It's not about tech ; the tech exists already. That wasn't my point. Everyone in the country could have a debit card with contactless payments TODAY if the banks wanted to offer them to everyone. They don't.
Cashless Society/World ...Thoughts?
- Thread starter meesterperfect
- Start date
It's not about tech ; the tech exists already. That wasn't my point. Everyone in the country could have a debit card with contactless payments TODAY if the banks wanted to offer them to everyone. They don't.
GodsEmbryo
Closed Account
Well, it's more than the technical availability I'm talking about. I'm talking about the far reaching 'changes' that happened and are happening in our society and how fast it goes. Especially when everything becomes digital. It certainly wasn't something I could have predicted as a kid.
Do you still buy cd's, dvd's, magazines, newspapers, books? Do you still go to a library? Do you use Facebook and other websites for social interaction, do you chat online, use webcam and so on? I presume your world is quite digital as well. In a broader sence, it's all about computers, automatisation, communication satellites, Internet, fiber optics etc. (read: communication, data and speed). This digital era is bringing some kind of new industrial revolution so to speak, with an entire new economy, and it's happening right under your/our nose. Banks are following that path too.
What you are talking about is a credit card and how some people cannot be trusted with that, but that's only a speck in that whole scheme and frankly said, irrelevant. Banks do have there mechanisms to prevent abuse, but whether it's cash or a card, if bad people want to abuse a system they will abuse a system. It won't stop banks especially when it becomes easier to trace digital transactions. Banks really don't want to go digital? It's ALREADY digital! They are NOT opposing but stimulating the available options. I can use my cellphone to pay for all kind of stuff, check my accounts or manage my payments online, use my cards to pay wherever and wheneve I want, my earnings are a number on my account, I can use online services like PayPall, etc. I hardly use paper money anymore. People, especially the younger ones, are already more and more comfortable using cards and modern technology so we can expect the use of cash to drop even further in the future. And there will be a point where cash is hardly used anymore.
For the record, I'm not talking about what will happen beyond that point. I do think paper money will disappear eventually, but how this will be achieved is to complex for me to speculate about (gold, inflation, a new digital currency...)
I'm not talking just about credit cards at all, I'm talking about debit cards, and the volume of customers that I used to serve, day in and day out, that are stuck using a basic cash card (or even, lord above, a PASSBOOK) to access their funds due to the unwillingness of providers to give them any level of payment card due to poor credit score caused by defaults/bankruptcy, unemployment, being hard to trace or criminal record. I worked in a "Grade 1 key location" in the city centre of one of the three biggest cities in England, and I'm not talking about an irrelevant number of people. I currently live within a ten minute walk of the same city, and every time I'm in my local convenience store - EVERY time - I see people paying their bills in cash at the pay point. Because they can't get a bank account that allows direct debits, or a debit card facility.
No, I didn't say that.
Why are we shouting?
I worked for one of the pioneers in Internet banking in my country and YES, they want everyone using Internet banking where possible to reduce branch based overheads and paper usage, and they want everyone making as many transactions electronically as possible to earn more payments from Visa etc, create more opportunities to gather marketing information about their customer base, and reduce risk of money laundering. However, they will only choose to offer these facilities to the customers they consider viable. The scum of the Earth need to be able to access their payments too, and you can't stop a percentage of mankind fucking their lives up and being forced to rely on cash access.
Hey, thinking about the dregs of society just made me think.... in a world without cash, all those homeless people currently eking by on the cash begged from passers by in the street will simply die instead.
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GodsEmbryo
Closed Account
(I'm not shouting, I use uppercases and bold font to emphasize things 
)
I do understand what you are saying but it's possible that we have some culture clash here. In Belgium we have a law on a basic banking service which basically stipulates that banks cannot refuse someone who wants to open an account (with some conditions of course). There are other trends as well: using cash to buy stuff has been reduced from 15,000€ in 2012 to 3,000€ as a maximum from 2014 onwards, mortgage or buying a house and some other stuff can no longer be done without having a bank account, etc. The past ten years the number of people who didn't have an account/debit card has been reduced from 1 million to 100.000 people and keeps dropping (This goes fom people who didn't want to use a bank account to people who didn't get an account). Reson: there's much more control on the flow of money. So I don't see a reason why banks or government wouldn't find a solution for the problem you mentioned. They could even invent something similar to a prepaid phone card for all I know :dunno:
Good point.
)I do understand what you are saying but it's possible that we have some culture clash here. In Belgium we have a law on a basic banking service which basically stipulates that banks cannot refuse someone who wants to open an account (with some conditions of course). There are other trends as well: using cash to buy stuff has been reduced from 15,000€ in 2012 to 3,000€ as a maximum from 2014 onwards, mortgage or buying a house and some other stuff can no longer be done without having a bank account, etc. The past ten years the number of people who didn't have an account/debit card has been reduced from 1 million to 100.000 people and keeps dropping (This goes fom people who didn't want to use a bank account to people who didn't get an account). Reson: there's much more control on the flow of money. So I don't see a reason why banks or government wouldn't find a solution for the problem you mentioned. They could even invent something similar to a prepaid phone card for all I know :dunno:
Good point.
GodsEmbryo
Closed Account
Woops. I meant from 400,000 to 100,000
Rey C.
Racing is life... anything else is just waiting.
One problem I see with cryptocurrencies is that people tend to keep them in accounts maintained by sometimes sketchy offshore companies. They could run off with your money, or some hacker could take it. Either way, your money is gone (really, it was gone as soon as you converted from fiat/paper to digital) - plus the wild gyrations in valuation mean that many merchants won't accept them (or they apply a steep discount). And even if you have the crypto data on a thumbdrive, you still need a functioning computer infrastructure in order to access it. If there happened to be some sort of cataclysmic event, that might be a problem. Sure, it's more portable than a giant bar of gold, but do you really have anything of value? :dunno:
Rey C.
Racing is life... anything else is just waiting.
Right. And if you think about it, doesn't a cashless system exclude people on the margins who aren't computer savvy, or whose lives and businesses are based in the cash world?
I posted that on June 4th, 2016 and it's still true. Prostitution remains a cash business. It's gotten tougher since the government killed backpage but it's still doable.
Theopolis Q. Hossenffer
I am in America, not of it.
I can't remember the last time I carried any cash at all much less a significant amount. Kinda tough on the ones asking for a handout on the street. I get the feeling they expect no one has much if any cash on hand anymore.
I like having sex with prostitutes, do not judge me. Normal women give me diarrhea.
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