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Comment by bluejekyll | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always found the difference between cash and credit to be a wash in terms of ease of use. For cash you need to always make sure you stop by an ATM. For credit you have to wait for a receipt after nearly every transaction, and sign (this is changing with chipped cards).

But ApplePay is actually more pleasant than both. I can pay with my phone and my watch. It is a faster transaction than both cash and credit, and no need to pull my wallet out.

With one big exception! There are a few places in the city that are starting to only accept credit/applepay/etc., but when their terminals go offline, they’re screwed. I saw this exact thing, for some reason they had no backup system to accept cash. I assume this is a rare issue, but still, I couldn’t believe they couldn’t resort to cash.

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> I saw this exact thing, for some reason they had no backup system to accept cash

To accept cash as a back up you have to have all the items in place to accept it all the time basically. You need the register and to have enough cash on hand to cover giving change plus the accounting and tracking at the end of the day to make sure cash hasn't walked. So if a place has the ability to accept cash intermittently they might as well accept it always.

For those that don't handle cash, they could get some sort of insurance to make up for lost business (and any brand damage) if the machines go down.

Yeah, I realized that something along those lines is the issue. It's still surprising when a business can't operate in a situation like this.

At least in Norway most visa debit (and/or credit) cards now come with nfc/"tap" payment up to a certain amount (10-15 usd I think) - with no need for chip&pin for "Small" transactions.

Has some issues wrt theft (portable pay terminal with boosted nfc signal/antenna) - but certainly convenient.

Most of the places here in the US seem to have gone to chip only for small payments, with a signature on amounts over some limit, dependant on merchant. Wish we'd catch up and use pins.

As I understand it, the major card companies all required vendors to upgrade their payment systems to use chip. If they didn't (by some date I think last year) then they moved the liability from themselves in regards to credit-card fraud to the vendor.

Isn’t there an exception for gas stations?

I can't remember how long it's been since I signed for a cc transaction. Aren't PINs used in the US?

Generally not for credit cards. It is used for debit cards. It's a problem buying gas (petrol) at unattended stations in Europe for Americans using credit cards. We don't know our PIN for credit cards.

> For cash you need to always make sure you stop by an ATM.

I used to get cash back at the grocery store. Very easy way to keep the wallet stocked since you're there 1-2x a week

The backup system in north america is a manual impression scan, where a carbon copy impression of the front of the card is made for later offline processing. Is this not available as a backup for when the electronic methods go down?

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