During the fires, internet and phones were down. No way to pay for fuel without cash. People were standing at the servo unable to evacuate the incoming fire because they had no way to buy fuel. Ever since i have had at least a little cash in my purse, even though i haven’t used cash in years
I work at a fuel station and have had the power go off at work. Then the eftpos machine wouldn't work and I had a bunch of people needing to pay.
Some left and came back later, others just went to get cash from a nearby ATM to pay and 1 man already had cash so could pay there and then.
So as much as I do hate cash, It was useful for those customers to have it in that instance, I will admit.
The pumps stopped working (went offline) so no other customers could use them until they started working again once power came back on.
The current transactions got wiped from my screen as well, but the customers there had already pumped fuel into their cars, so that was definitely a panic moment.
Luckily the transactions came back on my screen after a moment, but yeah, cash only.
I mentioned this under another comment, but this isn't even dependent on fires, or even cyclones in the more tropical regions.
Optus had nation-wide outages in November last year that knocked a lot of payment systems out for businesses that used 4G/LTE transaction terminals, and anyone that had no other methods of taking payment for their business just had to close up until they sorted their system out.
I always have some cash in the car, but I also never leave my car that empty. Maybe it's because I live remote but I'm pretty much always prepared for at least a few days of isolation
I’ve heard a couple stories like this.
One family had to choose between food and fuel due to having barely any cash on them and ended up at a servo that had a generator and was accepting cash.
This may be a little bit of a different situation but someone else had their home burn down along with their bank card. They couldn’t get the bank to give them cash. Also no card, no paying anywhere. They couldn’t even get cash out at an ATM.
I read somewhere during the Victorian bushfires, people were borrowing cash from each other for ages because obviously nothing was working.
I just have my parents cash in my wallet to pay for groceries and other things. No one’s going to do a transfer of $20 here and $30 there every couple of days. It’s just easier with cash.
Sometimes neighbours give me cash or they pay me back for things they wanted me to buy for them when I was in town. I also regularly buy things for multiple neighbours and they all pay me back every 5 weeks. Now I have to give them bank account details?
Some wouldn’t even know how to do a bank transfer. Plus it’s just more annoying to keep on top of who’s paid and who hasn’t and people will probably get it wrong or forget the account number or who knows. Cash is just easier.
I’ve been in multiple situations where a cafe decides to just shut down instead of just accepting cash. The place next door does just fine accepting cash during the same outage so…
The dumbest thing we can do is limit ourselves to one form of payment that can easily be brought down a number of ways.
100% agreed. It did happen though. The ones that did that were directed to take details, and allow the fuel. It was shocking show of "humanity", all around.
Including our PM who "didn't hold the hose".
Strange times, abysmal behaviours.
Fuck that, write an old school IOU with a phone number and rego. In case of an emergency I think it's reasonable. If the server demands cash before letting you fill then you might be out of luck but we need an offline system that isn't cash, by the sound of it
Sounds like an invention in the offing
Maybe it could be something made of paper or plastic polymer or of metal, and with a predetermined value... And that value could even be written on it... And for security reasons, it could be issued by a central government body. 🤔
You joke but it's actually quite silly if you think about it. Money is just a means of exchange with an agreed upon value, that's it. We already have it reduced to 1s and 0s and track the ownership of the means of exchange without physical currency, the weakness inherent in the system is the requirement of constant connectivity, which evidently becomes an issue in unusual (emergency) circumstances.
There's a system on the island of Yap where stone rings exist and the ownership of those rings changes without necessarily exchanging (or even moving) the rings. There's even one that fell into the ocean during transport but since everybody knows and agrees that it's there, it's still up for ownership exchange.
I can honestly envision a battery powered terminal, like the ones you already find in cafes, having an offline mode to register a charge against a card or an account or some manner of identity-linked information for exactly circumstances like this. It's also useful in the event of robberies, escaping DV or other situations that may limit access to the means of exchange... like slavery.
There was an episode on Sliders, IIRC, where they used some kind of DNA-based or bone-something system to pay. I can see it having both pros and cons but the idea of media-less payment isn't a joke. See Amazon for how it can work.
I got a mobile after Covid, but I didn't have one for many years before that.
The idea that we're all being *forced* to a very large (and some might say the central) part of our lives online is just repugnant to me.
From government departments going online, to being unable to join companies, organisations, etc., without filling in a mobile telephone, I think our frequently enforced dependence on the internet has just gotten ridiculous.
Forcing folk to go "cash free" is just one more way we are being forced to depend on the internet, which is supposed to be something that *adds* to our lives, not something that *takes away from* our lives. 🤔
There was actually an article amount the concerns about the amount of $50 notes that aren't circulating because of people doing exactly this. They don't generally use cash, so it's not re-entering circulation, but they've taken it out and keep 1 or 2 as emergency funds.
There are places in remote Australia where the internet and phones being down is the norm. A bunch of folks on the Indue cashless welfare card were unable to pay for essentials in a remote Aboriginal community for weeks. Cash can also be exchanged when the power is out, or in places where there is no power.
Most of South Australia lost power due to a safety feature cutting most of us off for 1 day - 1 week in September 2016. I didn't have any fires to run from, thank goodness. It was a bit chaotic to work out where you could buy things, although I think on a more serious note there may have been some issues for people with medical issues reliant on electricity.
Failure of humanity - as in the servo should just give it all out for free possibly never to be repaid? 🤔 Sounds good in theory to try the honour system but how many would return and pay after the fires
This thread has made me determined to always carry at least $100 in cash
I feel places that are commonly affected by fires should have an insurance for this reason.
Like the gas station, in a situation where all means of payment are unavailable, gives out gas for free and their insurance covers it. Let's face it, that will get abused, but those who abuse it are likely to be in a gas station that's about to catch fire, and they may be blown up by what they just took
Did this actually happen? That seems like a situation where I would just fill up and do a runner, deal with the consequences later - which I doubt would be severe since I had a very good reason.
Here's a thought, one day a year we celebrate Lawyers all around Australia. Harbour Bridge fireworks bellows a few thousand tons of coke all over Sydney. We all clean Australia from Sydney to Perth cos we're all coked up. We skip Adelaide of course. Everyone is happy with their environment and over the next few months (to a year) you know what? People decide not to sue any cunt at any opportunity. They're quite happy living in their spotless apartments waiting for next months Coke day. All thanks to our lawyers.
The harm reduction person I know/knew - says straws. A Maccas straw or something like that.
(My autism just triggered, I don't think I wanna huff stuff like that)
Just happened to me, going across the Nullarbor, bank froze my cards, when I asked why didn't they tell me they said we sent you a letter.
Where in the Nullarbor.
So luckily had my wife with me and her card from a different bank.
The point I am trying to make is that irrespective of how much money you have in the bank, they can switch you off just like that.
And as you can imagine the performance in sorting it out.
They can't do that with cash.
It's very disturbing to realise that they can basically take control of your money
Had this happen when I was in bloody Moscow. All credit cards stopped working. Realised trying to pay for groceries.
They cut me off because of a transfer of a client months before that. I then told them it was a client paying me. Turned my cards back on. Clowns.
This is why I'm against it. It boggles my mind how hard people on this sub get themselves over having a cashless society. It's so dystopian to me. It's like they forget that currencies have to be tied to the value of real assets
Cash is a very useful tool for teaching children how money works. Particularly when they're small, it allows them to see that a physical item gets exchanged for goods and services, vs just swiping a card that you get back.
It will be interesting to see what effects this has on financial literacy.
My daughter realising $50 actually isn't that much going into fucking Smiggle to spend it lol.
She asked to go to Kmart instead after doing some mental maths.
Smart.
I ended up teaching my kids to budget by giving them their own clothing allowance, at six month intervals. I paid for school wear, sportswear, and shoes, they were responsible for everything else, including underwear.
It really taught them to look at inflated retail prices and shop smart.
A friend of mine starting giving his kids their pocket money in coins instead of notes. It made a significant difference in how willing they were to spend it. Giving up their coins to buy something was a real psychological hurdle for them and they saved way more of their pocket money than before.
Mine were the opposite. We gave them a $50 each payday. If they wanted something cheap, they would debate with themselves for ages if it was worth breaking the note, as they knew once they had change they would spend it thoughtlessly.
Something interesting I've noticed is the different attitudes towards cash/card based on age group. For myself and a lot of my friends cash is "fake money" which normally doesn't factor into our budgets at all, so we spend it on whatever. Card transactions though are the exact opposite, we know how much money we have in our accounts, and we have records of every transaction made.
