Australia's transition to a cashless society is underway — but not everyone wins when we get rid of cash
Australia's transition to a cashless society is underway — but not everyone wins when we get rid of cash
Phasing out cash has serious implications for privacy, safety and financial exclusion among marginalised communities.
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Coincidentally, while reading this over my morning coffee earlier, an email reminder came through from my daughter's school, for the Father's Day stall tomorrow.
It got me thinking there must be millions of tiny little use cases for cash, where tap and pay just isn't feasible.
Not sure what the answer is, but I do believe a cash-reduced society should be the ultimate goal.
But privacy is also a concern. I really wish my bank would introduce a tap and pay app, rather than me having to use Google Pay.
I refuse to use Google's services. They are not a bank, they're an advertising company who's major goal includes knowing everything about everyone. They can fuck off. I agree, the banks need their own apps so we're not beholden to a foreign surveillance corporation to use contact-less phone based transactions.
Yeah, I'm on a de-Googling journey myself right now. It's not easy, as I (naively, maaaany years ago) hosted my domain on Gsuite, so getting everything out without disruption is (intentionally, on Google's part) difficult.
I really need to just sit down, map out everything I still have with them, and work out the right order of execution to unpick everything. It's a real PITA.
Cashless reduced society still leaves millions of people without access, no thanks!
I didn't say cashless - I said cash-reduced. We need to remove cash from situations where it shouldn't be a requirement, such as gambling venues. While privacy is a fundamental human right, it provides criminals the ability to hide behind a cloak of anonymity.
I believe the goal should be as cashless as we can be, without disadvantaging groups of people that can only use cash.
But that would require a government brave enough to create strong enough laws to safeguard our personal data from abuse and misuse. Not only to stop Big Tech and other megacorps from using our data without consent, but also to punish those responsible for not protecting our data properly, including deletion when it's no longer required (fucking Latitude).
Might as well hope to win the big Powerball prize - both seem equally likely right now...
My sons after school care had some fundraising stalls run by the kids with cookies, raffles etc. The first day was cash on,y and many parents didn’t carry any. Day 2, they had set up a cashless payment method.
Our school's PFA has cashless available for things like the 2nd hand uniform stall, democracy sausages, things like that.
But the Father's Day and Mother's Day stalls are a rite of passage for primary school kids, and tap and pay is impossible in that scenario.
Whys that? I don’t see it as different.
This was for kids run stalls and games. I don’t think they did tap and pay, from memory. It was scan a QR code and pay online.
I'm talking about the stalls where kids buy (during school hours) gifts for their parents.
Ah, ok. We don't have that. Ours are after school. However for other kid purchasing activities (they ran a games carnival for fund raising) they could purchase things with tokens rather than cash. Tokens could be bought electronically.
Yeah, I don't know why our school hasn't done something similar. We have an app where we can order and pay for lunch orders. Surely they could implement tokens or vouchers for stuff like this.
That said, I think a big part of it for the kids is having some coins in their hands, and shopping for stuff, calculating what they can afford, how much they'll have left, etc.
Yes, we have a similar app for lunches. Not clanky but it works fine.
It should help to train them for a cashless future, lol. I was in a toystore recently and I noted the check out had a contactless payment terminal and phone!
I did note myself that playing shop in the playground, my kids were unfamiliar with the process of shopping due to covid meaning I didn't take them into supermarkets much up until last year. They had no concept of change. I pay everything on phone and don't carry cash.
There’s voucher systems for school stalls beings used. You buy a $5 voucher through the app and then all the gifts are either $5 or $10 at the stall. Works out cashless and pretty handy.
Yeah, I dunno why our school isn't doing that yet. There's an app where we can place and pay for lunch orders. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to introduce a pre-paid voucher system, to use at these things.