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Norway has an app called Vipps, released by the national bank. When first introduced it was primarily aimed towards payment from person to person, linked to phone numbers. But most online vendors accept it as a form of payment too.
I forgot my wallet while at the grocery store the other day, and using what little charm I have I managed to get the cashier to pay for me, and I Vippsed him the money owed.
And once again I look at a Scandinavian country with envy
In Brazil you can use a central bank system called pix. Everyone with a bank account has it. You can send money to any phone number registered on pix and everyone accepts it.
All banks support it so people can use it anywhere with anyone. Also we support a system like Japan with barcode but since pix people are using it less
Singapore has PayNow, Thailand has PromptPay, India has UPI… Just US/EU still struggling to get out from grip of mastercard/visa. Tho after Trump nonsense Eau is trying, but UK is not even trying.
Visa/MasterCard is a tax in every transaction. You might not see it but it is there.
I hate that I don’t get like a 2% cash discount, I get like 3%+ from credit cards so justifying cash is kind of hard
At least in Denmark, paying cash was shown to be more expensive, due to the cost of money transportation services and the fee banks charge to provide bills and coins for the change in the register.
Also the stores can’t do any analytics on purchasing patterns on you when paying cash. So all in all they prefer credit cards or registering for membership programs for payments.
Wow, I had no idea you could do that in Japan, and the idea never crossed my mind.
That’s a brilliant solution to online payments.
We now have the technological means to make online payments better in many ways for both customers and vendors. We just need to move away from one of the biggest American exports, middlemen.
How are we going to do that? What’s the payment method everyone should use for now?
@ontariobay in Brazil there is the PIX, it is an instant payment between almost any bank account, in the first year it was introduced you could use it to pay for almost anything, online or in person, it usually approves in less than a second and there is no fee.
Yes I remember reading about how US credit card companies are pissed about PIX which isn’t a surprise.
You can even do this in Uniqlo when not in Japan. Make an online purchase, pay in store within 1 hour, and then it’s like you made an in-store purchase (with all the benefits).
I consulted for a luxury brand on e-commerce for a bit and I was surprised how important credit card splitting was to their American business.
Like, people splitting a purchase across multiple cards because they were so close to the max for each.
I questioned how much time we were spending on it but they assured me it was a common use case.
Note I recently had to do some gymnastics to split a purchase over ‘credit cards’ because I had received a few modest gift cards. I suspect that’s an even more common case, since people want to completely use up a received gift card and that’s all but impossible without splitting. Even if I have 10s of thousands of available limit, a gift card means I’m trying to spend like $50 or $100 out of a card.
I HATE gift cards. Kiddo got one for Nintendo. We have a hacked switch! Can’t even use it.
Have a Home Depot one that says “invalid” or whatever wording, won’t let me use it.
Basically buying a piece of plastic, they take your money and tell you to fuck off. No one’s going to take them to court for $50, so it’s win-win all around for them.
Regift it to someone who can use it
I did this ONCE on a $10k required purchase. Never again.
Interesting, usually when I get into something that expensive, they don’t even want to accept credit cards. I think most I got someone to take as a credit card transaction was about $6,000. They’ll only take check or certified check, or if a car then of course they really want you to borrow through whatever they have partnered with.
unfortunately, was for a lawyer. paid it off in two months, but didn’t quite have $10k i cash in my pocket. it wasn’t for a DUI, i don’t drink lmao. thats the most common reason for lawyers i’ve heard.
No. In Sweden, 99% of all payments are cahsless. Most stores don’t even take cash anymore.
We still have plenty of (digital) options for payment in addition to Visa/Mastercard.
In my view, it’s actually the opposite. The more digital paymenst are used, the higher the incentive to create a competing payment solution. Swish and Klarna are taking over more and more here.
I thought klarna was just a payday loan basically?
It’s mostly a middle man to outsource payments. The stire doesn’t care if it’s on credit or not. You can pay directly with a bank account through Klarna, at least with the major Swedish banks.
