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>> Why? Credit cards are faster >No. There's no electronic lookup to verify cash is valid. No swipe, no chip with cash.

This goes against every experience I've had waiting behind someone with cash at the grocery store. A credit card is just a single swipe (not even a signature for low dollar amount purchases at many places), while it always takes longer for someone to pay with cash and the cashier to make change.

Making the assumption that the entire transaction flows perfectly, you're generally correct. But if your chip is dirty, or there's a network interruption, or... a 30 second transaction turns into several minutes of repeating the same actions, waiting for the skinner box to spit out some food.

Cash is only really slow because people have lost their familiarity with how to give change. I find that to be somewhat unfortunate, frankly.

> But if your chip is dirty, or there's a network interruption, or... a 30 second transaction turns into several minutes of repeating the same actions, waiting for the skinner box to spit out some food.

How many times did you have these type of issues? I've never had an issue with a "dirty chip" or a network interruption. These types of issues are very very rare.

I could tell you - your cash can get damaged while you carry them - that will make some merchants refuse to accept it, Also try going and paying with a $100 bill - a lot of places don't even accept them.

> Cash is only really slow because people have lost their familiarity with how to give change. I find that to be somewhat unfortunate, frankly.

Seriously? Did you forget how long did it take before to calculate a proper amount of change in the first place??? Nowadays cashiers have a screen that tells them right away how much change to give back, that already drastically reduced the transaction time, but it's nowhere near the transaction time of a credit card, nevermind nfc payments.

> Also try going and paying with a $100 bill - a lot of places don't even accept them.

I had a stack of $100's due to a vegas win that I could spend every location I tried (in my home town). The only caveat is I'd ask if they could change it out first, since today hardly anyone uses cash and cash drawers get slim. It's not very difficult to spend them, and that even surprised me a little.

> Seriously? Did you forget how long did it take before to calculate a proper amount of change in the first place???

Man these comments make me feel old. I didn't forget at all, I was a cashier. If you can't instantly calculate proper change for any transaction under $100 you didn't make a very good cashier. Most experienced (with cash) cashiers could trivially beat a chip-based credit card transaction. I do agree today you are correct, but I also find it incredibly sad and pathetic.

A properly trained and experienced cashier can change out a $100 bill for a random say $35.24 transaction in roughly the amount of time it takes to print one of those extra long receipts.

In fact I'm pretty sure with an hour of practicing on a cash register again I could likely match it. A few weeks and I'd consistently beat it without trying.

> but it's nowhere near the transaction time of a credit card, nevermind nfc payments.

You are correct re: NFC, but that is still not widely accepted. Chip card? Cash better be faster or your cashier is incompetent. They are incredibly slow.

I really find it strange so many on HN defend credit cards as a social good - they are not. They are a social evil if anything, exacting a 2-3% tax on all transactions since once they met plurality the merchant fees just got priced into all goods. I do not find this to be ethical at all, and feel it's one of the least ethical systems I contribute to - it's simply a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy. Very few poor folks get to use rewards cards, and they still pay the same 2-3% merchant markup we all do. Without that huge 0% cash back customer base, your reward benefits would be slashed.

I also didn't mean my trailing comment to cause such a controversy. I wasn't actually denigrating cards on purpose there, just stating I find the whole 'churning' and 'status' scenes pretty ridiculous and silly. I dropped that prefer cash line in there as an afterthought :)

> Cash better be faster or your cashier is incompetent.

A lot of processing time of cash transaction goes into a customer opening his wallet, counting bills, searching for a change to match the amount so that he gets a solid bill instead of coins, same goes for cashier, he/she has to calculate first, double check it by counting again in front of customer. So I am sorry ,but I disagree that even back in the days it was faster to pay with cash vs today's credit cards

I've found Apple Pay to be the fastest way to pay for things. The local BurgerKing just updated their POS system and it had the RFID symbol. The lady at the till mentioned using the phone is much faster than a swipe. It's also secure as each transaction gets a unique card number. Employees can't go back and use the same card number for a number of transactions; a typical CC scam.

There was a time I would have argued against you. Now I agree with you. You're also leaving out the very important arguments against credit cards being that they involve taking on new debt and they lack the psychological safeguards that cash has. You hand your credit card over and you get it back plus your items. You hand cash over and you don't get it back.

Yep.

Also, a small thing, but you're generating less data exhaust, not involving third parties in a simple transaction, and (depending on what and where you're buying), there is the "cash discount"/not paying taxes to the banks.

