How Long It Will Be Before Our Society Becomes A Cashless One?

[melthebell]

4 minutes ago, Anna B said:

The point is you have the choice to draw actual cash out of a machine, and use that if you want.

A Cashless society removes this choice and all transactions become electronic. And that gives banks total control over your transactions / life.

 

For example PAYE is deducted from your pay at source, you have no choice. What if banks used the same criteria? What if it insists you pay off your overdraft before you pay your rent, or withholds payments it doesn't approve of? 

What if you're overcharged on a regular basis or decide you don't want to pay something on principal. They have the ultimate power to override you.

 

Without a cash alternative, you are giving the banks control and power. They have enough power over our lives already...

Give over luddite, its all electronic behind the scenes, they make the choices whichever way you choose, the ONLY difference is the medium digital versus cash, the banking is the same for both, as i said, you need to get the cash in the first place, thats the banks, that doesnt matter whether its cash or digital.

[altus]

2 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

Shops already collate and share data about where we go. We are filmed every time we enter a store or a town centre. We have enough loyalty cards to require a separate wallet and for several years the shop tills have tracked every purchase on what we buy and tailor offers on the things we want.   In my opinion some of these more wild objections against embracing the obvious convenience and betterment that comes with cashless are nothing more than just conspiracy theories and paranoia about "The Man".

"We" don't all have loyalty cards, some people do, some don't. Some of people realise the implications of it (whether they be happy to make the trade off or not) and others do not.

 

Neither is it conspiracy theories and paranoia about "The Man". Some people just don't want companies tracking everything they do. Is that really such an unreasonable notion? Are we really just things to be targetted for commerce? It's the argument that some people aren't bothered about it therefore anybody who is bothered is being unreasonable that seems unreasonable to me.

 

Shops don't have an overriding need to do this. Companies that advertise on the internet don't have an overriding need to do it either. In the case of the latter, it's not even the best solution. The Internet Advertising Bureau produced a paper comparing various ways of targetting advertising from by page content (which doesn't actually need to know who is viewing the page) to increasingly intrusive tracking. Although the tracking based ads were more effective they were much more expensive. The paper showed, although it didn't draw attention to it, that companies wanting to sell products would get a greater return on their advertising budget by buying more, less effective ads. Most of this tracking is about the advertising industry creating busy work to justify charging companies that want to sell products more per ad - so a greater proportion of that budget goes into the pockets of the ad companies rather than producing more sales.

37 minutes ago, melthebell said:

Give over luddite, its all electronic behind the scenes, they make the choices whichever way you choose, the ONLY difference is the medium digital versus cash, the banking is the same for both, as i said, you need to get the cash in the first place, thats the banks, that doesnt matter whether its cash or digital.

Drawing out a few hundred quid in cash and spending it over a few weeks in a dozen or so shops gives the bank far less information than those transactions would appearing as individual items on your bank/credit card accounts.

[St Petre]

1 hour ago, altus said:

"We" don't all have loyalty cards, some people do, some don't. Some of people realise the implications of it (whether they be happy to make the trade off or not) and others do not.

 

Neither is it conspiracy theories and paranoia about "The Man". Some people just don't want companies tracking everything they do. Is that really such an unreasonable notion? Are we really just things to be targetted for commerce? It's the argument that some people aren't bothered about it therefore anybody who is bothered is being unreasonable that seems unreasonable to me.

 

Shops don't have an overriding need to do this. Companies that advertise on the internet don't have an overriding need to do it either. In the case of the latter, it's not even the best solution. The Internet Advertising Bureau produced a paper comparing various ways of targetting advertising from by page content (which doesn't actually need to know who is viewing the page) to increasingly intrusive tracking. Although the tracking based ads were more effective they were much more expensive. The paper showed, although it didn't draw attention to it, that companies wanting to sell products would get a greater return on their advertising budget by buying more, less effective ads. Most of this tracking is about the advertising industry creating busy work to justify charging companies that want to sell products more per ad - so a greater proportion of that budget goes into the pockets of the ad companies rather than producing more sales.