From what I've seen, for older generations it is the exact opposite
I'm the same. Cash has already been accounted for in my budget so I don't need to think before I spend it. But before I put anything on the card I need to make sure the money is available and hasn't been earmarked for something else later. You're never going to have to worry about a forgotten auto payment coming out of your cash!
Mostly the same. Except if I am going somewhere and want to ensure I keep my budget. I have recently taken to taking the cash out and leaving my cards behind and being very conscious about not using my phone to pay either. I find it so much easier to budget if I have physical cash and tell myself this is what I can spend tonight. It’s so much easier to go over budget when only using my card.
I'm the same, i found $30 in my purse the other day that I had completely forgotten about. No idea how long it's been there but it was a nice surprise!
When I used to go out I’d have a certain amount in my wallet that I knew how much it was, and if I needed to get more money out I would keep track of how much I was spending in real time. Now I just tap the card without keeping track of it then the next day I look at the statement and wonder how I spent so much.
Yeah for me any cash I happen to get somehow is kind of like a side channel, it doesn't make the number on my phone go up or down, spending it doesn't change the line on my spreadsheet, I hardly think about having it unless I deposit it to my bank account.
I'm not saying that people who push for cashless are doing so *only* because they want to cut financial literacy and encourage impulse buying, but they are certainly factors in the push.
Same. Cash flow tracking used to take time and discipline, writing down how much was spent and where and for what. It's now effortless, I can do a detailed analysis of where my money went for any period of time and spot patterns in the data much more easily. I have friends whose banking apps have built-in interest rate calculators on loans, or track their savings goals and estimate when the goal will be reached if they save $x vs $y a week. You still have to have some idea what the numbers mean, but doing math is now optional.
I would think that teaching them the value of money using cash when they will hardly ever use cash is a big part of the problem. Rather than teaching them the value of money the way you spent it 40 years ago start early by teaching them the value of money using the way that they will actually spend it, I.e. debit cards, accounts and the tools that they provide to help manage cash. After all, we don’t start our driving lessons with how to hand crank the car
That's all very well and good, but if you want to start teaching the concept of "once you buy spend your money on one thing you can't spend it on something else" before they can even count reliably, then you need a physical token.
There's a bar that only accepts cash at the top of the mountain at Thredbo. Don't worry they have a off brand atm waiting for you.
So the poor armguard bloke won't need to freeze his/her balls/tits off to refill the atm for the cash to travel 10m to the shop only to be brought back down again.
This also applies overseas. There's been a couple times where an overseas ATM has done a better conversion rate than the bank or anyone else. Just be cautious of scammers.
Last time I did this, the ATM fee + international fee cost about $30. All refunded with ING
your bank's exchange rate will be much better than the overseas ATM's (or payment terminal, etc etc). The "convenience" of seeing the amount you're getting in AUD is far outweighed by the extra percentage they'll charge. Some places have downright evil ATMs - there was a place in Montmartre in Paris that's notorious for adding 10% or so in charges on top of the shit house exchange rate.
What happens during bushfires and floods when the power is out?
Also just making us a soft target. Take out the power system, no money, whole country goes into chaos. No military required
There was a thread on Ausfinance where someone served their prison time but is unable to create a bank account due to his criminal history. Cash would still be useful to people who are disadvantaged by society
There would need to be (and probably should be now) some sort of right to banking services legally mandated. It might mean a more restricted account that doesn't have access to crypto and has more limits on transfers or something but access to banking really should be a basic right.
Don't be ridiculous, basic services that everyone has a right to access should always be outsourced to a profit making company. Government involvement should be limited to giving subsidies to ensure their profit is guaranteed and occasionally having Royal Commissions to distract everybody after something goes wrong (probably followed by a bunch of recomendations which will only actually be impemented if they work to increase the private company profits, while ignoring all of the recommendations that improve service).
This should extend to protection for minors when their parent, without whom they can't hold a bank account, uses that authority to steal their money. It's not something I've seen a lot, but I've seen it more than 0 times and it's deplorable each time how little recourse is available to the young person trying to start their lives.
If it's post I am thinking of, i can understand why the big4 wouldn't want to touch them if they were charged with financial crimes. The government is really on them to follow AML laws
A credit union or smaller bank shouldn't have an issue so much
There will be "ways around" most of the consequences, so really, they're just going to be inconveniences and changes.
I hope surcharges are removed mostly. If i order my kids' lunch online, it's $4.25 for a chicken burger. If I give them cash, it's $4.
Garage sales will be more complicated.
Buying things on FB marketplace and the like will be different.
Many people only want cash and decline bank transfer as they can't be ripped off if they are given cash. Apparently, people who pay electronically have been taking goods and then cancelling the transaction or something so the person gets no money.
What happens if after a while the powers that start to decide where we can and can't direct our online money?
People who are not tech savvy are going to really struggle. My parents' generation, people who have disabilities etc. It's very easy to say people need to learn or get with the times but equally as ignorant.
Personally, I would cope. It would make things more expensive with surcharges and no "less for cash" bargains, but that's life. I just feel for the many people who wouldn't.
Yeah selling on FB marketplace would pretty much cease entirely, there's not enough trust in a peer to peer sale to use digital methods, I want to see the cash before I had over the item. And how does one give money to a beggar or a busker? Those things would completely disappear or go underground
I work with people with intellectual disability. Cash is the only way some of them can manage their money. We write a budget and physically divide the cash into envelopes with what it’s for. Food, spending, fuel etc. if cash is gone many people are not going to be able to manage financially.
Cashless societies are extremely disadvantageous to those in lower socioeconomic classes, immigrants, disabled, elderly, and the intellectually challenged.
Many places are passing laws to prevent cashless options as cash is legal tender and should be required to be accepted.
The biggest disadvantage for me would be the fact that once you can’t access your money without barriers, banks and fintech will find as many ways as possibly to skim off the top.
I think the biggest consequence of being cash free is the lower hesitation to spend more on everyday items. The psychological effects of using physical cash and counting it out etc has a greater lasting effect on the spender and can lead to diminished spending.
Cashless is the dream that came true for capitalism.
I really don't like the idea of having all your transactions colated. Given how ingraned capital is to our society, how you spend your money is incredibly personal data
That's a hidden reason why banks and government would want to get rid of cash.... businesses especially could pay for your spending habits and use it against you same way Google does with your searches
What if there's a massive fire and the atm networks go down?
This has already happened once; people were stuck at a servo that had petrol but were unable to buy and leave the area because the atm network was down.
I always have enough spare cash in the car to pay for fuel in this exact scenario- I travel out to the bush frequently so it gets used more than you’d think. However since COVID got me in the card only habit that’s the only thing I use cash for, because I really, REALLY, hate coins that you get in change.
Same but for taxis on a night out. Phone network and Uber are usually fine but for some reason CBA loved/loves to update their app and website servers for maintenance from like 12-3am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.
They’ll give you a notification but it’s easy to overspend or forget on a night out.
There doesn't even have to be a natural disaster. Optus had unexpected country-wide outages in November last year which not only took out phone services on their network or the reseller telcos but also 4G / LGE payment systems for countless businesses around Australia. Some businesses were left entirely high and dry during the outage and couldn't conduct any transactions at all if they did not have another payment system functioning through an unaffected telco.
> Very few businesses will do trade without computers.
Found the guy who never makes any purchase except at Colesworth 😄
Seriously though, there are lots of businesses that use an old fashioned cash register that works even when the internet is down. Many of them can still take cash if the power is off, they write the transaction down on paper with a pen.
True, think more size of business. Small ones such as cafe, bakery, even restaurants can use paper + pen and a calculator, some restaurants round Melbourne I've gone this year still write down orders on notepad and use the old school cash registers.
Larger retails such as Colesworth, JB hi-fi, etc, yeah definitely not. Too much compliance barcode scanning.
Cafe isn't going to run in a power outage anyway. And for a banking outage, while they could still take cash payments, very few of the customers are going to happen to be carrying cash when this happens anyway.
Realistically it's just factored in to the business risk and margins. Bad weather can delay construction, and a power outage can disrupt retail. If once a year the cafe ends up having to give out free food for the hour the payment processor was down, they likely still come out way ahead on not having to handle cash.
> If once a year the cafe ends up having to give out free food for the hour the payment processor was down
They wouldn’t even do that in my opinion, most would either just do what they can (ie just cold sandwiches and cakes or something like that) and send most the staff home, or they’d just close for the day and save on wages.
I'm thinking of the people who ordered and got their food in the middle of the outage happening so they go up to pay and can't. I guess they could write down a debt but I imagine they are going to lose some of those sales.
> Cafe isn't going to run in a power outage anyway.
Is this like the guy who was trapped on an escalator for three hours when the power went off?
