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Comment by bcg1 | Hacker News Reader

In person, I always use cash whenever possible. It saves business owners 3% or so on processing fees, so they can keep prices lower. I suppose there is the possibility that they might forget to declare that transaction and not have to pay federal taxes on it... but that wouldn't break my heart and potentially it would keep the money within the community.

"Cashless society" is a cute idea for tech enthusiasts living in urban areas (nothing wrong with that btw) but it is not feasible for most of the places where I find myself.

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>It saves business owners 3% or so on processing fees

For a "cashless society" surely the fees will be regulated. FWIW, the EU recently limited interchange fees for credit/debit card transactions to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards.

Add scheme fees (around $0.01 + 0.017%) and acquirer markup and debit cards don't really cost more than 0.5% and credit cards 1%. Often cash handling is a lot more expensive than that.

I don't have any sources now on hand, but for many businesses the cost of handling physical money is greater than the fees from card payments.

It saves business owners 3% or so on processing fees

Banks charge business owners to deposit nontrivial amounts of cash too, especially in the form of coins.

Also, cash has its builtin handling costs. It needs to be handled and counted by cashiers, which usually takes more time than an electronic payment transaction (iff the electronic transactions go smoothly).

I don't have any insight on how much costs this is actually causing BTW. But I recall handling costs for businesses being an argument in the debate to abolish pennies (in the US) or 1ct/2ct coints (in Europe).

> But I recall handling costs for businesses being an argument in the debate to abolish pennies (in the US) or 1ct/2ct coints (in Europe).

FWIW, the merchants in one city in Germany are currently trying to stop accepting 1ct/2ct coins, because the bank charges the merchants 1ct per coin to deposit, so they aren't making any money on it.

Not any bank I have ever had dealings with. Smaller local banks tend not to be so fee happy.

Not anywhere close to 3%. And anecdotally, I've never had anyone complain when I handle them a bundle of $20 bills.

Many banks don't charge fees for using machines that count coins that are dumped into them. However, some big banks are charging customers who deposit lots of cash. At one major bank, there's no fee for the first $10,000 deposited. After that, you'll pay 20 cents per $100. [1]

[1]: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/banking/sneaky-bank-fees.asp...

That link only applies to consumers.

My bank generally charges 0.225% on bank notes deposits and 2.25% on coins deposit for commercial customers. The max per month without fees is 1000$, coins always have fees.

My bank is one of the big 5 canadian bank with assets in management over 500B$.

If you need to contract an armored courrier to move that cash, that's an extra very significant fee.

Still not anywhere close to 3%. And I'm not arguing that electronic payments don't have merit; just that the elimination of cash does not have appreciable merit to be feasible.

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