This is causing a lot of chatter in Canada today:

https://business.financialpost.com/t...n5HvpmTPs8gEHg


I can think of so many industries that would boom or die off this. we can get into that conversation later.

But the one thing I'm trying to determine is how it would immediately affect bitcoin and gold. Seems to be they'd have to create some sort of a 2-3 year period to phase cash out in Canada.

Obviously during that time all the dirty money has to be converted into something else. Seems to me like bitcoin and gold become obvious choices.

Anyway the motivations for governments to do this are obviously huge. Something tells me the USA would be among the last to do it though. Seems way too divisive, specially when the American dollar is still the currency of choice all over the world.

But other countries doing this? Seems like we're well on our way now. Strikes me as a huge opportunity, short and long, across so many sectors.

Sweden is the leader when it comes to going cashless.

Ummmm. Do you think that when you buy something using a credit card, debit card, check or account transfer that someone is running around with paper money from one institution to the other?

The proposal is for something that already exists.

This was the banking institutions job for hiring that nerd for the - Elite - Best of the Best, just for this occasion. This **** has been overthought at this point. The finished project is prolly nicely designed at this point.

didn't read entire article....... but much of it.

why would someone want to use this currency? when the existing one works so well...... and i'm assuming people who want secrecy and alternative channels don't want the govt tracking you.

what is cash? i'm not even sure i.e. when OP says cash-less........ i barely use printed notes any more. i did until i did electronic banking.

canadian newspapers had an article about a new type of charge card. 3-6% fee for merchant. and you generally pay it off very fast. millenials don't like credit cards apparently...... but it seems like amex already exists. and you can use visa/MC and pay off your account very quickly........ solving a problem that doesn't exist as far as i can see

China isn't far behind.

I think it's a matter of time we go cashless. Venmo (now owned by PayPal) is halfassedly pushing out QR paycodes as it is. Alipay/WePay codes are already available at stores in major US cities.

The beauty with QR codes is startup cost is literally just cost of printing the code and laminating it. You don't need to pay thousands or dollars to setup a fancy POS.

Cashless is coming. It's only a matter of time.

US/Europe are behind in part because the entrenched players (Visa/Mastercard/AMEX and banks/processors they work with) are unwilling to give up their fat fees so they are still trying to make expensive NFC techs work. Despite the costs of NFC (Apple Pay/Samsung Pay with special POS), adoption is rising, enabling more cashless going forward though with an unnecessarily expensive technology.

PS: my wife and I both only take Venmo payments now because it's silly to pay PayPal's processing fee.

I know someone in the rare coin and collectible industry. Topics of going cashless or getting rid of bills over $20 is ever on their minds as an impending disaster for their market. Go to a coin show and the amount of cash flying around is absurd. You will see guys laying out 100s in piles for $5k purchases all over the place. A lot of them are doing everything above board, reporting every cash transaction and filing the appropriate paperwork when its over $10k. It just makes sense to transact in cash vs checks which can bounce or cards which have fees and cut into small margins.

For most of the general public in the US, they have already gone cashless. I paid with a $100 at the grocery store the other day and completely threw the guy off his flow. Hes like whoa ok, its been awhile since I've seen one of these, no one pays cash anymore.

I am not even sure the US will have to forcibly go cashless, I think its already happening naturally.

Guys there's (obviously) a big difference between a population going essentially cashless, vs ALL cashless. I'm about to build a house, and let me tell you paying cash for stuff is a big thing no matter how many people in this thread basically don't use cash. As Sideline said, there are numerous niche sectors already doing it.

No I get that you'll be able to go from bank account A to small electronic payment processor not hooked up to the CRA (our IRS). But still, it's gonna take a long time to convince some trades guy to deal with something that has a much clearer trail than handing over a stack of bills.

If this really is coming, it's gonna be disruptive as ****. But maybe we'll actually be able to see our services grow once all that tax revenue is recouped. Maybe that's wishful thinking.

It is only going to disrupt tax avoidance?

