A bigger problem may even be the dependence on US companies for payments. This was mentioned by the head of Riksbanken in an interview the past week. He mentioned Mastercard and Visa, and the Swedish payment system Swish. He did not mention that Swish requires IOS or Android.
Good thing is we do not depend on the US of A - The Unified Payments Interface is an Indian instant payment system and protocol completely independent of US behemoths. There are special, simplified UPI apps developed for senior citizens and lots of training material to ensure differently abled folk are are able to use it.
In the few years, UPI will also be linked with other BRICS national payment systems such as MirPay (Russia), UnionPay (China) and Pix (Brazil). A lot of other nations have expressed interest in joining. Once that is through, we will have an international peer-to-peer, payment networks completely separated from the West and not subject to big-nanny Western interference. Yay! The US can go cry in a corner when its bullying sanctions are just ignored.
chews•1mo ago
I hate that food shops like sweetgreen are cashless, just because the they can’t trust their tellers is not a reason to outright refuse the ability to purchase.
SilverElfin•1mo ago
bsder•1mo ago
I'm perfectly capable of operating in a cashless society, but I also absolutely do NOT want to operate in it.
Without cash, you are operating in a "social credit" society, and those of us on HN can clearly see the problems with that.
walterbell•1mo ago
Except in SF, Berkeley, NYC and other US cities that mandate cash acceptance.
chews•1mo ago
walterbell•1mo ago
> The Sweetgreen fast-casual chain is dropping its cashless-only payments policy, saying the operational benefits are outweighed by the “unintended consequence” of some consumers being unable to become customers. All 94 branches of the salad chain will resume accepting cash by the end of the year, the brand said in a blog installment posted Thursday.
chews•1mo ago