With the ANZ up the road soon to close, locally there is no mention of whether the ATM will remain. Suncorp ran away nearly two years past and left no ATM. Depending on who has your cash and which ATM is available there is a cost for access. Cash out at the checkout would also seem to be off the agenda for the ColesWorth empire too!
P.S.
Opportunity knocks?
The younger ones are likely to be the first to go without any in their pockets. If the trend continues with fewer businesses accepting cash. Next time the wonderful grown up children are visiting and we are out for lunch. Sorry, Iâve only brought cash.
It would make no difference as they are not online.
Back when James Cook was in short pants I sold shirts in a department store, we had electric cash registers. When there was a blackout there were two standing orders:
Spread out and be vigilant as shoplifters would be there in droves
Get out the big handle and plug it into the register so it could be hand cranked and we could keep selling.
Havenât paid for anything using cash at shops for months now, but always have a hundred in notes just in case the âsystemâ is down. And the day some charity collector with an eftpos machine rather than a tin knocks on my door is a day I hope never comes.
I just checked my CBA MasterCard and my wifeâs Woolworths Visa card and both still have the raised lettering so as to work with imprinters.
The imprinters were never online. The merchants included a copy of each form along with the cash and cheques in their banking.
Back in the days of imprinters only for credit card transactions, a business associate pointed out to me how one could spot the escorts going into the hotels by the size of their handbags. The escorts must have been glad to be rid of the imprinters.
Ditto. However, the other day when I returned a defective pack of cos lettuce to Coles and I had my credit card at the ready, the staff member wanted to refund the $2.00 in cash but I insisted in getting a credit instead.
Those old manual card imprint devices were not online, BUT once the charge was over a certain limit, the salesperson had to phone up someplace and get authorization. How many hours I spent waiting for my purchases to be completed. Glad to see the end of that system and replaced by network connected facilities.
It is not necessarily an either or problem. Standby old school forms might suffice up to a certain threshold when the networks are down. Pay waves are authorised by definition to $100 (now $200) so the same could be done with paper backups to a preset amount. Over the amount? Run multiple transactions.
Old school paper backups would allow the shop to keep selling and the customers to keep buying with only minor inconvenience. The bank responsible for being down should wear the risk a transaction having to be done from paper forms is fraudulent.
Remember this focuses on Woolies (and any other shops) that do not accept cash. Even if they accept cash and the network is down one sometimes cannot get cash, so the problem remains.
In the early days the card providers did accept the risk of a fraudulent paper payment. In fact Amex in particular sold their cards on the feature that no in-store phone authorization was required. I had one for just that reason, to avoid the waiting.
Then the limits started coming down. Many times tried splitting things into smaller purchases to be under the limit for each. Nope, it still needs authorization, since itâs from a particular customer on the same day from the same merchant The final insult was when Amex introduced limits, and very low ones, and failed to provide a workable phone authorization facility. After waiting in Myer one day for 30 minutes as the frustrated salesperson tried in vain to get onto Amex, I cancelled my card and went to Visa which had started up online authorizations.
The offline card system was a dumb card, it only served as identification and to verify that an account existed or had existed. The merchant was always bearing a risk that when the paperwork was presented the account might have been closed or have insufficient funds. I donât see banks going back to that mode of operation, so the imprinter that is offline cannot be used as a backup where online systems go down and cash isnât usable.
Banks need to own the problem when they are down in a cashless society. Empty apologies do not cut it.
Would they willingly do it? I doubt it, but it is a theoretical solution to keeping business open and customers shopping and being able to pay when the electronic infrastructure is off-line. âHeâ who is down, not their customers, should âownâ all consequences.
How much are you prepared to pay to keep a less secure system available as backup? How much are you prepared to pay for its operation? Or are you suggesting the banks just absorb the cost?
I would rather keep cash going. Whether that is possible or not I would have two different cards so that if one is down the other can be used.
Now some facilities have offline modes. Some donât. ATMs for example can operate and dispense money in offline mode quite happily. Reduced limit per cash payout sure, and they remember what card they have processed so withdrawers canât go nuts.
Eftpos, depending on the transaction type, works quite happily in offline mode. It gets a bit confused these days when Eftpos can be used for Credit, Debit, or a mix of both because of backend network dependabilities.
Some time ago when Supermarkets started going late night or even all night, the punters got to know just when the Eftpos systems would go offline for nightly batch processing, and fronted up in droves to put all their goods on cards, which they knew were over the limit but would be accepted in offline mode.
And my local corner shop, with a single point simple Eftpos device that can handle cards is out of business if their network connection is out and they donât do cash.
Or are you suggesting the banks just absorb the cost?
We will have to ask them very nicely. Along with the miners that destroy environments to extract their product the cheapest, the shippers who use the cheapest (most polluting) fuel, the pubs that canât survive without 500 pokies, the list is endless. They can all reduce their profits for the good of the people: to the barricades!
There are a lot of people, probably millions in Australia who prefer to use cash. Who is really driving this âcashless societyâ and why? For the good of whom? Certainly not for many, and why canât there be both systems of payment anyway?
Currently the move to a cashless society is very much on trend. Irritatingly so for those amongst us who desire the retention of cash as a lifetime option.
If the zero cash future arises?
Who is going to wear the cost of the cashless systems.
How do we stop business inserting themselves into the cash flow food chain to extract more profit and more data. (Perhaps thatâs Smithâs invisible hand?)
What outcomes are there for government in respect of regulation of the flow of credit.
Will the cost savings to government of not printing money or producing coin be too little to offset increased costs in following the money flow.
What about the future of all those Aussies stashed under the mattress or in some private safe.
Should credit be banned as a means of meeting everyday expenses to eliminate inappropriate consumer debt traps, or is there another way.
âBarricadesâ!
Perhaps Iâll be more empathetic for a fish trying to swim back up the Murray.
I do not accept anything I posted suggested any more than the banks who owned a âsystem downâ problem in a cashless society should be responsible for owning the risk of a fraudulent charge in the interim. No details in how they should fund it included, but fund it they should.
edit: that is no different from the fraud guarantees the card issuers provide today, excepting their risk profile is higher when their systems are down
