this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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Yeah there's no such thing as free lunch. Cash is not free and neither is this new EU currency. The costs are hidden from you but they are there.
When you buy a pizza in cash for example, you're not just paying for the pizza. You're also paying for the business to send someone to the bank regularly to deposit earnings and and withdraw coins to give customers as change. And the bank is doing the same thing - all those armoured cars delivering cash to ATMs around the city? Those are not cheap and you are paying for them.
Worst of all, cash tends to go missing - Maybe an employee gave a customer two twenty dollar bills in change when it should have been one... or maybe the employee pocketed the 20 bucks. The business has no way of knowing which and both happen regularly. Either way the customer ultimately pays - the business sets prices high enough to cover those costs.
Ask anyone who keeps track of this stuff for a large business, they will tell you credit cards are cheaper for them.
It's mostly insurance. Because while cash goes "missing" more often, credit cards still has issues (stolen card numbers and occasionally software bugs) and unlike cash, where the business pays, with credit cards often VISA/MasterCard often have to pay. The fees are partly to cover that. And the fees also cover the money they spent trying to prevent money from going missing (they spend a lot of money on that).
Mine doesn't. They make monthly deposits into my account based on how much money I have there and how much they were able to profit off using it for investments.
it's a Credit Union, so technically I'm a shareholder and the entire business model of the bank is to make money for their shareholders (me). You too can be a bank shareholder. The only "fees" they charge are to pay for employees and customer service, and those are far less than what I earn in interest on my savings.
Yes, but with state digital currency it's not a profit driven effort behind the cost, less cost inflation and shareholder pressure.
Also very good points. This is in general a very good move by the EU, and I'd wish we had it as a currency in my country.
It's also a choice to use, so if you don't like it then keep use your VISA/MasterCard.
Exactly.
And perhaps to make a more distinguishing contrast I would add that you can also keep using paper currency as well (banknotes still have the kind of anonymity online transaction can't offer, yet even there is still a huge distinction between government hopefully not selling your data vs megacorps rallying on that).
Just because its not a free lunch doesn't mean you have to charge as much as you possibly can for it.
Yup. Few years back I remember asking a small shop if they would rather I use cash or card, and they said that the card, even with transaction fees, was much cheaper for them. When I visited them recently they now had a "no cash" sign.