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Cashless society

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As some one who owned a retail business for quite a few years, offcourse I understand that Merchants are charged a fee.

But as I said neither cash or the credit card are free, it costs businesses money to handle cash.

Most places don’t increase prices when you pay via Credit card, for example Woolworths charges the same for a tin of baked beans regardless of whether you use cash or a credit card.

Woolworths, McDonald’s and plenty of other businesses pay large fees to have armed guards pick up their cash each day, and deliver change.

If you can get away with only banking once a fortnight it’s probably because you don’t get a lot of cash sales anymore, even then you are spending time to bank and potentially losing out on some interest which can be 0.5% a month.

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But when I was in retail we only paid 0.76% on credit card transactions, and a flat 15 cents for eftpos, Amex was 3% but that was a small subset.
 
yes, cashed is preferred by people involved illegal activity such as tax fraud.
 
One of the businesses that I help stay solvent in Midland has quite a large sign on the counter "What the sneaky A*&%%^hole Banks are doing to rip you off. Always makes me smile when I see it. He has an adversion to banks full stop. A necessary evil he reckons.
 
I used to love eftpos transactions at my business, I saw the 0.76% fee they charged as good value. Not having to bank at much, or deal out change, and be worried when we ran out of $5 notes etc…
 
Value Collector said:
Nope, the risk vs reward is not there for me, and it’s to easy to make money legally, and the legit tax deductions are pretty fair.
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Depending on the type of business there is scope to move slightly sideways into the grey area. Pretty hard to disprove some things. I have had a few wins in the grey zone.
 

True, though banks don't charge a surcharge for cash transaction.

Woolworths, McDonalds and such add all costs into one ledger and screw the supplier for big discounts, including the banks. The small and medium business cannot do that. In the end everyone pays for the surchargers.

Yes, cash has decreased over the past several years, but we also are also not as paranoid about keeping cash and let it build up significantly before banking.

Whatever you paid for the surchargers, there is other costs involved; paper rolls, time to collect rolls or a delivery charge, electricity for the machine, time on phone when issues occur, time learning and setting up new device. It doesn't matter how insignificant, it is still a cost, just like handling cash.

Nothing is free in this world, but some things you pay a bit more for without realising.
 
Equal = equal John De
 
Just like you say businesses include the cost of credit card transactions in their prices, the banks add the cost of cash handling into their fees and charges.

I understand all those minor costs of operating my eftpos machine, they are small compared to the time and costs of banking cash in my experience.

Sure sometimes the eftpos machine drops out, but sometimes you run out of change, trying to give some one $6 in 20 cent pieces because you had a run of $50 notes and didn’t bank yesterday is pretty stressful and embarrassing, or even worse you accidentally lose $20 because you gave some one to much change.
 
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Though of recent times, not that we go to the banks that often these days, the queue is considerably less than say 12 months ago. Most times when I have had a need to enter the den of inequity, there has been only a couple in front of me. That is not to say it is still quick service. Some of these tellers i feel have been trained in the school of" extra slow service".
 

And huge business like Woolworths can force negotiate discounts from suppliers & banks, which small & medium businesses can’t. However, the only expense they have with cash is traveling to their local bank, which gives them some competitive chance against the monster size competition.
 
With the little bit of shopping that takes place in this household the locally owned independent is where our hard earned is spent.
 
farmerge said:
With the little bit of shopping that takes place in this household the locally owned independent is where our hard earned is spent.
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I think the statistic is something like 70% of the population own Woolworths shares either directly or via their super, so you may as well consider them locally owned too
 
farmerge said:
With the little bit of shopping that takes place in this household the locally owned independent is where our hard earned is spent.
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I use credit cards for just about everything. I pay them off every month, don't pay an annual fee, and end up with $1000 worth of points or flights every year. I still always have a few hundred of cash in the wallet and few thousand in my house, but don't often use the cash.

What credit card spending allows me to do is see exactly what I spend and where I spend it with a few mouse clicks in excel. This is about 7 years of my household spending distribution habits on groceries. I don't specifically prefer any shop over another, but I would have guessed IGA was more than about 50% of my spending because I am closest to an IGA... Facts show it's definitely not.

Are the banks and credit card companies are selling this information on my spending habits?
 
I'd argue the government allows foreign students/visa holders to be part of a large cash economy. Many poor have only risen up because of the cash economy. Once they get there they join the rest of the taxpayers.

As for illegal, they generally spend the money into the economy and sometimes into back pockets of said government.

The government and ato would probably be wise to leave this area alone. It's literally the only out for a lot of low income earners.
 
Value Collector said:
I think the statistic is something like 70% of the population own Woolworths shares either directly or via their super, so you may as well consider them locally owned too
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That maybe so but the independants i mentioned here are owned by local famiies and are not comgolerates.
 
I'll pose a question.....

Suppose that I go to a supermarket, spend an hour taking goods off the shelf and placing them into a trolley, go through the checkout and then their system, or the bank's fails?

Now if I offer to pay cash well no problem, all sorted.

But if the supermarket doesn't want the cash then they don't think I'm walking out without the goods, right? Not when I've spent an hour of my time, they gave no warning that their system would fail, and I could instead have gone to a competing supermarket.

Just my view but if a business invites customers to purchase goods, and the customer has met all stated conditions of entry etc and has broken no law, there ought be an obligation to process the sale so long as the customer offers payment. If the shop's EFTPOS fails and they don't want the customer's cash, that's their problem.

Noting that's a hypothetical scenario but it's one I can foresee happening if businesses don't accept cash. Customer's been served food or they've travelled in the taxi or they've had their hair cut or whatever. If the EFFTPOS fails, and they don't take cash, well that's not the customer's problem.
 
As I said, it’s possible now and would be more so in the future, the transactions could be processed off line.

But, in the future you might not even be carrying cash, I know people my age and younger are carrying less and less cash.
 
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