Oh, I never looked into it. Just thought it was one of those high interest “loans” and said fuck no.
The destruction of cash in the EU is jusy disgusting. I dont want to have to leave a paper trail for everything.
There are digital payment schemes that would be completely anonymous for the vast majority of consumers, like GNU Taler. Support an implementation of it in your country. Cash is dying because of how inconvenient it is, we must build something that has the convenience of digital payments while also preserving privacy, there’s no other way.
That would be ideal, but the people in office and their corporate overlords want to know every single breath we take. It will be hard to gain that right and easy to lose it.
Right, there’s no permanent solution to this issue while the working class is not in control of the state, because ultimately it’s the state which sets the value of fiat currency. If we win the fight to get a Taler-like system recognized as an official one, it would be as difficult to get rid of it as it is to ban cash right now.
Could be an alibi if you ever get in major trouble, lookup the transaction, match to security footage, prove you weren’t there.
I don’t have to prove I wasn’t there. They have to prove I was.
So if someone is lying and says you were? Mistaken identity? Easy fix if you show you weren’t where the crime took place.
You have a lot of trust in “the system”.
In Canada we have Interac E-transfer for transferring funds from our standard chequing accounts to private businesses or people we’re buying things off of. We also have “virtual credit cards” that are just a CC number with an exp date and CVV that we can use for online purchases and that money comes out of our regular back account without the need for a credit account.
Most people still have and use Credit Cards but we are far less reliant on them here. Most of them time if someone has one it’s for the perks that card gives, like cash back on purchases or points for rewards like gift cards, tools, vacations, etc.
We also have “virtual credit cards” that are just a CC number with an exp date and CVV that we can use for online purchases and that money comes out of our regular back account without the need for a credit account.
So, like, a debit card?
No, as you cannot use your debit card for online credit card interactions.
You can’t use a debit card to buy things off Amazon.
You absolutely can, I did so this week.
That’s a new one for me. I didn’t realize in some countries you can’t use a debit card on Amazon. To be clear, I’m not talking about an ATM card, I’m talking about a debit card with a Visa or MasterCard logo.
what why??
Must be a regional thing, because no such restriction exists in the US
Funny that, since I said in my OP, I’m Canadian.
I was thinking that I definitely knew there were some European countries that are more cashless than the US.
I wish I could pay in cash for online purchases from Amazon. Amazon has such a privacy nightmare that I cannot even hide or delete my purchase history. I know deleting the history doesn’t remove the trait or nullify anything, but the fact that it remains visible on your account is stupid. There are purchases that I dont want anyone looking at my account to know and sometimes I just like clearing it. I don’t care for shit I bought back in 2018 anymore.
Any better alternatives?
In the BeNeLux we have bol.com, a local alternative to amazon because amazon didn’t want to comply to our laws.
I use guest account on ebay. Works fine
Ebay is paypal and super evil too.
Alternate account?
I wonder where that puritan far right “women’s rights” advocacy group is now that Twitter is generating CSAM and non consensual AI generated material, or maybe the purpose was always to punch down on independent artists.
They are actively pushing against every attempt to stop Twitter and it’s owner Mask producing child pornography and non-consentually showing it to the users. That’s where they are right now.
That genuinely doesn’t surprise me, what an absolutely reactionary organization
I like how Visa/Master Card are shutting “indecent” games down, but have no fucking issues with twitter generating CSAM.
It’s never an issue when the criminal is rich.
It’s a crime if you’re poor and a fine if you’re rich and all’at.
Well, in this case, isn’t Valve the “criminal”?
No, it’s the small indi devs, if vida tried to have a Microsoft game delisted there would be lawyers involved.
This kinda requires having a heavily consolidated convenience store industry with a lot of locations. Japan has both of these the US not so much. Urban sprawl, a physically larger country, and a culture of not using convenience stores as much kinda make this hard. Also said stores would likely need to register AML and KYC controls.
