just customers but also businesses, banks and governments - then the facilities for using cash will get fewer and fewer, and less and less convenient. The question we need to ask ourselves is, is there anybody who is significantly disadvantaged by this? Not disadvantaged as in "I just prefer cash, and I'm sad that the people I deal with don't", but disadvantaged as in, "this creates non-trivial problems for me".

The obvious category of disadvantaged people is those already excluded from the banking system. Try opening a bank account if you don't have a home address, a couple of utility bills and a driving licence or passport. And then ask yourself how, e.g., the homeless and the transient fare in a world without cash.

Consumer database? You're simplifying it too much.

Your bank/card issuer would at some stage convert your print into a checksum (a long sequence of digits). When you pay using your print the terminal checks these two numbers against each other much like your PIN currently works but instead of 4 digits it's 64 or 128 or whatever.

This checksum is unique to your Bank/card issuer so if someone stole the data, it would be the very same as them stealing your card info, nothing more. You would have a different checksum for your home security system, starting your car, unlocking your computer, clocking in at work, boarding a flight, and so on and so on.

Save your outrage. Neither the EU nor the State is proposing to tell you that you can't use cash at all.

What is under consideration - no decision has been taken one way or the other - is a directive prohibiting cash in transactions of €10,000 or more, as part of a package of anti money-laundering measures. This isn't based on an assumption that anyone using cash in high-value transactions is doing so for money-laundering purposes; more on a recognition of the fact that high-value cash transactions are a technique that money-launderers frequently use. The implicit calculation behind the proposal is that any inconvenience to the "legitimate" users of cash in high-value transactions is justified by the impact the measure will have on money-laundering

Well revolut is free. I pay a smaller fee lodging a cheque than the card fee. I pay a smaller fee again to get a client to bank transfer the payment to me. Cash is the cheapest option for me because I use it to pay my suppliers. I can lodge cash into my credit card account without fees. I can also lodge cheques into my card account free of charge. Cards are the most expensive way I can take payment. This is why I no longer take cards but am happy to take cash, cheque, revolut or regular bank transfer. I'm saving over €1k per year since I got rid of the card machine

If it was 1.69% of my profit or service charge I wouldn't mind but I can buy a shower for €600 & supply & fit it for €700 or €750. The tiny 1.69% you talk about takes 10 to 15% of my service charge/ wages because I'm paying it on a shower I make no profit on. It does not make any sense for me to throw this money away in such a fashion

Fair enough if this works for you.

In my case I'm taking 7 -10 payments a day and almost all of them hand me a card.It would be bad for business and unprofessional of me to start telling them about Revolout.

When I'm out and about I generally only use card,I dont have a wallet anymore.I don't have particularly strong views on it,it's just handier for me.I did leave a shop a few weeks ago and put the item back in the shelf as they were cash only,i went to the next shop and bought it instead.I also had to leave a restaraunt and go to an atm to get cash to pay,I didn't leave a tip whereas I would normally.There is no excuse to not be able to take card in these places,I accept it might be different in your business.

As regards the dodging tax issue I can only talk about my own situation and friends who run small businesses. Any cash I take goes straight in my pocket or is used to pay a lad here and there cash in hand.

Yes I have Revolut myself,you need it in the pub these days as everything seems to go on one person's card!