I use cash only. It helps to control spending but also my bank doesn’t need to know each and everything I buy. Local businesses appreciate it as they get the full amount and there is no cut taken by card processors or banks. And as the recent CrowdStrike outage has shown, being 100% dependent on digital services is not ideal. I have to deal with change, but that’s a small inconvenience I’m willing to take.
Username checks out.
Let me just pull my phone out, download this money transfer app with an abysmal privacy policy. Now let me register an account and input every personal detail known to man. What’s this? I need my government issued ID? I’ll inform the beggar I’ll just pop to my house to grab it. Got my ID, now I’ll complete a liveness test because god forbid that I might be a robot. I may as well send them an ass swab because they need to “know their customer” so well. I just need to link my bank account and enter an OTP that’ll take 5 more minutes to arrive. Finally, I can donate to the beggar after messing around with a poorly printed QR code on a cardboard sign.
OR I can just pull out my wallet and hand them a $10 note. I’m going to pick the 10 second process with fewer steps over the 30 minute process any day of the week. Having options is important, especially if your phone dies for whatever reason. A cashless society is just a way for card companies and payment processors to continue making a quick buck in the name of convenience. Both card and cash have their uses, and it should be up to the consumer to decide which to use.
Agreed. I would love to see a law requiring businesses to accept cash where possible. That sort of law already exists at state and local levels in the US, would like to see it adopted in the UK.
I’ve been using a SL address for my domain contact for a couple of years now without issues (.com domain). I would recommend going for a TLD with whois privacy, as that allows you to redact addresses and phone numbers as well.