Hacker News Reader

Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I often just leave the house with my phone and buy stuff with apple pay.

I admire your uncomplicated, predictable life.

Sometimes I want to buy something from a guy with the ice cream cart at the park. Sometimes I need to tip a valet, a doorman, a hotel maid, or another service worker. Sometimes I want to buy Girl Scout cookies from the girl with the table on the corner. Sometimes I want to buy something from one of the 35 million Americans without a bank account. Sometimes tow truck drivers take cash only. Many of the late-night restaurants and food carts in my city are cash only.

Some day I'll go cash-free. But my life is not yet that simple.

View on HN

I think it's clear the person you're replying to isn't from the US since they seem unaware of how prevalent even magnetic swiping is in the US (or was when I left before the pandemic, when I visited a few months ago it seems interest in contactless has finally started to catch on).

Also from the US. The last business I encountered that insisted on swiping cards was this past Spring, a toy vendor in a local mall. Contactless is normal, and my issue is I will sometimes want to pay someone a tip that only takes Venmo which I just don’t have nor want to have.

Cash-only is far more prevalent than card swiping, and even that is incredibly rare.

I reluctantly set up Venmo but I really don’t like services directly connected to my bank account.

I pay other people with venmo but refuse to accept payment (I'd literally rather just forgive the debt) for exactly that reason. I don't trust paypal, so they do not get access to my account.

I am from the US! Probably living in the Bay Area has influenced my ability to use tap to pay almost everywhere now. Covid definitely accelerated this though.

As for parent claiming my life is “uncomplicated” and “predictable” I won’t say they’re wrong. I have a pretty boring yet comfortable life.

The only thing that has changed in the past couple years is that a few more of the larger gas stations chains have renovated with new chip readers. Most small businesses are switched over.

You can still count on old gas pumps and pay parking kiosks using mag stripes.

US person here, I can do this too, but in a limited fashion. In fact the donut shop in my circuit used to be cash-only but eventually relented because of the pandemic.

I agree with a lot of the other things. But for this:

>Sometimes I want to buy Girl Scout cookies from the girl with the table on the corner

I have seen a lot of them carry Square dongles or accept Venmo payments. I guess they got tired of people telling them they do not have cash.

In Australia ...

> Sometimes I want to buy something from a guy with the ice cream cart at the park.

The ice cream van that comes past our house is contactless card-only.

> Sometimes I need to tip ...

Ugh, tip culture!

> Sometimes I want to buy Girl Scout cookies from the girl with the table on the corner

She's probably got Square.

> Many of the late-night restaurants and food carts in my city are cash only.

Where they exist, they're more often card-only here.

This is not to say one is superior to the other, but it is very geographically and culturally dependent. If I had to choose to leave the house with either my Apple/Android-pay enabled phone or a pile of cash, the phone would get me a lot further in this country.

You'd be surprised how often you can ask "do you have a venmo?" and just tip service workers via the QR code.

Someone tried to tip the valet in my garage with Venmo once. It turned into a near 20-minute ordeal with half a dozen people backed up behind her waiting to get their cars.

Half a decade ago in China it was already common for beggars to carry QR codes for this purpose

As a double advantage, it ensures the workers tips are 1099-K'd when their venmo hits $600 aggregate and they can't weasel out of the social contract of paying up for muh roads.

This is, as far as I know, only true if you use the business "mode" in venmo. I certainly take in a lot more than $600 in aggregate per year via venmo (passthrough rent), and don't get a 1099-k.

Slight correction: it is true if the sender marked that payment as for "goods and services" on the confirmation screen[0]. When you are about to make a venmo transaction, there is a toggle for it. Afaik, it is fully up to the sender.

0. https://help.venmo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407389460499-2022-...

1) That makes sense because the $600 threshold has never existed before. The first time this will ever be reported at this threshold is this year. According to Secretary Yellen the threshold was lowered to $600 because people earning that much are high-income billionares that need held accountable.

2) In non-business "mode" it's still not your choice if the sender tags it as 'goods or service.'

3) Customers and Workers may be wary to potentially violate ToS by defrauding Venmo and/or the IRS by falsely tagging a transaction that there is an easily electronically auditable record of. Venmo ToS explains your account may be terminated and funds 'held' if you do this, and tons of random people sending you money on a regular schedule is easily identifiable as not 'friends and family.' This is far easier to trace than someone spending putting $200 in singles in a drawer at the end of the night and spending $20 x 10 at the grocery store.

4) Your 'pass-through' rent situation is far less falsely identifiable as goods and services income. 2000x people sending $5 over a year is far more identifiable to a computer than the exact same few people sending you $1k a month or whatever. A very large number (high hundreds to thousands) of nodes sending small amounts over the course of the year easily 'sniffs out' someone providing goods/services and can be bet on to be found out by Venmo compliance sooner or later.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com