Aotearoa / New Zealand

🛠️ memes aside, I'm a software developer and I don't trust software-only systems with no fallback. Too many moving parts that can go wrong.

From what I hear in China, and possibly some other countries, if they don’t like what you do/say you’re not only censored but they’ll cut you off from your bank. Cash is king and it always will be.

Your bank account is nothing but zeros and ones. Imagine if there was a massive power outage for an extended period of time. It happened here last week, luckily for only a day, but you couldn’t get gas or groceries because there was no power. If they had power, the internet was down so the card machines wouldn’t work.

It’s easy to forget how fragile the whole system is and cash on hand will always be king.

I live in germany and never leave the house without cash because at least once a month, one of those stupid card terminals will either refuse to work properly or be blocked by my bank for no reason.

Those cards are a terrible implementation of digital money and I hope they die a swift death to make way for something that actually works.

Until then, cash it is.

2FA would probably be part of the answer: whereby you get a text / app notification with a unique code to confirm a transaction. Not always convenient, I pretty much always sigh when having to use them, but at least significantly harder for people to spoof.

I can imagine a future, not that far off, where physical cards are obsolete, and phones are the primary identifying factor in everyday transactions.

But yeah that whole not honoring transactions from a near(ish) to expiry card thing is total BS. I'd be looking to ditch Skinny if that happened to me.

You are lucky the bank is catching these unauthorised transactions and not holding you responsible for them.

Cashless requires an effective cash substitute, otherwise people who can't get bank accounts are not able to use money.

These people include but are not limited to:

• newly adult children of "off grid" or religious cult parents who did not register their birth, or whose parents are withholding their vital documents
• people who have lost all their identification in a disruptive life event such as a house fire, flight from a war zone, unexpected incarceration with subsequent loss of home and belongings, or due to activity resulting from untreated mental health conditions
• identity theft victims whose electronic reputation has been destroyed
• victims of bureaucratic error who are officially dead or otherwise tangled in red tape
• immigrants, migrants, and refugees who are not "legal" and who therefore can't get the documentation they need (regardless what you think of those who skirt immigration laws, this group includes people brought into a country as children, and human trafficking victims and even if it didn't the punishment for illegal immigration should be deportation, not starving on the streets)

Outside of that, while a cash or cash equivalent economy allows for various criminal and black market economy, it also provides a buffer for targeted minorities or other potential victims if there's an outbreak of fascist and/or genocidal government.

This is the bulk of why I think we need some form of legal currency that is bearer only.

I have never had the problems you describe.

I think for the Skinny related issue, that's their fuckup, not the bank's.

Cashless society, very bad idea. It wouldn't function and I think the top level knows that.

I don't see any change to using cash, every store and most places except public transport accept cash.

We will continue to see developments on the digital side, ie wristbands and chips for contactless payment.

Perhaps in another generation when we have had cashless for so long it becomes less common, but so much of the lower class depends on physical cash, that unless the banks issue physical devices to stand in for cellphones and mark-of-the-beast implanted chips, cash will remain.

I don't know any parent who doesn't want cash to remain a thing. They need to be able to give their kid cash to go buy lollies at the dairy, or for their tooth etc.

15 years ago or so, I worked for a bank that made their cards not work at Walmart due to the high rate of fraud there.

When a customer called it, the solution was to tell them this and ask them to use a different card or an atm for cash.

If they only had one card, they were out of luck.

I can’t remember, but they might have been able run the card as debit and use their pin.

Either way, cashless is not a good society.

I went through a round of this with my bank a couple of years ago. They would reissue a card that would be compromised in days and the cycle would go around. It was an internal security problem for them that eventually got sorted out. I remember one card was cloned and bought several dozen monthly transit passes in Boston (contactless purchase) before it was caught. I live in Western Canada. So yes I carry cash. A lot of younger retailers don't even accept it. They just have that square tap system tied to their phones.

I think that this was just a shit situation caused by skinny and that digital and cash will continue to function without major issue.

I see a lot of comments that a cashless society would not be a good one, but no reasons behind this.

Sure, current implementations and technology make it nonviable, but I cannot think of any reason why this could not change in the future.

Hypothetically, the government's central bank could issue a crypto-based currency, backed by them, and equal exactly to the dollar. Let's call it the Kiwicoin. This coin would work using an official wallet, and perhaps other 3rd party wallets. It could be used with a debit-card, like some places already have (crypto.com, wirex, etc). You could exchange fist into this, and back, 1:1 with no fees. Instant transactions, resilient network, complete record of transactions. There are many potential benefits.

This is only one option, I'm sure there are other ways of executing a cashless society. Cash has no intrinsic value, and other than being a physical object, has no benefit over the numbers in your bank, and several downsides.

I tend to have all the weird problems but in decades of using cards I don't think my troubles combined are anything as bad as this.

This isn't a common scenario.

What are folks in places like Gisborne supposed to do when the infrastructure for digital payments goes out in another flood?

Monero, it's the only digital currency that resembles cash.