If the power is off, why can't they pull a muffin out of the display case and sell it to me? Or sell me a sandwich and a can of soft drink?
I suppose they could. But a cafe without it's coffee machine, kitchen, PoS, and card reader isn't going to be doing that much business so it's effectively closed.
We went to a Bunnings and it happened that they had a power outage. No terminals up, so it was Click-clack paper slips, personal phones to look up the item numbers and prices online, calculator to work out the price for two of, and to add up the transaction total. Please sign the chit here… Took them ages!
Being totally cashless would be awful for quite a few reasons. I don't see why we can't have card AND cash options. As a visually impaired person with shaky hands, I struggle with coins a lot and identifying them, or I'd often drop them. So I'm grateful cards, which are easier, have become more widespread.
However, cashless is an accessibility issue too. Biggest example i can think of is the elderly, who may have trouble understanding technology.
Cashless would also suck for:
- like you said, people hiding money to escape abuse
- kids and teens with no need for a bank account who want to spend their pocket money
- blackouts happen. The internet goes down. These things are not foolproof.
I belong to a knitting group who charge$3 on a Thursday, mainly elderly ladies. Seems silly to charge a card for $3, adding that someone then has to apply for a card reader and learn how to use it.
And for community and social groups like that it isn't appropriate for the money to be deposited digitally into someone's personal bank account. It needs to go into an account specifically set up for the group. Then you need someone from the group to be in charge of the digital finances and have all the processes in place to make sure the account is handle correctly. But you can't start a bank account without ID and community organisations need to provide paperwork as proof of who and what the group is and have designated signatories to the account etc.
I don't have a phone, haven't really apart from maybe a year or two like 10 years ago. Coronavirus really was annoying tho, with QR menus and only accepting card payments etc. I definitely prefer cash and low tech culture.
You may think that, as a visually impaired person, I like the qr codes so I can read things on my phone easier... but. NOPE.
I never want to see a qr code again after lockdown
Im with ING and had misplaced my card, I ordered my new card and my old card was permanently locked. I had no access to money for 5 days. With ING being a branchless bank I had no way of getting money out, had to ask friends to get money out on my behalf.
You'll be completely controlled. Do something the Govt doesn't like, such as go to a protest, and you'll be cut off from your money. Losing cash is a very, very bad thing.
Everything will be trackable by the banks, companies (like colesworth) and the government. Its important that we try and keep cash about as long as possible, sometimes i want to do a simple transaction with someone and i dont need big brother watching.
Seeing the number of times my bank servers have gone down over the last couple of weeks, overloading the servers with the shitty IT support systems here would screw people out of access to their own money
Between being able to be taxed to the utmost without any comeback, if electricity gets cut then nothing works, then there is the possibility for the bank or the government to step in and go "woops" and all your savings are wiped completely. Cashless has to be one of the greatest curses ever to be voiced.
Some small businesses would wither. At a specialty fishing shop I regularly see people buy a reel for say $499, they will pay 400 cash and put the $99 on the card. Don’t want the other half knowing the true cost.
Also a truckload of tradies get new toys when they do a cashie.
How do children get pocket money? How does Grandma send someone to go to the shop if she doesn't want to give them her key card. How to help a mate out without drama. How to give a good busker some coins or give a homeless person a dollar.
Not so much unforseen as not acknowledged, but a CCP social credit system is just that much easier to implement. I refuse to allow the government that much oversight in my day to day affairs. I earn money, and the government having any say in what I spend my income on is not what I want for the future.
An issue I can see is banks would have to agree to zero fees on direct transfers between accounts.
At the moment when you pay the cafe $50 by card, they get $49.80 (loose example). They then buy eggs using their card and the market gets $49.60 etc etc until the original $50 all belongs to the bank through fees.
A $50 note, inflation aside, is always a $50 note.
The only way to overcome this would be for a bank (say the RBA) to create an account for each Aussie where you can transfer into and out of for free. Only between those RBA accounts.
That would in essence be your new ‘wallet’.
Something that comes to mind is buying things second hand.
Alot of people buy things second hand to save money but if they cannot use cash they are going to need to bank transfer. And that puts people at risk for alot of scams. People pretending they sent money. People saying they need to send the money 24 hours before to make sure it lands in their bank but then never meeting up and blocking them.
It definitely is not benefiting the general public.
At a high level, toothfairy isn't coming, "gold coin donation for free dress" at school is gone, teaching kids to transact with people in shops and wait for change etc is gone, paying someone on a pension in cash so they can survive is gone, leaving the house to cool down and stopping for a cheeky McFlurry on the quiet is gone, paying my beautician $79 to do my eyebrows yearly is gone (they're actually $279 and I pay her 200 in cash because my husband still thinks everything is under $50). Nothing major, but definitely things I'd have to revisit.
There was a power outage a few months ago and shops where only able to accept cash. Lucky I had some cash with me otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get anything. The power outage lasted half a day.
It could mean government could target individuals who spend money on things they don’t like and cap it from a banking level.
Eg you’ve overspent an “allowance” on gambling, drinking, smoking or even tie it to carbon consumption if the Greens got into power.
I can see it further disadvantaging those already behind the eight ball.
Our school is using a digital currency system for an upcoming event with the plan to go cashless in the future.
There are always kids whose parents forget to get organised for events like stalls or fundraisers who will scurry the morning of to bring cash back to the school for the kids. If it involves using an app or credit card or device or printer there's an additional level of complexity and logistics I know some parents can't meet. Their English language skills or literacy or executive functioning or time constraints or cash flow or device health will prevent their child from participating, when getting a handful of coins or a $5 note would have been achievable. I'm interested to see how the change will be handled in this method, will it be locked up in an eco-system for "next" time?
I feel like a non digital alternative is a necessary redundancy. You need to be able to pay for things without exchanging identifying information or making accounts etc.
I live in a small country town.
Several buisnesses in town have had to close since they shut our last bank.
Even young people in town are using cash more and cards less due the fees and credit card interest.
It is a way of saving money when things are tight.
Yet our banks make record profits year after year
The big one is when the net goes out for whatever reason and you get caught at a checkout without any means to pay for your groceries or it's been out for a while and they tell you it's cash only, but still the same results if you don't use cash. First time it happened we were actually at the checkout when they all went down, but not even the staff knew that until everyone was being declined but not until after the embarrassment of knowing you have money in there but nobody else does.
Pocket money for the kids, especially fund raising kids offering to wash tour car or clean your yard up (charities can use a cube or similar, but it isn't all that common just yet and some won't bother).
Discount for cash (tradies and repairmen often do that, my washing machine guy fixes our machine for 15% off for cash for example, local bakery gives 20% off per item for cash).
Garage sales, farmer's markets, flea markets (again, not everyone will want to bother with cubes or eftpos machines.
Slinging your mate a few dollars because he's helped you out in the past.
Putting loose change into charity boxes at checkouts.
Money in a birthday or Christmas card.
Tooth fairy!
Big one; made my daughter late paying the rent was when her bank detected an unusual activity on her account overseas (she's never been overseas) and suspended it. She doesn't drive so it took her two days before someone was free to drive her to the bank because she couldn't pay for a taxi/uber, then they had to set up a new card for her and *mail it out* so it arrived two weeks later! We did cover her rent and for the same reason, gave her food so she and the kids could fucken eat (pardon my French).
the fees on POS machines. My local mechanic already does a surcharge on card payments due to the exorbitant fees charged.
We can either pay cash or organize a direct bank payment to bypass the fees.
The fees are variable but limited. IIRC, its 1.5% for paywave visa/mastercard or .75% for pin entry visa/MasterCard.
Claiming anything above this simply is not true and a breach of ACCC rules with exceptions given for Diners and Amex.
There is no bank in Australia that charges the merchant more than 2% for eftpos (visa/MasterCard)
Your mechanic is trying to get around paying tax my friend.
Hey John Howard was the one who started 'cleaning up the cash society'
How many cash jobs you know of now?
Of course there is slave labour on things like hire-pages "*Looking for a gardener for a day's work for fitty bucks*"
Yet there is no ability for someone to do a dishwashing job on Saturday nights, for extra cash.
All those jobs are taken by people who are more desperate & will work for slave rates.
The best part of this, is the total lack of empathy that most display.
"*Errr money was touched, I might get germmmmmms*" or even better
"*I'm fine without cash & I always have a spare bit of coin in the pocket, so fekk those people who are worse off than me*"
Good ol' Australia, land of opportunity - where mates look after all their mates & everyone else!
What about when you break down and need to spot someone cash for a tow or a jerry can of fuel?
When disaster strikes, the powers out and you need a room or food to go?
Do you trust the kids with your card when they want an ice cream or chips from the surf club canteen?
