France's Shot At Cashless Society Gets Mixed Reviews
from the been-there,-done-that dept
With the exception of the Octopus card in Hong Kong it seems that most attempts at smart cards have failed. Now France is trying to get in on the game by issuing smart cards called "Moneo". It sounds like the French version is trying to avoid the mistakes that previous smart card failures have made (and, in fact, the system sounds very similar to the Hong Kong system). It's completely anonymous - so you don't need a pin number or anything (though, this also means if you lose the card, whatever money you had on it is gone). They'll also let it work on top of a regular credit card, so people don't need to carry around one more card. However, like many other trials, it hasn't caught on that quickly. Shop owners don't like having to install another terminal. It also isn't clear how the backers of such a system make money to stay in business. People, it seems, aren't willing to pay very much money to replace cash. There's also the cultural issue. Apparently some people, "enjoy the jingle of coins in their pockets".
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Offer a discount
Or offer a 0.25% tax deduction on all sales for which you can provide receipts proving you used eMoney.
Both suggestions have the benefit of getting customers to shop at stores that accept eMoney, and the second suggestion puts the responsibility on the customer to save their receipts and use them for deductions, and since people won't save all their receipts and many people won't bother to save *any* receipts, the government takes a smaller loss on tax revenue.
Of course, if the government isn't pushing for the adoptation, then neither suggestion will work.
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French are already fairly cashless
If Moneo is really private, great. That's not being touted.
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Cashless In Canada
There are a few places where this is a pain (the odd store here and there, the odd farmer's market) - but I find that I just don't shop in those places anymore. I use Interac or credit card, and for laundry - the apartment I live in has smart cards that can be refilled easily by Interac, credit card or the cash machine (feed in bills) - a vast improvement over the coins previously required.
The only time my household even gets cash (my husband still carries an average of $5 Cdn / month) is when well-meaning friends pitch in for pizza or something, and we spend it on parking (very rarely) and donuts (once every six weeks). And since the Tim Horton's down the street just started offering Interac, and most parking kiosks in this city offer credit card payments, I suspect that he will be going cash-free pretty soon too.
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Cashlessness
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Re: Cashlessness
every barcode is divided into two parts by three markers, and those three markers are always represented by the number 6, 666! now what does it say? no one shall be able to buy or sell without that mark! and now, what they're planning to do in order to evaporate all credit card fraud and in order to precipitate a totally cashless society, what they're planning to do, what they've already tested on the american troops, they're going to subcutaneously laser tattoo that mark onto your right hand, or onto your forehead, they're going to replace plastic with flesh!
FACT"
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Re: Cashlessness
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Re: Cashlessness
Nuff said
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Cashless ?
Would they really do tahat ? (surely neither the politcians I met there nor the prostitues)
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