Self-Check Out/Conversion To Cashless Commerce: Any Opinions?

Don't worry jbuck, I'm sure Jeffrey Preston Bezos (& his crew) are working on mass producing those food replicators as we type & hit "reply."

I just love this!

Rogers network outage across Canada hits banks, businesses & consumers
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/08/rog...nsumers.html

It's been on the news all day showing grumpy commuters unhappy that they didn't get their java fix (what happens when you rely on networks/don't bring cash).

From my understanding their system is down but other ISP's were working. It's just that Rogers is one of the 3 major ISP's and the biggest player when it comes to phone & other electronic payments. They also own some smaller ISP's & there were many ripple effects. My wife told me that several stores that take digital payment only (with no cash options as discussed in this thread) were forced to remain closed today.

They still don't know the cause of the system failure & are still trying to restore the system as of this time tonight (05:00am Friday until 10:38pm Friday 7/8) according to a spokesperson from Rogers on CBC news.

I am one of Mr. Roger"s 10 million customers yesterday they will cause the greatest lost of patrons by their great service, maybe everyone should sell their stock. Alright that"s over, use very little cash now since covid, most places prefer cards except yesterday.

Sweden's Riksbank (their central bank) made a very similar statement about cash not so long ago.

I'm similar but in an opposite way @jbuck! I also want to be clear that I don't want to eliminate digital payments (which can be great) but I just don't want to be forced to pay digitally when I could use cash!

Another thing to keep in mind is that all commerce has been 80/85% by the books (or digital) for as long as there's been such a thing. Banks & businesses don't use wheelbarrows of cash (& never have). Bank drafts & money transfers have always been the mainstay. I think that is why I get so infuriated when I see all the lies & deceit of the BTCA (clearly a cash-grab tax dodge for billionaires)! They seem to be intent on eliminating the last small fraction of individual cash commerce! They've been hellbent to demonize cash use as the realm of criminals, a vector for diseases & to disseminate propaganda that the BTCA actually help disadvantaged women & poor set up bank accounts! Absurd! People tend to take on much more debt when they never dig out cash & see how much they're forking over for X or Z.

It is important to understand that we all pay for the cash back programs! We're paying for our privacy to be sold out to marketing agencies & other businesses. We rarely give it a 2nd thought after we use our cards (& that's the dilemma I have).

Exactly my sentiment too!

-That was my sentiment too @cedargrove. However, lately, I've become even more reliant on cash just because I'm getting so annoyed with the rapid transition here & b/c I want businesses to know that cash is still relevant.

I used to save my $3.00 in change to buy a lotto ticket but have discovered this is impossible at Shoppers since they've converted everything to self check-out & often will have nobody on cash. I've walked out several times now b/c there's no cash check out available (saved myself some money ) & now wonder how many transactions they've lost due to their rapid transition.

In case you think that the rest of the world is safe- here's a BTCA ally (Merchant Machine) article on "The Countries Most Reliant on Cash":
https://merchantmachine.co.uk/the-c...sh-in-2022/)

Note that ATM's are being shut down in UK (& I heard the same has happened here in Canada). This will probably be a trend globally in the not-too-distant future.