Just saw a sign in my bakery today begging people to pay by card because getting small coins from the bank is hard and expensive.
TBF here in Belgium Bancontact has a local monopoly (about 1 % flat fee, no fixed cost per transaction; that seems fair and intuitively cheaper than holding, insuring, depositing cash, dealing with employees skimming off the top, of the time lost counting bills).
Also the government heavily incentivizes electronic payments because those can’t be pocketed without paying VAT. That’s a MONUMENTAL amount of tax fraud being chipped at by the progressive disappearance of cash.
The people insisting on using cash are the ones with a big pile of it, with origin dubious to unknown. Anti tax evasion is the best part of digital banking. Threats to privacy is the other side of that coin unfortunately…
That’s the real crux, banks charge businesses to deposit cash. They do it in such a way that there’s no way to escape their ever-increasing fee percentage.
The mattress solution is more and more appealing, imo.
Also the government heavily incentivizes electronic payments because those can’t be pocketed without paying VAT. That’s a MONUMENTAL amount of tax fraud being chipped at by the progressive disappearance of cash.
Unfortunately I think the amount of cash tax fraud that exists is far more reasonable than the amount of straight up fraudulent, yet “legitimate”, expenditure that governments allow. See, for example, covid PPP loans.
Just saw a sign in my bakery today begging people to pay by card because getting small coins from the bank is hard and expensive.
TBF here in Belgium Bancontact has a local monopoly (about 1 % flat fee, no fixed cost per transaction; that seems fair and intuitively cheaper than holding, insuring, depositing cash, dealing with employees skimming off the top, of the time lost counting bills).
Also the government heavily incentivizes electronic payments because those can’t be pocketed without paying VAT. That’s a MONUMENTAL amount of tax fraud being chipped at by the progressive disappearance of cash.
The people insisting on using cash are the ones with a big pile of it, with origin dubious to unknown. Anti tax evasion is the best part of digital banking. Threats to privacy is the other side of that coin unfortunately…
That’s the real crux, banks charge businesses to deposit cash. They do it in such a way that there’s no way to escape their ever-increasing fee percentage.
The mattress solution is more and more appealing, imo.
Unfortunately I think the amount of cash tax fraud that exists is far more reasonable than the amount of straight up fraudulent, yet “legitimate”, expenditure that governments allow. See, for example, covid PPP loans.