Canada 'sleepwalking' into cashless society, consumer advocates warn

Governments really need to break the Visa and Mastercard Duopoly.

Not mentioned in this article, but certainly related, was the Canadian governments unprecedented step to freeze hundreds of bank accounts of protestors during COVID protests using their Emergencies Act. While I couldn't be more politically removed from the protestors, using a legislative power envisioned for war like conditions to personally ruin protestors financially is more than worrying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act

I feel like it would be easy to just mandate stores to have to allow for cash transactions. It seems simple to enforce too, just walk into a store and try and by something with cash. If not, report/fine.

As a Canadian, I also feel like there are so many more pressing issues right now, like housing, employment, inflation, immigration. Does this cash/cashless issue somehow affect one of these things?

The comments and the article don't mention the positives of "cash"; Physical currency.

And really, it's more trouble than it's worth.

The number one benefit of going full cashless is just controlling inflation. It's MUCH easier to regulate supply if the supply isn't physical.

Also it's expensive to make and expensive to maintain for little real benefit.

And to solve the problem of vulnerable people not having economic access: Make accepting government cards required; It's the same argument for cash, but doesn't run into the difficulties of physical currency.

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press.

I really hate paying by credit card (I don't like asking the bank for permission to spend my own money), but it's so convenient that I can't bring myself to carry cash any more.

I have a really nice small wallet that I can store a few notes in, but I need a compartment for < 5 EUR's worth of change to make it perfect.

That's literally the entire reason I pay by card nowadays, I just don't like carrying coins.

The bad feeling I get from cashless is "what if some future political conflict will lower the status of my ethnicity to such a low position, so I'll be denied buying food and nobody will care?" or some similar scenario.

Japan has tap payments for public transit and restaurants for decades, while simultaneously being very cash driven. Will be interesting to see how the cash meta evolves with different countries and cultures.

10% is way higher than I thought. Probably <0.1% of my transactions are in cash.

Cash is cumbersome and annoying. I wish there was a digital anonymous replacement.

Cashless is convenient but effectively amounts to automatic inflation. Not just from the merchant fees but making it easier to slowly raise prices/fees/tip %. Plus whatever % of the population is dumb enough to revolve credit and get buried in debt.

A cashless society with NFC tap to pay or QR code-based mobile payments is much better. No need to carry around a heavy and bloated wallet full of physical coins, no need to touch dirty bank notes that have germs and even drugs on them [1]. As a child, my parents always made me wash my hands with soap whenever I touch money, since you never know where the note has been. It just seems so unsanitary to handle physical cash, especially in places like restaurants that deals with serving food to customers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency

And panopticon surveillance and control over every move you make in life by corporations, small businesses, and governments. Want to tip the cashier or give money to the homeless window washer? No.

Also, AI social credit and precrime are just a nightmare away.

This is happening in a lot of places, just a few days ago I went to a restaurant (California) that had a sign up front saying "We are now Cashless" and touting why this is better for the staff.

https://imgur.com/a/uDA8E4A

I predominately use credit for everything because its easier, faster, etc. But the 3% fees since time immemorial is screwed up. We need a better standard for payment that is digital but cash equivalent, aka not paying for the payment convenience.

My take (as an American) on the one reason why cashless sucks: exorbitant transaction fees. 3% plus 50 cents is ridiculous, it should be like 0.1% at most for payment processor infrastructure.

I see a lot of people saying that cash increases freedom because the government / banks / card companies can't instantly shut off access. But, if you're being targeted and don't already have massive cash reserves, you're not going to be able to pull out cash from your account anyway.

If the authorities want you sanctioned and oppressed, they will use a method that transcends any specific technology or tangible item: the justice system.

A little context for Americans: Canada implemented chip and pin debit cards across the country in the 90s. Pretty much overnight, paying by check(cheque) disappeared and nearly all businesses took debit cards. So Canadians have been used to paying by card for decades now.

COVID put the nail in the coffin of any remaining cash-only businesses.

I think it’s more constructive to think about what risks are borne by each party in a transaction, how much it costs to take on each risk, and which party is better equipped to manage each risk. Then you can construct the thing that people actually want, and that thing is almost certainly not cash as we think of it today.

For example, if I order something and pay cash, I’m taking on very different risks than if I pay with a credit card. Similarly the risks to my privacy are very different with each one. Maybe we need a third option that sits somewhere between the two.

for businesses with slim margins, card and processing fees above whole percentage points are basically a private tax. the problem with cashlessness (and over-regulation and surveillance in general) is it mainly punishes normal people for a lack of enthusiasm in their compliance while ignoring (therefore rewarding) the total scofflaws. the economic and cultural effects of this are negative for everyone outside the funded or socialized sector.

the loss of legit businesses has come up in backyard conversations for years about how many of the neighbourhood retail storefront businesses are just money laundering fronts. it drives up rents for legit businesses, discourages entrepreneurialism, and turns highstreets into homogenous globalized airport strip malls without local character. the dominance of laundering and other criminal activity is the direct effect of over regulation that sets high compliance bars for any new business, and so entrepreneurs (mainly 1st gen immigrants) switch away from the legit economy into grey and black markets to survive, while legit ones are forced out.

black markets need prohibition and arbitrary regulation to exist, and all of canada's regulatory nonsense is exclusively creating conditions for those markets. the cities are starting to resemble 3rd world economies where political parties fund themselves through kickbacks from tolerating the black markets created by their own absurd policies, while preying on anyone trying to make their own way.

the solution is to roll back the regulatory culture to let new legit businesses have their natural advantage on criminal ones. any further moves toward cashlessness only empower the black market.

Same is happening aggressively in Japan. It's quite sad.

How times change. Not a single comment mentions Bitcoin, and its potential in affecting the march towards a no-cash, centrally tracked and taxed, society.

Perhaps its legacy will be more about portraying human nature that largely saw it as an opportunity for scams, schemes, greed, speculation, money laundering, and other nefarious activities.

It's frightening how many HN users will trade their freedom for just a bit of convenience. The dystopia is closer than you think. At the very least I hope the lurkers reading these comments are just shaking their heads in frustration and moving on to another post.

I haven’t carried cash in at least 7 years in Ontario.

Just yesterday I went to a coffee shop that had a big sign saying they didn't accept cash. Seems to become more common as time passes.

Sleepwalking is hardly fast enough. It's embarrassing that people are still forced to use cash in current year.

I used to be vehemently opposed to going cashless (as a society) because then how would I buy illegal drugs? But crypto seems plenty mature to handle that problem now and I'm running out of arguments for why physical currency is essential.

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> Payments Canada, found that a majority of respondents were worried about the prospect of cashless stores and want to maintain the option to use cash — which is free from bank fees

I mean, that is the problem right there. We don't generally have that problem in Europe because we don't rely on credit cards.

Here's there no extra fee for using Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Pay with cash, your card, NFC... it's all the same.

Stop using credit cards might be a good step for the USA. I don't know much about Canada to be honest and how it works over there, and if it's CC centric like the USA.

The comments here are truly bizarre. It seems like a few commenters here feel that this is an opportunity to derail on-topic discussion in order to forward some political agenda.

The truth is Canada is already a cashless society. Cities, rural areas, farmers markets, country fairs... I haven't carried cash for years and I can't remember the last time I needed to.

Earlier this year I went on a vacation to a remote tropical island and took out cash only to discover that nowhere even accepted cash! I was stunned.