People do heavily use gas stations which are about the same thing
True. This is one thing we still need to buy in person, and can’t have delivered, so gas stations exist even in the smallest towns.
The other place, of course, is grocery stores. I can pay in cash at the self-checkout in Walmart, and the machines scan barcodes. So, that’s another option.
Would post office work better for US?
We used to have postal banking - this is a very good argument to bring it back
Maybe. The lines in my local post office are always long but they do exist. I can’t come up with an easy way for the Comstock act to prohibit it being used for adult material but then again I don’t work for the “Heritage” Foundation.
Then again Congress likes it’s puritannical laws and would need to create such a service.
At first, I was only thinking about the ubiquity of post offices and that they already reach rural areas. But the government aspect does add a bit more too. Feels like it’s official to use government currency in a government building instead of a local convenience store.
Honestly this type of transaction seems like it could easily be an automated kiosk. Scan barcode / QR code. Insert cash. Get receipt. Employees nearby to help if needed. Done
Kiosk could work, but I could see that thing being perpetually broken after a few months of (mis)use.
It also requires not being dominated by people who think lack of options is a feature they can exploit and would happily destroy society if it meant that whatever was left was more dependent on them (partially to profit from it, partially to hold the keys to control who can access it and how).
Here in Czechia you can pay for online transactions with instant direct bank transfer, so cards are not really needed. This is often used for direct transfers between individuals where one generates a QR code on his phone and the other scans it.
That’s because Europe has SEPA, which are used in the EU.
Europeans mind can’t comprehend the issues of american banks.
They are so bad, it doesn’t make any sense.
Europeans mind can’t comprehend the issues of american banks.
Still need an American credit card to rent a car tho
No you don’t? What are you talking about?
Car rentals almost exclusively accept payment by credit card, unless you have a corporate account that is billed periodically.
I’m sure you can find an exception but please let’s not fly off to nitpick land.
I’ve literally rented cars in Greece using cash.
They do require some form of identification for obvious reasons, but that is about it.
None of the rental places required credit cards.
My parents are not from the USA and don’t have USA bank accounts or credit cards and have had no problems renting a car in Europe or anywhere else they went. I really don’t get what you mean. I don’t see why you specifically need an American card and not just a credit card from any modern country.
Eu banks typically use a MasterCard or Visa partnership for their credit cards. The EU bank might issue the credit card to their customer, but the actual payment processor is an american company. If MasterCard/visa starts blocking certain payments, then there’s nothing that the EU bank can do about it.
You can know which payment processor your bank’s credit cards uses by the presence of a small logo on the front of the card. 2 overlapping red and orange circles = mastercard network.
As for car rental companies, Hertz has some wonderfully twisted logic on their Belgian site where they say that they accept debet payments from any eu bank card, as long as the card has the visa or Mastercard logo. In other words, they only accept Mastercard or Visa payments, not eu debet payments.
I mean if you don’t understand things you should ask, not assume others are in the wrong. Yeah it would be pretty stupid to be forced to have US accounts to rent cars in Europe, luckily we’re not THAT stupid.
VISA and MasterCard are practically a monopoly on credit card circuits, your parents’ cards may be issued by a local bank but there’s a 95% chance they’ve got one of these two companies’ logo printed on them, and out of every payment they make, these AMERICAN companies get 2% (blah blah cashback, blah blah terms and conditions), because they are made on their circuits!
You may also have debit cards that DON’T have those logos, but debit cards can’t be used for car rentals.I did ask. Specifically I asked what you were talking about. All you really had to say was Visa and MasterCard are USA companies that handle card transactions. If you had clarified that initially you wouldn’t be getting downvoted to hell.
you should ask, not assume others are in the wrong.
