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Comment by shortcake27 | Hacker News Reader

> Imagine homeless people. You wouldn't be able to give them money.

This is incorrect on all levels. Electronic payments between bank accounts have existed for decades. Banks in many countries now support instant payments using email/phone numbers. There are QR based payment methods which do the same thing. There has even been a special jacket invented to accept contactless:

https://www.tsip.co.uk/blog/2019/2/19/introducing-helping-he...

> Imagine trade in place without data connection.

What, like an airplane? Where many airlines no longer even accept cash on the plane?

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> This is incorrect on all levels. Electronic payments between bank accounts have existed for decades. Banks in many countries now support instant payments using email/phone numbers. There are QR based payment methods which do the same thing. There has even been a special jacket invented to accept contactless:

Is this in Silicon Valley or something? That's the most tech utopian statement I've seen on HN for a while, where even homeless people obviously have access to electronic banking.

Currently those require a bank, a (smart) phone, and a data service. All of which aren't impossible but they're also not exactly universal. There's still about 5% of the US that doesn't even have a bank account in their household, a number highly correlated with income.

Homeless people are often unbanked, and it's very difficult to open a new account without a credit score and permanent address.

Recent immigrants have difficulty opening accounts for a similar reason - only US credit counts. Political activists are also often denied accounts out of an abundance of caution on the bank's part, e.g. with the Occupy Wall St protests.

The hurdles you mention are nothing compared to lack of ID. Lack of ID is the #1 obstacle to homeless people, especially anyone on the street whose stuff is regularly lost or stolen.

Especially if someone is from out-of-state, good luck rebuilding that cache of ID again. It requires nominal payments and some sort of starting point of documentation. Sometimes it's chicken-and-egg with the DMV.

The first step usually involves procuring a birth certificate from the correct jurisdiction. Good luck if you're an immigrant from, say, a small village in Latin America.

There are whole services and ministries that help people with obtaining ID. I really appreciated that fact. If you're an addict or mentally ill or raised in poverty or abuse, you're gonna have trouble calmly navigating bureaucracies, for sure. It helps to have a tour guide alongside who can coach you through it.

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