No I'd think a lot more obviously. Just the size of the counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting markets as another. And then retrofitting the world of cashless. Storing money. Transporting money. Illegal economies. Etc

I was searching for a statement I remember hearing in the radio earlier this year. I thought I remember either Junker or Draghi claim that the EU will become cashless eventually. But I couldnt find anything on it. Rather some news/papers on why EU shouldnt/wouldnt do it. However Id be surprised if we still have cash in 10-20 years.

It's silly to think tax avoidance will disappear when people go cashless. There will be plenty of payment services (QR codes straight into an overseas/anonymous account. Visa/master/AMEX gift cards) that will be very difficult to track.

In a lot of ways, it will actually be easier for unscrupulous individuals to essentially launder money into something usable.

It's not even speculation. It's what's happening. You see a lot of these tactics in action in FCPA space and even more (on smaller scale) in countries with currency/capital controls (China and Argentina immediately come to mind.)

china is basically cashless, when i go there these days a lot of vendors won't even accept cash

a regular poker game at a bar is all cashless too, we all transfer to the host when we buy in and he transfers back when we cash out

it's had some interesting side effects, for example, the country is now littered with rental battery stations. You grab a portable battery, plug in your phone and get charged by the hour and you can return it to another location too - main reason why restaurants and shops happy to keep the charging stations at their businesses because if a customer can't charge their phone then they'd be unable to pay for anything

Cashless is a way to be able to enforce deeper negative interest rates i think right?

Well it's going to require the next generation of tax avoidance obviously. Because a 50 year old trades guy today is gonna have issues doing what you suggest.

I agree that the rest is possible when it's pretty frictionless. But the challenge is what to do with the money once you've made that hop. Is it easy then to use it on rent, groceries, local restaurants, etc? Because that's how people who mostly earn in cash use it today. I'm not talking about the kind of people who can keep 5-6+ figures offshore for play money. A lot of people who do this, live on it and have immediate needs for it.

No. They are going to make it incredibly difficult to use.

That's what I suspected. But I can only rely on people who actually know.

Homeless people will suffer the most, certainly.

We know the 50 year old trades guy don't have a problem with it because there are already such people doing it. You'd be surprised how quickly old people learn stuff when it means getting paid faster and more safely.

homeless people in China busk using cashless payments

google "wechat pay homeless" and go to images

if people want to go cashless, everyone will find a way to accept that money

same reason why every store is willing to forfeit 1%+ of every transaction to offer credit cards

If I was a homeless guy, I'd save up for a 6 digit text number. "Text BUM to 542632 to help a brother out"

I was curious so I spent a couple minutes ( meaning my info could be way off) googling. It looks like the minimum for one of those numbers is $500 per month. It also look like they have a long list of restrictions and rules. Donations via text can only be made to 501C3 charities.

Just putting your venmo on a sign, and asking for cheap beer, seems to be highly effective though.



Everything I've always read says we can't/won't go cashless anytime soon because it'd be too hard on the poor.

Guys, most homeless people own a cell phone where they just use public WiFi... This "what about homeless people" stuff is largely unfounded and as I've mentioned, the homeless have adopted cashless payments in countries where it's common like China

If you google the topic there is a long list of articles detailing how going cashless will hit the poor, homeless, and elderly hard. One article even mentions that the People's Bank of China is cracking down on merchants who refuse to accept cash.

lol, the fact that you mentioned a bank has to try to coerce merchants to accept cash again emphasizes how utterly cashless China is right now instead of refuting it

homeless people literally wear necklaces that have their payment qr codes on them

last time in china i didn't have a local sim so often didn't have a data connection and it was a nightmare because so few places wouldn't accept cash

this includes publicly traded companies, luckin coffee which IPO'd in the US this year literally won't accept cash and they have thousands of coffee shops, you can only pay with wechat and through their app, the coffee shops don't even have registers

it's real and cashless society is already full blown in China

I wasn't trying to refute how cashless China is. The point is China realizes being completely cashless is onerous on enough of it's citizens that it's enforcing merchants to accept cash.

The lol is saying that because China is largely cashless everyone should follow suit without looking at any of the repercussions.