There's also the "cash discount" on business taxes in heavily cash oriented businesses (think pizza joints and convienence stores). I wonder how much sales tax is missing because of untraceable transactions.

> There's no electronic lookup to verify cash is valid.

That's why cards (credit or debit) are faster; cash is validated in amount by manual counting, and for validity of individual bills often by even more cumbersome manual counterfeit detection measures. Electronic verification makes cards faster.

The safety aspect of credit cards isn't so much about fraud risk, but rather the risk of irrecoverable theft (or just accidental loss) and/or bodily harm. I feel a lot safer walking around with a bunch of credit cards in my wallet than with a few thousand dollars in cash.

I get 1 to 5 percent for every transaction. Literally every time I'm forced to use cash I'm losing money.

Yes, you are participating in a low-level wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy. I do too, but you have to understand what it is. I find it to be one of the least morally acceptable practices I participate in.

Every single person in the US now effectively pays 2-3% more for goods, and that goes directly to pay for your benefits.

I don't consider this a positive, and I honestly feel really scummy using my card in such a manner - but it's one of those things protesting doesn't really help any longer.

I also actually do value my privacy quite a bit as well - and giving banks free marketing data annoys too.

I feel the first complaint is a huge social problem, but the second rather trivial.

Also, credit cards are only faster these days vs. cash due to the insanely bad cash handling skills of the average cashier. 30 years ago this was exactly the opposite - and once in a while you'll get an old-school cashier who has worked a cash business for years and you will realize how utterly slow credit is in comparison.

When using Apple Pay at my grocery store, if I wait until the cashier is done scanning my items, it takes 4 seconds from when I tap to having the receipt come out. I can tap at any time during the transaction, and the process is nearly instantaneous. There is absolutely no way cash is faster than this.

As far as the cost of credit card rewards, the cost of managing cash for retail businesses is about 1.3% (cite http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfina...) but I honestly suspect that doesn't take into account cash shrinkage (theft). At 2-3% for credit cards, it's not a huge difference. I spend way more when I use my credit card then when I (grudgingly) use cash, so I suspect retail stores come ahead overall by taking credit over cash.

I'm an Australian, so I'm going to comment here.

We have NFC (or PayPass) nearly everywhere.

So you tap your card, and about 2 seconds later a receipt comes out. My 1 year old can do it. In fact, she actually loves doing it - every time we go to a store, she takes my card and I help her tap it.

Compare that to the old doddery shops using cash, where they have to take their gloves off, get your notes/coins, ring up the register, count up the change, and hand it to you?

And really - if you're handling food or near food - do you really want them handling coins/notes?

There is no way cash is faster.

Apparently US doesn't have NFC everywhere and you still have that old magnetic swipe thing? I'm assuming that will change soon though, when you guys upgrade. But yeah, definitely easier/faster.

The only shops around here that still take cash only are very low value shops, or a few Asian restaurants who everybody assumes are just doing tax evasion...lol.

In fact, at a recent popup food stall in Pyrmont - they had big signs saying "Card Only" - probably because they didn't want the safety risk of lots of small merchants handling large amounts of cash - or the possible food/health/safety violations.

And even in Coles (one of our two major supermarkets) - a lot of checkouts are Card Only - so that people using cash don't hold things up.

"Apparently US doesn't have NFC everywhere and you still have that old magnetic swipe thing? I'm assuming that will change soon though, when you guys upgrade. But yeah, definitely easier/faster."

I had a MasterCard with NFC, which was a pleasure to use at the few stores that supported it. But most stores only had swipe-type terminals at the time. (I have three other credit cards, none of which ever had NFC.)

The current version of this card has a chip, and the NFC was removed. The US is standardizing on chips (but without the PINs that make them secure), not on NFC. The chip transactions are horribly slow, much slower than a swipe. From a usability standpoint, it's a step backwards.

There are plenty of counterfeit bills so certain places or amounts will still require a check, which is far slower. It also means a greater risk for the merchant which increases costs and time.

And so what if you replace your card? Nothing happens. Credit cards are the safest possible payment type - a 5 minute phone call and they'll remove the charges and refund your money and even give you a new card number if you want. How much easier can it get? With cash you have no recourse.

By "quick" transactions, I mean craigslist, rural areas or similar scenarios that don't have the infrastructure or are too small to justify the transaction fees. If you're buying something for a few bucks from a street vendor, cash is probably best.