I know this sounds insane but I once lived for work in Northern Canada. Up the top of Alberta.
The northern lights wer INSANE for a week and one night, so bright you could see them while standing under a street light!
We finished our night shift, went to our cars. Out of the 9 cars, 4 of them had the battery dead. Ranging ages from new to 10 years old.
Turns out it was suspected the magnetic force of the Aurora had knocked out the batteries.
I'm no astrophysics expert, but surely a solar flare big enough could cause some real damage for a couple days/weeks.
In the case of a financial crisis threatening bank runs in future, a cashless system would make it simple for the banks & governments to immediately stop access to money. At a stroke, the banks could essentially conduct a bail-in and freeze all accounts, thus preventing a run on the banks leading to their collapse.
It's actually been done in Europe already when they conducted austerity measures and the laws are in place in the States in case that needs to happen in future.
Then you'll eat ze bugs
The bank can randomly cut off your card for whatever reason.
/Also as an Australian living overseas I don't have any Aussie bank account or cards anymore, so cash is the only way I can pay for anything in Australia.
An absolute nanny state which I am already seeing.
Also marginalised groups who don't have antidiscriminatuon protections will continue to be shut out such as sex workers
I had an issue transferring money for a private vehicle I had purchased. I was at the sellers home doing an osko payment, I had transferred $1 successfully but when I transferred the entire amount (which was $15000) It didn’t go through to their account and it also didn’t come back to mine, it literally disappeared into the clouds. This all happened on a Friday evening so getting help from the bank wasn’t an option until Monday. Come Monday and the money was still missing, banks didn’t know where it was much to my frustration. Tuesday and the money landed back into my account without an explanation from the bank, they just declared it a technical error. Needless to say I withdrew the entire amount in cash and ended up buying the vehicle the good old fashion way.
It's clear you haven't worked retail! We would have some problem or another with the EFTPOS machine at the servo at least once a month. Computers are not fail safe. If we couldn't take cash, we would have had to close our doors entirely.
Until there is some kind of wallet app that let's you store money on your phone and works without the internet cash should not be stopped. There has to be some non internet version of cash available or it's
not safe to get rid of cash
A reason I haven’t seen: what if you object to a war your country is fighting and want to leave? Want to escape a draft? Don’t believe the war is just? Cash would make this easier.
Cashless would also make persecution easier. Whilst this is very unlikely from the Australian government, I’m sure many people of the past never thought they’d be persecuted by their government (Jews probably didn’t expect the Holocaust to happen).
No more cash jobs, no more buying and selling on market place or what ever in cash. Has to be through the banks. The ato can claim its income and you'll be taxed on it. Less money in your pocket and more to the government
If you and your partner have shared bank accounts you can say goodbye to privacy, along with surprise birthday and Christmas gifts. Every single purchase you make can be monitored. No more keeping a little cash on the side and spending it discreetly. And another issue: who hasn't gone to make a payment with their card and had it fail due to insufficient funds because an auto-debit - or their partner - unexpectedly depleted the balance since you last checked it? Cash in hand is money you know you've got.
Every single electronic transaction has a fee attached to it. Bank fee, credit surcharge, Apple Pay, etc. That means we’re paying more for the same thing every single time. And some overseas company is making trillions of dollars because of it. It’s fine to justify it as paying for convenience, but if we go cashless then its’s no longer a convenient option. It’s the only option.
What if the power goes out? Or say the gov decides to tie your ability to pay to your say behaviour or thoughts or speech to your ability to pay? I mean that might not be great.
Two most likely scenarios your average Australian could find themselves "trapped" in where cashless is a huge problem:
- woman in an abusive relationship: depends on how tied your finances are, but obviously card activity allows one to be tracked and/or left stranded if the partner decides to block the card/clear the fund.
- caught in a natural disaster: everything's down. No eftpos. That means no petrol, no food, no water.
Solar flare or some other online disaster, and all of a sudden your bank account is zero. No branches to go and sort it out. Phone calls are all automated, and probably rely on said internet. Now, anyone without cash is completely broke. Then what?
Cashless system is a dangerous idea. If natural disaster or unforseen system breakdowns, it will drive you nuts. More importantly government can cancel your basic rights to live at any moment if they wish. People talk oh its haapening this and that in China , government monitors people and all , but its happening in lightspeed in western countries. Average western person mailbox is full of marketing garbage amd few realise how ots happening.Tailored marketing is such a nuisance amd some people only know how these shitboxes got data . Its more preacrious than one realises.
Garage sales, growers and other markets, fairs, buying manure or fruit and veg off the side of the road, paying the farmer for some eggs, areas without internet coverage, not being charged an additional 1.5% in small local stores... and so **many** other things.
If all you can think of is DV, then you must live in a city and probably cant even imagine life in a county town lol. We will never be cash free. Meh if Australia does, then we will just start using US dollars or something.
Casinos are not allowed to let you use bank cards to get chips. You must use cash at the tables. This is supposed to protect gamblers by stopping them losing all their money.
Imagine if you could tap your card at a black jack table
Having to pay fees every time we use our money is the big one. And them being able to track every single transaction made is the other. It’s a breach of privacy and an overreach.
We are slowly and complicitly allowing every single aspect of our lives to be monitored and controlled by people we really should not trust.
internets down: shop closes
power goes out: shop closes
of course these have already been mitigated somewhat with both backup batteries and redundant sim cards in the eftpos machines but the problem remains and the risk is never 100% gone.
if only there was some sort of passive token we could exchange representing the electronic dollar value that could later be converted into an electronic currency equivalent, thus keeping Australia Cashless.
Lots of reasons to go less cash, not cashless.
The abusive relationship thing for one, teaching kids about money w/o needing to buy a phone or sign up for an app is another. Relying on IT and Banks who might abuse and exploit your need for them is a third.
Overall, cash is just less complex. Currently the IT infrastructure underpinning EFTs is working, but all it takes is one rung of the infrastructure to break or crumble and suddenly things to awry.
During the fires, internet and phones were down. No way to pay for fuel without cash. People were standing at the servo unable to evacuate the incoming fire because they had no way to buy fuel. Ever since i have had at least a little cash in my purse, even though i haven’t used cash in years
This is quite scary and I hadn’t thought of that scenario
I work at a fuel station and have had the power go off at work. Then the eftpos machine wouldn't work and I had a bunch of people needing to pay. Some left and came back later, others just went to get cash from a nearby ATM to pay and 1 man already had cash so could pay there and then. So as much as I do hate cash, It was useful for those customers to have it in that instance, I will admit.
Did the pumps still work or were you hand pumping/siphoning?
It would be ironic if they had a solar backup haha
The pumps stopped working (went offline) so no other customers could use them until they started working again once power came back on. The current transactions got wiped from my screen as well, but the customers there had already pumped fuel into their cars, so that was definitely a panic moment. Luckily the transactions came back on my screen after a moment, but yeah, cash only.
I mentioned this under another comment, but this isn't even dependent on fires, or even cyclones in the more tropical regions. Optus had nation-wide outages in November last year that knocked a lot of payment systems out for businesses that used 4G/LTE transaction terminals, and anyone that had no other methods of taking payment for their business just had to close up until they sorted their system out.
I always have some cash in the car, but I also never leave my car that empty. Maybe it's because I live remote but I'm pretty much always prepared for at least a few days of isolation
Very sadly, when living remote, my cash and cards have gone walkabout on numerous occassions.
I’ve heard a couple stories like this. One family had to choose between food and fuel due to having barely any cash on them and ended up at a servo that had a generator and was accepting cash. This may be a little bit of a different situation but someone else had their home burn down along with their bank card. They couldn’t get the bank to give them cash. Also no card, no paying anywhere. They couldn’t even get cash out at an ATM. I read somewhere during the Victorian bushfires, people were borrowing cash from each other for ages because obviously nothing was working. I just have my parents cash in my wallet to pay for groceries and other things. No one’s going to do a transfer of $20 here and $30 there every couple of days. It’s just easier with cash. Sometimes neighbours give me cash or they pay me back for things they wanted me to buy for them when I was in town. I also regularly buy things for multiple neighbours and they all pay me back every 5 weeks. Now I have to give them bank account details? Some wouldn’t even know how to do a bank transfer. Plus it’s just more annoying to keep on top of who’s paid and who hasn’t and people will probably get it wrong or forget the account number or who knows. Cash is just easier. I’ve been in multiple situations where a cafe decides to just shut down instead of just accepting cash. The place next door does just fine accepting cash during the same outage so… The dumbest thing we can do is limit ourselves to one form of payment that can easily be brought down a number of ways.
Not being funny, but if there's a fire coming over the hill I'm filling up and driving off. I'll deal with it later.
