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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 10 2019, @04:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the Big-brother-is-watching dept.

Dominos Australia has taken a controversial step in having five of its stores go cashless for pizza pickups in the name of reducing pickup time and queues. Dubbing the new system "tap and take" Dominos hopes that it will reduce waiting times, increase convenience, increase safety and reduce costs involved with handling cash so that they can "remain digitally agile and continue to meet consumer demands". The trial is not winning any points with Libertarians who believe that the government is pushing businesses to crack down on the cash economy with concerns about the government taking a big brother attitude to monitoring business cashflow. While a number of businesses in Australia are cashless, removing the option tends to put customers off with a number of businesses just bearing the loss of profit from customers who prefer to pay with cash.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 11 2019, @01:56AM (5 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday July 11 2019, @01:56AM (#865607)

    Never heard such a thing in Australia.

    'cos yer a bunch of tone deaf criminals, the lot o' ya.

    Also might be because Australia was founded as a single unified (penal) colony and never had to deal with legacy Balkanized currency. Aboriginal shells and stories weren't much competition for the Queen's face on paper.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:09AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 11 2019, @02:09AM (#865615) Journal

    And how's that relevant, mate?
    I mean, relevant to the "tragedy" of Dominos Australia going cashless?

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    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:59AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:59AM (#865664)

      It's probably relevant to his point because we (AU) never had to worry about people here accepting our money.
      The yanks originally had a bunch of different state currencies, so when they went federal they passed laws saying the federal money was good everywhere. I don't think they were even considering electronic systems, it was to prevent people demanding specific gold or silver coins. Forcing a cash option is really just a side effect. (Not really relevant to Domino's in Oz, but he's making the point that the cashless society will be more difficult to force in the USA because of those laws.)

      He's also wrong about accepting for all debts. That might be true for government debts, but there are denomination limits for private debts. You can't force a vendor to sell you a $20,000 car for 2000000 pennies. They can accept if they want to, but you can't force it. You also can't force a street vendor to cash a $1000.00 bill for a sausage-inna-bun.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:23AM

        by helel (2949) on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:23AM (#865675)

        As I understand it cash is good for all debts - A business can refuse to accept cash for goods or services before a transaction but after the goods or services have been provided and you have incurred a debt they cannot reject cash. However, they are not required to make change, simply accept the offered cash to clear the debt. Hence, you may indeed be able to force a street vender to accept a 1K note for a sausage-inna-bun but they don't have to offer you anything other then the already provided dog in exchange.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by lentilla on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:19AM (1 child)

    by lentilla (1770) on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:19AM (#865673)

    Australia [...] never had to deal with legacy Balkanized currency

    Not entirely correct. The early colony had somewhat of a shortage of currency [wikipedia.org] so rum (the alcoholic beverage) became the de-facto means of exchange. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in some issues! The British military running the place had extensive problems with corruption to the point they earned themselves the sobriquet of the Rum Corps [wikipedia.org].

    In the decades following the establishment of the penal colony in New South Wales in 1788 there was a protracted battle for control waged between the British Government, the Rum Corps and the Squattocracy [wikipedia.org]. The Rum Corps was disbanded in 1818 (mainly as a result of the Rum Rebellion [wikipedia.org] of 1808 where the military tried to take control of the government.

    Currency was still a problem and in 1812 the government purchased some Spanish dollars and had one of the convicts with previous experience with forgery turn those Spanish dollars into Holey Dollars [wikipedia.org], so named because one Spanish dollar was punched into two parts: the Holey Dollar and the Dump. The currency was more-or-less under control by 1825 but it took another a decade after Federation in 1901 that Australia had it's own currency.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:09AM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:09AM (#865763)

      See, if there's ever a question of why Oz is better than the US, just compare: Rum Rebellion vs Tea Party.

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