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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the All-your-credits-are-belong-to-us dept.

A cashless society is a wet dream for some, a nirvana for others, and hell in a mall for retailers unable to collect payment for goods. The latter is what happened to ANZ and Westpac customers this boxing day where EFTPOS systems failed, leaving businesses to ask customers to pay in cash. For busy shops during boxing day being unable to process payments by card is a nightmare. This type of system wide failure puts a stake in the idea of a cashless society. In order to go fully cashless the credit systems backing payments for retailers must be robust enough to survive this kind of scenario. Which, with the state of today's technology, looks likely to happen any time soon.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:11PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:11PM (#778715)

    Since any purchase can be easily reversed everytjing nes to cost more. It is equivalent to another tax. So wece got the realmtaxes and now at leastntwo levels of hidden taxes (inflation and cashless).

    Of course, they should accept crypto and gice a discount, which has no chargebacks and should be (and has been) deflationary in the long run. But most of these places going full cashless probably dont have the balls to go for a non-government solution anyway, so they would go extinct in time if not propped up by the gov.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:14PM (#778721)

    Whatever, on mobile... AB testing has been making typing more and more difficult with each new device.

  • (Score: 2) by NPC-131072 on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:58PM (3 children)

    by NPC-131072 (7144) on Wednesday December 26 2018, @09:58PM (#778751) Journal

    Cashless < Crashless

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @11:21PM (#778783)

      The dollar has been crashing for like ten years, right now the fed is pumping it but it likely cant last.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 27 2018, @03:00AM (1 child)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday December 27 2018, @03:00AM (#778864) Homepage
      Yes, the problem with an EFTPOS system is the SPOF.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @08:24AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @08:24AM (#778931)

        What's the actual SPOF though?
        The connection system used? Internet? Dialup? SMS? What?
        The POS machine?
        The bank system itself?