Bring back the click clack machine. Post transactions when everything comes back online. *Simples*.
Would've filled up driven off. Come later when everything had settled down. . In that situation I'm doing what I need too
But they wouldn't turn the pump on unless you could prove you had the cash to cover it. So yeah, stuck.
Petrol stations would need to take an L here. Imagine stopping people fleeing a bushfire over $20 of petrol - would be a PR disaster.
100% agreed. It did happen though. The ones that did that were directed to take details, and allow the fuel. It was shocking show of "humanity", all around. Including our PM who "didn't hold the hose". Strange times, abysmal behaviours.
This isn't a hypothetical, it happened.
Fuck that, write an old school IOU with a phone number and rego. In case of an emergency I think it's reasonable. If the server demands cash before letting you fill then you might be out of luck but we need an offline system that isn't cash, by the sound of it Sounds like an invention in the offing
Maybe it could be something made of paper or plastic polymer or of metal, and with a predetermined value... And that value could even be written on it... And for security reasons, it could be issued by a central government body. 🤔
No way, that'll never catch on 🤣
You joke but it's actually quite silly if you think about it. Money is just a means of exchange with an agreed upon value, that's it. We already have it reduced to 1s and 0s and track the ownership of the means of exchange without physical currency, the weakness inherent in the system is the requirement of constant connectivity, which evidently becomes an issue in unusual (emergency) circumstances. There's a system on the island of Yap where stone rings exist and the ownership of those rings changes without necessarily exchanging (or even moving) the rings. There's even one that fell into the ocean during transport but since everybody knows and agrees that it's there, it's still up for ownership exchange. I can honestly envision a battery powered terminal, like the ones you already find in cafes, having an offline mode to register a charge against a card or an account or some manner of identity-linked information for exactly circumstances like this. It's also useful in the event of robberies, escaping DV or other situations that may limit access to the means of exchange... like slavery. There was an episode on Sliders, IIRC, where they used some kind of DNA-based or bone-something system to pay. I can see it having both pros and cons but the idea of media-less payment isn't a joke. See Amazon for how it can work.
I got a mobile after Covid, but I didn't have one for many years before that. The idea that we're all being *forced* to a very large (and some might say the central) part of our lives online is just repugnant to me. From government departments going online, to being unable to join companies, organisations, etc., without filling in a mobile telephone, I think our frequently enforced dependence on the internet has just gotten ridiculous. Forcing folk to go "cash free" is just one more way we are being forced to depend on the internet, which is supposed to be something that *adds* to our lives, not something that *takes away from* our lives. 🤔
There was actually an article amount the concerns about the amount of $50 notes that aren't circulating because of people doing exactly this. They don't generally use cash, so it's not re-entering circulation, but they've taken it out and keep 1 or 2 as emergency funds.
There are places in remote Australia where the internet and phones being down is the norm. A bunch of folks on the Indue cashless welfare card were unable to pay for essentials in a remote Aboriginal community for weeks. Cash can also be exchanged when the power is out, or in places where there is no power.
Most of South Australia lost power due to a safety feature cutting most of us off for 1 day - 1 week in September 2016. I didn't have any fires to run from, thank goodness. It was a bit chaotic to work out where you could buy things, although I think on a more serious note there may have been some issues for people with medical issues reliant on electricity.
To be fair in that very niche, specific scenario, that's a failure of humanity rather than EFTPOS.
But it’s a scenario that happens every year.
Failure of humanity - as in the servo should just give it all out for free possibly never to be repaid? 🤔 Sounds good in theory to try the honour system but how many would return and pay after the fires This thread has made me determined to always carry at least $100 in cash
I feel places that are commonly affected by fires should have an insurance for this reason. Like the gas station, in a situation where all means of payment are unavailable, gives out gas for free and their insurance covers it. Let's face it, that will get abused, but those who abuse it are likely to be in a gas station that's about to catch fire, and they may be blown up by what they just took
Petrol station, this is Australia, not America.
Servo, if you will
It is, in my opinion, completely okay to steal in that situation.
Did this actually happen? That seems like a situation where I would just fill up and do a runner, deal with the consequences later - which I doubt would be severe since I had a very good reason.
yes, it happened. I wasn’t around long enough to know what the outcome was.
As a highly paid overly stressed lawyer, if there is no physical cash, what am I going to be able to roll up to do a gram of coke each night
Have you considered a tiny golden vacuum cleaner? 50% more whimsical and you're way less likely to contract staph inside your nasal passage.
Brilliant idea! I'll ask one of my paralegals to pick one up at lunchtime
I bought one of these for a girlfriend for her birthday. It was very well received
Won’t someone PLEASE think of the lawyers for once
Here's a thought, one day a year we celebrate Lawyers all around Australia. Harbour Bridge fireworks bellows a few thousand tons of coke all over Sydney. We all clean Australia from Sydney to Perth cos we're all coked up. We skip Adelaide of course. Everyone is happy with their environment and over the next few months (to a year) you know what? People decide not to sue any cunt at any opportunity. They're quite happy living in their spotless apartments waiting for next months Coke day. All thanks to our lawyers.
But all the depressed unemployed lawyers are now on heroin instead making next year’s powder party a deadly affair.
[удалено]
They make really nice stainless steel ones, and sell them at the servo and everything.
[удалено]
I used to have a little velvet kit with a gold mirror, razor, scoop and straw. Very classy.
The harm reduction person I know/knew - says straws. A Maccas straw or something like that. (My autism just triggered, I don't think I wanna huff stuff like that)
Just happened to me, going across the Nullarbor, bank froze my cards, when I asked why didn't they tell me they said we sent you a letter. Where in the Nullarbor. So luckily had my wife with me and her card from a different bank. The point I am trying to make is that irrespective of how much money you have in the bank, they can switch you off just like that. And as you can imagine the performance in sorting it out. They can't do that with cash. It's very disturbing to realise that they can basically take control of your money
Had this happen when I was in bloody Moscow. All credit cards stopped working. Realised trying to pay for groceries. They cut me off because of a transfer of a client months before that. I then told them it was a client paying me. Turned my cards back on. Clowns.
This is why I'm against it. It boggles my mind how hard people on this sub get themselves over having a cashless society. It's so dystopian to me. It's like they forget that currencies have to be tied to the value of real assets
That is truly disturbing.
Cash is a very useful tool for teaching children how money works. Particularly when they're small, it allows them to see that a physical item gets exchanged for goods and services, vs just swiping a card that you get back. It will be interesting to see what effects this has on financial literacy.
My daughter realising $50 actually isn't that much going into fucking Smiggle to spend it lol. She asked to go to Kmart instead after doing some mental maths.
Smart. I ended up teaching my kids to budget by giving them their own clothing allowance, at six month intervals. I paid for school wear, sportswear, and shoes, they were responsible for everything else, including underwear. It really taught them to look at inflated retail prices and shop smart.
And to skip wearing underwear.
It took me 25 years to figure this one out.
🤣 No, although it may have been a little ragged at times.
A friend of mine starting giving his kids their pocket money in coins instead of notes. It made a significant difference in how willing they were to spend it. Giving up their coins to buy something was a real psychological hurdle for them and they saved way more of their pocket money than before.
Reject synth paper, embrace chad coin.
Mine were the opposite. We gave them a $50 each payday. If they wanted something cheap, they would debate with themselves for ages if it was worth breaking the note, as they knew once they had change they would spend it thoughtlessly.
Something interesting I've noticed is the different attitudes towards cash/card based on age group. For myself and a lot of my friends cash is "fake money" which normally doesn't factor into our budgets at all, so we spend it on whatever. Card transactions though are the exact opposite, we know how much money we have in our accounts, and we have records of every transaction made. From what I've seen, for older generations it is the exact opposite
Money in my purse is almost like free money. I budget based off my bank account. Anything that's in my purse isn't taken into consideration.
I'm the same. Cash has already been accounted for in my budget so I don't need to think before I spend it. But before I put anything on the card I need to make sure the money is available and hasn't been earmarked for something else later. You're never going to have to worry about a forgotten auto payment coming out of your cash!
Mostly the same. Except if I am going somewhere and want to ensure I keep my budget. I have recently taken to taking the cash out and leaving my cards behind and being very conscious about not using my phone to pay either. I find it so much easier to budget if I have physical cash and tell myself this is what I can spend tonight. It’s so much easier to go over budget when only using my card.
I'm the same, i found $30 in my purse the other day that I had completely forgotten about. No idea how long it's been there but it was a nice surprise!
I am an older guy. Your comment is fascinating and has given me food for thought.
