Comment by asdff
18 hours ago
Another thing to consider is your credit card rewards cash back etc are really trading your privacy for a little rounding error worth of discount in comparison to using cash.
You may also save far more money going cash only. E.g. some local restaurants near me give you like 5% off paying in cash. Gas is generally cheaper cash price vs card price or debit fee. You have a big job with a contractor, tell them you might be interested in paying cash and they might offer you a substantial discount.
Many more restaurants and grocery stores don’t, and then it’s 2-5% of cashback vs. 0% cash discount. Doesn’t sound like a rounding error to me.
There are a lot of good reasons to dislike the market structure and game theory of card payments in the US, but please don’t accuse consumers of being short-sighted or irrational.
The only way to break the cycle of self-reinforcing incentives would be swift regulatory action. Absent that, playing the game is the rational move at the individual level for both merchants and consumers.
> Another thing to consider is your credit card rewards cash back etc are really trading your privacy for a little rounding error worth of discount in comparison to using cash.
How much privacy really? If I get mostly $20s from the ATM, and the merchant does daily deposits of most of the $20s they get, why wouldn't banks start scanning and tracking serial numbers (if they don't already), if my purchasing habits are actually valuable?
In a theoretical sense, you are right.
The life of most currency notes is bank to customer to merchant to bank, and the bank could just track serial numbers to figure out your spending habits.
Practically, it would make little sense. The actual life of most currency notes is bank1 to customer to merchant to bank2, and there is a large probability that bank1 and bank2 are different entities. And then, so many more people use the credit card system, and it is so much easier to track people there, that the ROI on tracking people using cash would be low.
I would be very surprised if any bank tried to scan currency note serial numbers.
Serial number scanning is a common feature of electronic cash counters (also networking!) I'm pretty sure all incoming serial numbers are scanned and checked against a database to find stolen banknotes. I don't know if any banks are tracking outgoing serial numbers, but it would be pretty trivial to implement. I've noticed when I go in and withdraw cash from a human teller that the cash no longer comes from a drawer, but rather is dispensed by an automatic cash handling machine and then handed to me.
Is the probability that large for bank1 vs bank2? There’s only a few major banks left. Chase has so many ATMs it’s hard to compete with the access.
Make change with your local under the table taco stand
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> The site was officially launched on December 23, 1998.
Contractors, but also cosmetic health work. Invisalign, veneers, plastic surgery, etc. Probably most big-ticket items or services that you're not buying from a megacorp.
Sometimes they'll give even more than 5% because they can keep it off their books completely, but in those cases, they want physical cash--not just a check to avoid credit card fees.