You also shouldn’t assume that, maybe if you think others don’t understand something, it’s actually because you’re wrong
If you have an account in any European bank, you can pay by bank transfer or SEPA in basically any European business, and often it’s their favourite way to do it because there is no commission. I don’t know country by country, but in Germany the standard for payment system is Girocard which is German payment processing, and the cards usually come equipped with both it and some American standard like visa and mastercard, but a lot of people opt out, if they don’t care about payment outside of Europe.
Any car rental worth it’s salt in Europe will accept some form of SEPA, but also, renting a car is not an essential part of people’s lives here, so it’s not even something people care about that muchbut also, renting a car is not an essential part of people’s lives here
It may not be part of your life, but I’ve done it hundreds of time as a travelling tech (plus a few as a tourist), and I’ve had times when airports with hundreds/thousands of rental cars had trouble satisfying demand, so it seems there are others with the same need.
And no, they don’t accept SEPA, although terms vary by country, and if they do they require a safety deposit that can go from a few hundred euros to the thousands, not exactly practical.
Being traveling tech is absolutely not usual occupancy, so it doesn’t change what I said. But if you work in Europe and traveling around, and moving around instruments is part of your job, you should have a company card anyway for it, so again, it doesn’t really matter for the rest of Europeans.
What I’m trying to convey, that even though you will have some incompetence without American run banking systems, unless you’re in a very specific operation, like needing to rent a car at an airport for example, you wouldn’t be severely inconvenient.
I’m saying it as a refugee from a country that (for justifiable reasons) is getting some negativity around, and being born there I’m deemed not actually a good person in advance, and it took me a lot of time to convince various governments that I’m not a dangerous exemplar of my race. The time I spent without access to international banking systems like Visa weren’t debilitating, even though inconvenient at times.How is a deposit not practical? Unless they require it in cash that has to then at the end be picked up at the pickup point (which would be crazy)? A rental company is taking a huge risk by renting cars to any random person with a driving license. It’s the same reason they don’t typically rent to people below 25 (or without a higher deposit).
It’s really only unpractical if you don’t have enough money on your account to afford the deposit, but then why are you renting cars? Otherwise you just pay a bit more the first time and then get that money deposited back on your account when you return the car. There’s basically no difference in the end other than a bigger number the first time, and if you wreck the car or something, you will lose the deposit through your credit card too.
I think you are making too sweeping of a statement here. Maybe this is the case for car rentals you encounter / have access to but the response should show that’s not the case everywhere in the EU. I rented a car without a credit card over 5 years ago where I’m from. You do pay a deposit that I suppose a credit card would normally insure for, but the option exists. Either way, if a car rental requires a credit card, I would not even consider renting with them. That’s ridiculous.
in Poland we have something similar! we have BLIK and it generates a code for you that the other person taps into their terminal/you tap into an online purchase window, then it tells you to confirm again in the app and there you go, paid
there’s also BLIK phone transfers, you just need the other person’s phone number and (provided they have their bank linked to their phone number ofc) you can send money to their account that way
i haven’t paid attention to it recently but when this was being introduced they also added a cheeky “this transaction only took you 30s ;)” at the end lol
We can also buy paysafecards in convenience stores, and these are actually anonymous, unlike Blik.
Makes me wonder: how are they not have the same stronghold in Europe? They’re also everywhere there as well.
They do, but people also do a lot of bank transfers. Which is essentially a cash payment. But if you don’t have a local bank account and app, or the Wise app, then credit cards work just fine most places.
Albania is the only place I’ve seen that has zero trust in anything but cash, but that’s because their socialist era was so restrictive that after that regime fell, people were wholly unable to understand how basic things like banks or economics works. A single pyramid scheme basically crashed the government in 1996-97. It’s a fascinating story about how much learning a society has to do to change from an oppressive regime to something else.
The EU caps interchange fees iirc so its not as profitable for VISA. We did the same for debit cards in the USA which is why credit cards became even more pushed
In the Netherlands we have iDeal, which will be turned into an European standard soon