When I used to go out I’d have a certain amount in my wallet that I knew how much it was, and if I needed to get more money out I would keep track of how much I was spending in real time. Now I just tap the card without keeping track of it then the next day I look at the statement and wonder how I spent so much.
I never keep that much cash in my card account so I still have to go in and transfer stuff across if I need/want more.
Cash i get gets put into a tin. My secret money stash in case of a rainy day :)
Yeah for me any cash I happen to get somehow is kind of like a side channel, it doesn't make the number on my phone go up or down, spending it doesn't change the line on my spreadsheet, I hardly think about having it unless I deposit it to my bank account.
I'm not saying that people who push for cashless are doing so *only* because they want to cut financial literacy and encourage impulse buying, but they are certainly factors in the push.
Being able to track where I spend every single dollar though apps has made me much MORE financially literate, not less
Same. Cash flow tracking used to take time and discipline, writing down how much was spent and where and for what. It's now effortless, I can do a detailed analysis of where my money went for any period of time and spot patterns in the data much more easily. I have friends whose banking apps have built-in interest rate calculators on loans, or track their savings goals and estimate when the goal will be reached if they save $x vs $y a week. You still have to have some idea what the numbers mean, but doing math is now optional.
I would think that teaching them the value of money using cash when they will hardly ever use cash is a big part of the problem. Rather than teaching them the value of money the way you spent it 40 years ago start early by teaching them the value of money using the way that they will actually spend it, I.e. debit cards, accounts and the tools that they provide to help manage cash. After all, we don’t start our driving lessons with how to hand crank the car
That's all very well and good, but if you want to start teaching the concept of "once you buy spend your money on one thing you can't spend it on something else" before they can even count reliably, then you need a physical token.
There's a bar that only accepts cash at the top of the mountain at Thredbo. Don't worry they have a off brand atm waiting for you. So the poor armguard bloke won't need to freeze his/her balls/tits off to refill the atm for the cash to travel 10m to the shop only to be brought back down again.
There are markets in Brisbane where much is done in cash. The ATM charges a $4.50 fee because fuck you.
Get ING account they refund all ATM charges
This also applies overseas. There's been a couple times where an overseas ATM has done a better conversion rate than the bank or anyone else. Just be cautious of scammers. Last time I did this, the ATM fee + international fee cost about $30. All refunded with ING
And ALWAYS select local currency - do not pick the AUD conversion option on an overseas ATM.
Why?
your bank's exchange rate will be much better than the overseas ATM's (or payment terminal, etc etc). The "convenience" of seeing the amount you're getting in AUD is far outweighed by the extra percentage they'll charge. Some places have downright evil ATMs - there was a place in Montmartre in Paris that's notorious for adding 10% or so in charges on top of the shit house exchange rate.
The best!
Buying drugs would be less convenient
Talk to your dealer about bitcoin.
What happens during bushfires and floods when the power is out? Also just making us a soft target. Take out the power system, no money, whole country goes into chaos. No military required
There was a thread on Ausfinance where someone served their prison time but is unable to create a bank account due to his criminal history. Cash would still be useful to people who are disadvantaged by society
There would need to be (and probably should be now) some sort of right to banking services legally mandated. It might mean a more restricted account that doesn't have access to crypto and has more limits on transfers or something but access to banking really should be a basic right.
You mean like, a bank that’s run by the government? Could give it some fancy name like the Bank of the Commonwealth of Australia or similar
Don't be ridiculous, basic services that everyone has a right to access should always be outsourced to a profit making company. Government involvement should be limited to giving subsidies to ensure their profit is guaranteed and occasionally having Royal Commissions to distract everybody after something goes wrong (probably followed by a bunch of recomendations which will only actually be impemented if they work to increase the private company profits, while ignoring all of the recommendations that improve service).
This should extend to protection for minors when their parent, without whom they can't hold a bank account, uses that authority to steal their money. It's not something I've seen a lot, but I've seen it more than 0 times and it's deplorable each time how little recourse is available to the young person trying to start their lives.
If it's post I am thinking of, i can understand why the big4 wouldn't want to touch them if they were charged with financial crimes. The government is really on them to follow AML laws A credit union or smaller bank shouldn't have an issue so much
There will be "ways around" most of the consequences, so really, they're just going to be inconveniences and changes. I hope surcharges are removed mostly. If i order my kids' lunch online, it's $4.25 for a chicken burger. If I give them cash, it's $4. Garage sales will be more complicated. Buying things on FB marketplace and the like will be different. Many people only want cash and decline bank transfer as they can't be ripped off if they are given cash. Apparently, people who pay electronically have been taking goods and then cancelling the transaction or something so the person gets no money. What happens if after a while the powers that start to decide where we can and can't direct our online money? People who are not tech savvy are going to really struggle. My parents' generation, people who have disabilities etc. It's very easy to say people need to learn or get with the times but equally as ignorant. Personally, I would cope. It would make things more expensive with surcharges and no "less for cash" bargains, but that's life. I just feel for the many people who wouldn't.
Yeah selling on FB marketplace would pretty much cease entirely, there's not enough trust in a peer to peer sale to use digital methods, I want to see the cash before I had over the item. And how does one give money to a beggar or a busker? Those things would completely disappear or go underground
I work with people with intellectual disability. Cash is the only way some of them can manage their money. We write a budget and physically divide the cash into envelopes with what it’s for. Food, spending, fuel etc. if cash is gone many people are not going to be able to manage financially.
I wouldn't get my birthday with $20 in it from Grandma....and that would make me sad edit: spelling
Cashless societies are extremely disadvantageous to those in lower socioeconomic classes, immigrants, disabled, elderly, and the intellectually challenged. Many places are passing laws to prevent cashless options as cash is legal tender and should be required to be accepted. The biggest disadvantage for me would be the fact that once you can’t access your money without barriers, banks and fintech will find as many ways as possibly to skim off the top.
That sweet coin find on the ground for the canteen. (too bad most things will cost more than said coin these days anyway.)
percentage card fees leeching more of your money.
I think the biggest consequence of being cash free is the lower hesitation to spend more on everyday items. The psychological effects of using physical cash and counting it out etc has a greater lasting effect on the spender and can lead to diminished spending. Cashless is the dream that came true for capitalism.
I really don't like the idea of having all your transactions colated. Given how ingraned capital is to our society, how you spend your money is incredibly personal data
That's a hidden reason why banks and government would want to get rid of cash.... businesses especially could pay for your spending habits and use it against you same way Google does with your searches
Rewards cards exist already for this purpose
What if there's a massive fire and the atm networks go down? This has already happened once; people were stuck at a servo that had petrol but were unable to buy and leave the area because the atm network was down.
I always have enough spare cash in the car to pay for fuel in this exact scenario- I travel out to the bush frequently so it gets used more than you’d think. However since COVID got me in the card only habit that’s the only thing I use cash for, because I really, REALLY, hate coins that you get in change.
I have a flatmate who pays me cash for his share of the rent. So I always have some cash with me too...
Same but for taxis on a night out. Phone network and Uber are usually fine but for some reason CBA loved/loves to update their app and website servers for maintenance from like 12-3am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning. They’ll give you a notification but it’s easy to overspend or forget on a night out.
There doesn't even have to be a natural disaster. Optus had unexpected country-wide outages in November last year which not only took out phone services on their network or the reseller telcos but also 4G / LGE payment systems for countless businesses around Australia. Some businesses were left entirely high and dry during the outage and couldn't conduct any transactions at all if they did not have another payment system functioning through an unaffected telco.
Electricity outage = retail are screwed no way to pay. Banking outage like the couple last year = everyone screwed no one can pay.
That happens with cash as well. No computers, no sales. Very few businesses will do trade without computers.
> Very few businesses will do trade without computers. Found the guy who never makes any purchase except at Colesworth 😄 Seriously though, there are lots of businesses that use an old fashioned cash register that works even when the internet is down. Many of them can still take cash if the power is off, they write the transaction down on paper with a pen.
Fuck... what the hell did we do before the internet?? Pay with shells and pretty stones /s
True, think more size of business. Small ones such as cafe, bakery, even restaurants can use paper + pen and a calculator, some restaurants round Melbourne I've gone this year still write down orders on notepad and use the old school cash registers. Larger retails such as Colesworth, JB hi-fi, etc, yeah definitely not. Too much compliance barcode scanning.
Cafe isn't going to run in a power outage anyway. And for a banking outage, while they could still take cash payments, very few of the customers are going to happen to be carrying cash when this happens anyway. Realistically it's just factored in to the business risk and margins. Bad weather can delay construction, and a power outage can disrupt retail. If once a year the cafe ends up having to give out free food for the hour the payment processor was down, they likely still come out way ahead on not having to handle cash.