Drawing out a few hundred quid in cash and spending it over a few weeks in a dozen or so shops gives the bank far less information than those transactions would appearing as individual items on your bank/credit card accounts.

Correct.

[Dromedary]

1 hour ago, altus said:

......Drawing out a few hundred quid in cash and spending it over a few weeks in a dozen or so shops gives the bank far less information than those transactions would appearing as individual items on your bank/credit card accounts.

And what do those transaction that appear on your account say? Basically all it states is who the transaction was with, what the amount was and that's it. I hope you turn off your phone when shopping as you can be tracked to where you purchase items from even if you pay cash.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Dromedary

[ECCOnoob]

2 hours ago, Dromedary said:

And what do those transaction that appear on your account say? Basically all it states is who the transaction was with, what the amount was and that's it. I hope you turn off your phone when shopping as you can be tracked to where you purchase items from even if you pay cash.

Just to add, some of these people better also start wearing balaclavas and gloves when they go shopping given facial recognition technology within stores, malls and banks is very much available.  There is even talk of it even being rolled out further with enhanced biometrics to enable age verification on restricted purchases, such as alcohol, without requiring involvement from staff.

 

Time for some to get themselves into the modern world. The days of taking ones wicker basket and coin purse over to Mr Wilson's general provisions store are well and truly over. 

Edited March 27, 2022 by ECCOnoob

[cgksheff]

4 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

.....

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There is even talk of it even being rolled out further with enhanced biometrics to enable age verification on restricted purchases, such as alcohol, without requiring involvement from staff.

....

....

Already running in a Coop I use.

[Chekhov]

11 hours ago, melthebell said:

Give over luddite, its all electronic behind the scenes, they make the choices whichever way you choose, the ONLY difference is the medium digital versus cash, the banking is the same for both, as i said, you need to get the cash in the first place, thats the banks, that doesnt matter whether its cash or digital.

I have a business which takes card payments (min £5 or a fee applies), online orders via Stripe, and cash in the shop and cash is not electronic. As an example if someone pays cash for a product, then later I pay for my delivered stationery order by cash that is not electronic in any way. And it is more efficient as well, I save two lots of bank fees......  

On the subject of fees, I can remember when we were in Rotterdam and we went out for breakfast, they only took card, so the bank billed us a huge non sterling transaction fee. The same on the bus. I was effin' ****ed off.

[Anna B]

2 hours ago, Chekhov said:

I have a business which takes card payments (min £5 or a fee applies), online orders via Stripe, and cash in the shop and cash is not electronic. As an example if someone pays cash for a product, then later I pay for my delivered stationery order by cash that is not electronic in any way. And it is more efficient as well, I save two lots of bank fees......  

On the subject of fees, I can remember when we were in Rotterdam and we went out for breakfast, they only took card, so the bank billed us a huge non sterling transaction fee. The same on the bus. I was effin' ****ed off.

The banks are only there to make money any which way they can. They're ruthless. Another reason for maintaining cash.

 

They've made it impossible to manage without a bank account, and will soon start ramping up the price for the privilege. They've made billions/ trillions but cut interest on savings to nothing, then increased the interest on loans. 

Banks are the new masters. Beware of giving them any more power than they have already.

[Dromedary]

43 minutes ago, Anna B said:

......They've made billions/ trillions but cut interest on savings to nothing, then increased the interest on loans. 

Its the Bank Of England that sets interest rates and not the banks. Low interest rates are designed to get people spending and not saving as saving does not help the economy grow.

 

[Chekhov]

8 minutes ago, Dromedary said:

Its the Bank Of England that sets interest rates and not the banks. Low interest rates are designed to get people spending and not saving as saving does not help the economy grow.

It's not that simple.

The current interest rate is 0.75% but the inflation rate is over 6% (it's way over that, 6% is a con). That is penalising people who have done the right thing and saved for their futures and/or a rainy day, it's disgusting.

The interest rate will have to go up and up anyway as inflation is such a massive threat and won't be going away anytime soon thanks mainly to the government's horrendously expensive pandemic strategy.