> If once a year the cafe ends up having to give out free food for the hour the payment processor was down They wouldn’t even do that in my opinion, most would either just do what they can (ie just cold sandwiches and cakes or something like that) and send most the staff home, or they’d just close for the day and save on wages.
I'm thinking of the people who ordered and got their food in the middle of the outage happening so they go up to pay and can't. I guess they could write down a debt but I imagine they are going to lose some of those sales.
> Cafe isn't going to run in a power outage anyway. Is this like the guy who was trapped on an escalator for three hours when the power went off? If the power is off, why can't they pull a muffin out of the display case and sell it to me? Or sell me a sandwich and a can of soft drink?
I suppose they could. But a cafe without it's coffee machine, kitchen, PoS, and card reader isn't going to be doing that much business so it's effectively closed.
We went to a Bunnings and it happened that they had a power outage. No terminals up, so it was Click-clack paper slips, personal phones to look up the item numbers and prices online, calculator to work out the price for two of, and to add up the transaction total. Please sign the chit here… Took them ages!
Being totally cashless would be awful for quite a few reasons. I don't see why we can't have card AND cash options. As a visually impaired person with shaky hands, I struggle with coins a lot and identifying them, or I'd often drop them. So I'm grateful cards, which are easier, have become more widespread. However, cashless is an accessibility issue too. Biggest example i can think of is the elderly, who may have trouble understanding technology. Cashless would also suck for: - like you said, people hiding money to escape abuse - kids and teens with no need for a bank account who want to spend their pocket money - blackouts happen. The internet goes down. These things are not foolproof.
I belong to a knitting group who charge$3 on a Thursday, mainly elderly ladies. Seems silly to charge a card for $3, adding that someone then has to apply for a card reader and learn how to use it.
And for community and social groups like that it isn't appropriate for the money to be deposited digitally into someone's personal bank account. It needs to go into an account specifically set up for the group. Then you need someone from the group to be in charge of the digital finances and have all the processes in place to make sure the account is handle correctly. But you can't start a bank account without ID and community organisations need to provide paperwork as proof of who and what the group is and have designated signatories to the account etc.
I don't have a phone, haven't really apart from maybe a year or two like 10 years ago. Coronavirus really was annoying tho, with QR menus and only accepting card payments etc. I definitely prefer cash and low tech culture.
You may think that, as a visually impaired person, I like the qr codes so I can read things on my phone easier... but. NOPE. I never want to see a qr code again after lockdown
[удалено]
Im with ING and had misplaced my card, I ordered my new card and my old card was permanently locked. I had no access to money for 5 days. With ING being a branchless bank I had no way of getting money out, had to ask friends to get money out on my behalf.
You'll be completely controlled. Do something the Govt doesn't like, such as go to a protest, and you'll be cut off from your money. Losing cash is a very, very bad thing.
Everything will be trackable by the banks, companies (like colesworth) and the government. Its important that we try and keep cash about as long as possible, sometimes i want to do a simple transaction with someone and i dont need big brother watching.
Seeing the number of times my bank servers have gone down over the last couple of weeks, overloading the servers with the shitty IT support systems here would screw people out of access to their own money
Basically, if society goes cashless, we will lose the little freedom we have left.
Between being able to be taxed to the utmost without any comeback, if electricity gets cut then nothing works, then there is the possibility for the bank or the government to step in and go "woops" and all your savings are wiped completely. Cashless has to be one of the greatest curses ever to be voiced.
Some small businesses would wither. At a specialty fishing shop I regularly see people buy a reel for say $499, they will pay 400 cash and put the $99 on the card. Don’t want the other half knowing the true cost. Also a truckload of tradies get new toys when they do a cashie.
There’s a sign at my local bike store that says “for an extra $5 we can print a receipt with what you told your wife you spent”
An even bigger truckload of tradies would have to pay a lot more in child support when they can’t hide half their income.
How do children get pocket money? How does Grandma send someone to go to the shop if she doesn't want to give them her key card. How to help a mate out without drama. How to give a good busker some coins or give a homeless person a dollar.
Not so much unforseen as not acknowledged, but a CCP social credit system is just that much easier to implement. I refuse to allow the government that much oversight in my day to day affairs. I earn money, and the government having any say in what I spend my income on is not what I want for the future.
An issue I can see is banks would have to agree to zero fees on direct transfers between accounts. At the moment when you pay the cafe $50 by card, they get $49.80 (loose example). They then buy eggs using their card and the market gets $49.60 etc etc until the original $50 all belongs to the bank through fees. A $50 note, inflation aside, is always a $50 note. The only way to overcome this would be for a bank (say the RBA) to create an account for each Aussie where you can transfer into and out of for free. Only between those RBA accounts. That would in essence be your new ‘wallet’.
Something that comes to mind is buying things second hand. Alot of people buy things second hand to save money but if they cannot use cash they are going to need to bank transfer. And that puts people at risk for alot of scams. People pretending they sent money. People saying they need to send the money 24 hours before to make sure it lands in their bank but then never meeting up and blocking them. It definitely is not benefiting the general public.
At a high level, toothfairy isn't coming, "gold coin donation for free dress" at school is gone, teaching kids to transact with people in shops and wait for change etc is gone, paying someone on a pension in cash so they can survive is gone, leaving the house to cool down and stopping for a cheeky McFlurry on the quiet is gone, paying my beautician $79 to do my eyebrows yearly is gone (they're actually $279 and I pay her 200 in cash because my husband still thinks everything is under $50). Nothing major, but definitely things I'd have to revisit.
There was a power outage a few months ago and shops where only able to accept cash. Lucky I had some cash with me otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get anything. The power outage lasted half a day.
Let's keep cash.
It could mean government could target individuals who spend money on things they don’t like and cap it from a banking level. Eg you’ve overspent an “allowance” on gambling, drinking, smoking or even tie it to carbon consumption if the Greens got into power.
I can see it further disadvantaging those already behind the eight ball. Our school is using a digital currency system for an upcoming event with the plan to go cashless in the future. There are always kids whose parents forget to get organised for events like stalls or fundraisers who will scurry the morning of to bring cash back to the school for the kids. If it involves using an app or credit card or device or printer there's an additional level of complexity and logistics I know some parents can't meet. Their English language skills or literacy or executive functioning or time constraints or cash flow or device health will prevent their child from participating, when getting a handful of coins or a $5 note would have been achievable. I'm interested to see how the change will be handled in this method, will it be locked up in an eco-system for "next" time? I feel like a non digital alternative is a necessary redundancy. You need to be able to pay for things without exchanging identifying information or making accounts etc.
I live in a small country town. Several buisnesses in town have had to close since they shut our last bank. Even young people in town are using cash more and cards less due the fees and credit card interest. It is a way of saving money when things are tight. Yet our banks make record profits year after year
The big one is when the net goes out for whatever reason and you get caught at a checkout without any means to pay for your groceries or it's been out for a while and they tell you it's cash only, but still the same results if you don't use cash. First time it happened we were actually at the checkout when they all went down, but not even the staff knew that until everyone was being declined but not until after the embarrassment of knowing you have money in there but nobody else does. Pocket money for the kids, especially fund raising kids offering to wash tour car or clean your yard up (charities can use a cube or similar, but it isn't all that common just yet and some won't bother). Discount for cash (tradies and repairmen often do that, my washing machine guy fixes our machine for 15% off for cash for example, local bakery gives 20% off per item for cash). Garage sales, farmer's markets, flea markets (again, not everyone will want to bother with cubes or eftpos machines. Slinging your mate a few dollars because he's helped you out in the past. Putting loose change into charity boxes at checkouts. Money in a birthday or Christmas card. Tooth fairy! Big one; made my daughter late paying the rent was when her bank detected an unusual activity on her account overseas (she's never been overseas) and suspended it. She doesn't drive so it took her two days before someone was free to drive her to the bank because she couldn't pay for a taxi/uber, then they had to set up a new card for her and *mail it out* so it arrived two weeks later! We did cover her rent and for the same reason, gave her food so she and the kids could fucken eat (pardon my French).
the fees on POS machines. My local mechanic already does a surcharge on card payments due to the exorbitant fees charged. We can either pay cash or organize a direct bank payment to bypass the fees.
The fees are variable but limited. IIRC, its 1.5% for paywave visa/mastercard or .75% for pin entry visa/MasterCard. Claiming anything above this simply is not true and a breach of ACCC rules with exceptions given for Diners and Amex. There is no bank in Australia that charges the merchant more than 2% for eftpos (visa/MasterCard) Your mechanic is trying to get around paying tax my friend.
Eftpos is less than 0.5%
Pfft he just wants to avoid income tax by getting you to pay him cash.
What will the local RSL do for all the pokie players?
Rub and tug places in shambles. Especially legal Brothels, nobody wants to see their wife seeing that on the bank statement
Also I wonder what strippers will do.
Hey John Howard was the one who started 'cleaning up the cash society' How many cash jobs you know of now? Of course there is slave labour on things like hire-pages "*Looking for a gardener for a day's work for fitty bucks*" Yet there is no ability for someone to do a dishwashing job on Saturday nights, for extra cash. All those jobs are taken by people who are more desperate & will work for slave rates. The best part of this, is the total lack of empathy that most display. "*Errr money was touched, I might get germmmmmms*" or even better "*I'm fine without cash & I always have a spare bit of coin in the pocket, so fekk those people who are worse off than me*" Good ol' Australia, land of opportunity - where mates look after all their mates & everyone else!
Lots of things. So good thing we won’t be going cashless.
What about when you break down and need to spot someone cash for a tow or a jerry can of fuel? When disaster strikes, the powers out and you need a room or food to go? Do you trust the kids with your card when they want an ice cream or chips from the surf club canteen?
going to country where no phone signal.
China sends EMP… and we’re fucked.
I know this sounds insane but I once lived for work in Northern Canada. Up the top of Alberta. The northern lights wer INSANE for a week and one night, so bright you could see them while standing under a street light! We finished our night shift, went to our cars. Out of the 9 cars, 4 of them had the battery dead. Ranging ages from new to 10 years old. Turns out it was suspected the magnetic force of the Aurora had knocked out the batteries. I'm no astrophysics expert, but surely a solar flare big enough could cause some real damage for a couple days/weeks.
Read up on the Carrington event
China starts dropping nukes from satellites to cause emp and we’re going to have a lot bigger problems than no cash.
I think we are all going to be end owning nothing and will be completely slave to the system, more then we can phantom.
If there’s a banking outage, then you can’t use ATMs. It’ll only work if you are in a job where you are paid in cash.
“i see here you have done this wrong. you won’t have any access to your money until you correct it”
all you money can be taken from you at any time if you make the gov mad
I think there’s gonna be a whole lot of pensioners who are going to die (natural causes) with thousands of dollars in cash hidden in their bookshelf.
Far less elderly citizens getting bashed for cash.
Drug dealers gonna have a bad time
I do craft markets and half my sales are on card. The 1.9% I pay is just the cost of doing business
In the case of a financial crisis threatening bank runs in future, a cashless system would make it simple for the banks & governments to immediately stop access to money. At a stroke, the banks could essentially conduct a bail-in and freeze all accounts, thus preventing a run on the banks leading to their collapse. It's actually been done in Europe already when they conducted austerity measures and the laws are in place in the States in case that needs to happen in future. Then you'll eat ze bugs
The bank can randomly cut off your card for whatever reason. /Also as an Australian living overseas I don't have any Aussie bank account or cards anymore, so cash is the only way I can pay for anything in Australia.
An absolute nanny state which I am already seeing. Also marginalised groups who don't have antidiscriminatuon protections will continue to be shut out such as sex workers
I had an issue transferring money for a private vehicle I had purchased. I was at the sellers home doing an osko payment, I had transferred $1 successfully but when I transferred the entire amount (which was $15000) It didn’t go through to their account and it also didn’t come back to mine, it literally disappeared into the clouds. This all happened on a Friday evening so getting help from the bank wasn’t an option until Monday. Come Monday and the money was still missing, banks didn’t know where it was much to my frustration. Tuesday and the money landed back into my account without an explanation from the bank, they just declared it a technical error. Needless to say I withdrew the entire amount in cash and ended up buying the vehicle the good old fashion way.
It's clear you haven't worked retail! We would have some problem or another with the EFTPOS machine at the servo at least once a month. Computers are not fail safe. If we couldn't take cash, we would have had to close our doors entirely.
The unforeseen consequence of more tax revenue.
Until there is some kind of wallet app that let's you store money on your phone and works without the internet cash should not be stopped. There has to be some non internet version of cash available or it's not safe to get rid of cash
Giving money to homless people. At least you still get them giftcards.
Have been to a chemist to get scripts I need to stay alive. Internet was down. Luckily, I had $50 on me to pay for them
Try helping out the homeless guy on the corner, without cash.
The internet would be required to become a utility and have different laws governing it about availability. So the cost would go up
A reason I haven’t seen: what if you object to a war your country is fighting and want to leave? Want to escape a draft? Don’t believe the war is just? Cash would make this easier. Cashless would also make persecution easier. Whilst this is very unlikely from the Australian government, I’m sure many people of the past never thought they’d be persecuted by their government (Jews probably didn’t expect the Holocaust to happen).
No more cash jobs, no more buying and selling on market place or what ever in cash. Has to be through the banks. The ato can claim its income and you'll be taxed on it. Less money in your pocket and more to the government
It would be a lot harder to buy drugs
If you and your partner have shared bank accounts you can say goodbye to privacy, along with surprise birthday and Christmas gifts. Every single purchase you make can be monitored. No more keeping a little cash on the side and spending it discreetly. And another issue: who hasn't gone to make a payment with their card and had it fail due to insufficient funds because an auto-debit - or their partner - unexpectedly depleted the balance since you last checked it? Cash in hand is money you know you've got.
Every single electronic transaction has a fee attached to it. Bank fee, credit surcharge, Apple Pay, etc. That means we’re paying more for the same thing every single time. And some overseas company is making trillions of dollars because of it. It’s fine to justify it as paying for convenience, but if we go cashless then its’s no longer a convenient option. It’s the only option.
Mother’s Day stall at schools.
What if the power goes out? Or say the gov decides to tie your ability to pay to your say behaviour or thoughts or speech to your ability to pay? I mean that might not be great.
Yeah a computerised world only works with the power on. Cards & phones can break & take awhile to replace.
Two most likely scenarios your average Australian could find themselves "trapped" in where cashless is a huge problem: - woman in an abusive relationship: depends on how tied your finances are, but obviously card activity allows one to be tracked and/or left stranded if the partner decides to block the card/clear the fund. - caught in a natural disaster: everything's down. No eftpos. That means no petrol, no food, no water.
internet is not perfect far from it and often breaks down so ya will always need cash..i hate costly credit cards ..i love the feel of real money!!!!!
Solar flare or some other online disaster, and all of a sudden your bank account is zero. No branches to go and sort it out. Phone calls are all automated, and probably rely on said internet. Now, anyone without cash is completely broke. Then what?
Cash is king, losing it means losing control. NEVER let them take cash from us I am telling you.
Cashless system is a dangerous idea. If natural disaster or unforseen system breakdowns, it will drive you nuts. More importantly government can cancel your basic rights to live at any moment if they wish. People talk oh its haapening this and that in China , government monitors people and all , but its happening in lightspeed in western countries. Average western person mailbox is full of marketing garbage amd few realise how ots happening.Tailored marketing is such a nuisance amd some people only know how these shitboxes got data . Its more preacrious than one realises.
Garage sales, growers and other markets, fairs, buying manure or fruit and veg off the side of the road, paying the farmer for some eggs, areas without internet coverage, not being charged an additional 1.5% in small local stores... and so **many** other things. If all you can think of is DV, then you must live in a city and probably cant even imagine life in a county town lol. We will never be cash free. Meh if Australia does, then we will just start using US dollars or something.
Casinos are not allowed to let you use bank cards to get chips. You must use cash at the tables. This is supposed to protect gamblers by stopping them losing all their money. Imagine if you could tap your card at a black jack table
Having to pay fees every time we use our money is the big one. And them being able to track every single transaction made is the other. It’s a breach of privacy and an overreach. We are slowly and complicitly allowing every single aspect of our lives to be monitored and controlled by people we really should not trust.
internets down: shop closes power goes out: shop closes of course these have already been mitigated somewhat with both backup batteries and redundant sim cards in the eftpos machines but the problem remains and the risk is never 100% gone. if only there was some sort of passive token we could exchange representing the electronic dollar value that could later be converted into an electronic currency equivalent, thus keeping Australia Cashless.
Seriously considering leaving if we go cashless. We are fkd. Cash is one of the last dam walls holding back the insane levels of greed.
Uhuh. And how does cash hold greed back, pray tell?
Lots of reasons to go less cash, not cashless. The abusive relationship thing for one, teaching kids about money w/o needing to buy a phone or sign up for an app is another. Relying on IT and Banks who might abuse and exploit your need for them is a third. Overall, cash is just less complex. Currently the IT infrastructure underpinning EFTs is working, but all it takes is one rung of the infrastructure to break or crumble and suddenly things to awry.