fwiw, here is an emacs version:

https://codeberg.org/martianh/lem.el#headline-11

I think what would be most useful would be a usenet→lemmy gateway, so that rich catalog of usenet clients can be leveraged on Lemmy.

I get rid of them pretty quickly by saying I have no bank account. I might start adding to that “take cryptocurrency?” so they leave with the idea that maybe they should be open to cryptocurrency.

@youmaynotknow is spot on. But consider this a very basic primer on just a small fraction of privacy abuse by banks:

• 24 banking problems solved by cryptocurrency that Bruce Schneier does not know about

So there’s 22 privacy abuses by banks to get you started. And that just barely scratches the surface.

You can somewhat ignore paragraphs 15 and 23 in terms of privacy. OTOH privacy is hand-in-hand with control and paragraphs 15 & 23 reflect control being in the wrong hands.

Banks abuse our privacy in countless ways. This could fill a book. This policy amounts to forced banking. I boycott banks. Banks have us by the balls and they abuse that power. A bank recently told me (in effect) to fuck off if I don’t have a mobile phone number to give them.

It’s impossible to define the amount in relative terms such as “average EU monthly salary +25%”,

It’s not impossible. Indexes are published. This is what they do with rent in places where rent is controlled. Landlords cannot increase rent more than an index. So they have to do the math. And in this case it’s not even a variable baseline like rent, it’s fixed, so the calculation can also be published so people need not do any math.

That’s net (take-home pay), not gross. Tax is high enough that you need to double that figure (€4,400) to get the gross pay. And just wait till you account for inflation, which the EU cash limits apparently fail to account for.

this poll shows it’s non-partisan:

https://layer8.space/@hyakinthos/112554837920009346

The left respects privacy far more than the right. But the left also has that high-taxation tendency. The outcome of that tug-of-war within left-leaning people results in ~73% embracing cash – just like the conservatives who don’t give a shit about privacy but have contempt for tax.

Beware on your next trip to Netherlands, where some bars refuse cash and conceal their contempt for cash (reference)

I just linked your post from that one because it fits well with the story.

(edit) BTW, I would like to see your workmate’s story published in a blog that serves better as a reference. It needs more exposure in a venue that’s not quasi temporary. I would even print hardcopies of it to distribute to cashless bar owners. So a nicely typeset PDF would be useful.

What country was that? I heard about a Belgian who tried to withdraw €10k from her bank account. They refused and also called the police who interrogated her and made a report. Belgian banks have cash withdrawal limits written in the contract. Even pulling out €3k raises eyebrows in Belgium. So withdrawing €30k trouble-free would probably require withdrawing €2.5k once per week over the span of 12 weeks. Is the car seller willing to hold the car for a buyer that long?

That’s not because of the cash. Even white collar workers getting paid electronically get audited because Belgium has a very high audit rate. I heard the probability of getting audited in Belgium is around 50%. Belgian auditors are extremely ambitious and highly motivated. They are employed in high numbers. The only way to avoid being audited in Belgium is to not work in Belgium.

This depends on the industry. Domestic workers and builders are often paid in cash in Europe. Belgium even writes it in law that cash wages are prohibited if you work in an industry where that is uncommon. Strange (and discriminatory) law, but indeed white collar workers are legally blocked from cash payment while other industries are grandfathered.

Indeed national laws don’t generally limit p2p cash, but the EU law encroaches on that AFAICT.

Enforceability varies depending on the scenario. Some countries have law that holds employers accountable for tax evaded by workers. Employers obviously won’t gamble, so they refuse to pay cash and cryptocurrency wages because they are scared shitless of being accountable for an employee’s evasion.

I demanded cryptocurrency payment and my employer refused on that basis. I intended to continue declaring it properly and just wanted a bit of freedom from bank dependency, but nothing could overcome the employer’s fears.

Cashier’s checks existed in Belgium a few years ago but I heard they are under fire and will be discontinued at some point.

Personal checks seem to be non-existent but I heard they can be requested but the banks give some resistance and try to steer people away from it. They only work domestically. I think if you gave a Belgian personal check to a Belgian, they would not generally know what to do with it.

Impulsive donations have been relatively killed off because cash donations are banned (I think because scammers impersonate charities). So that leaves check and electronic payment. Oxfam does not (AFAIK) carry payment terminals. Checks would make sense, but they are taboo. So they have to ask for a bank transfer, which gives donors a chance to be lazy and forget about it.

The Geldmaat website states that debit cards need to be Maestro or Mastercard and that credit cards can be Mastercard and Visa. I’m surprised the Visa debit card worked at all in a Geldmaat, because as far as I can tell it shouldn’t.

One of the (otherwise helpless) bankers I spoke to said Visa is probably not accepted by Geldmaat. I thought the banker had to be wrong but maybe they meant to say visa debit does not work. Yet I have a receipt from a functional Geldmaat machine which says “visa debit” in a field named “app. label”. Then at the bottom of the receipt it (incorrectly) says “credit card account … credit limit …” which actually reflects the card balance.

Some point of sale terminals are said to only work with visa credit or visa debit, but then I’ve had banks tell me their cards act like what the machine wants it to be. I’m fuzzy on the details. There are situations where you have to choose “credit” or “debit” on the terminal, and the bank says I can choose credit even if it’s debit, and vice versa. So it’s hard to pin down what’s going on. I don’t even get why the distinction between the two exists at the network API level. It’s not the business of the merchant or the ATM to know those details.

I can only imagine that perhaps it’s there for casino situations. A credit card holder once went to LasVegas with a credit card from a region where gambling is illegal. One of the laws was that it’s illegal to collect on a gambling debt. So he took a cash advance on his credit card inside a casino, lost it all, then returned home and told the bank it’s a gambling debt, get lost. My understanding of the story is that he got off the hook for the debt on that basis. But I wonder if that’s why this distinction exists on the card networks.

Another theory is that credit cards have more buyer’s protections and higher fees to the merchant and so some merchants don’t like that and want to insist on debit cards. But the ATM seems like the reverse of that.

Anyway, maybe not all Geldmaat machines are the same.

I appreciate your insight. Perhaps some of the refusals is related to visa debit incompatibility.

Withdrawing money from Dutch banks is effectively free (that’s what the banks charge you for) so a commercial party putting down ATMs in public can’t make money from the vast majority of potential customers.

Well free to the customer but the ATM likely still profits. My bank eats the atm fee but they have no deal to hide the fee from the customer. So I agree to the fee, see the fee on the receipt, and the fee appears on the bank statement followed by a credit back in the amount of the fee. EU accounts probably just hide the fee from the customer otherwise ATMs would not be sustainable.

update

This page says:

You can make a cash withdrawal at every geldmaat ATM using your Maestro or Visa debit card and/or your MasterCard or Visa credit card.

(emphasis mine)

On the other hand, if they have clear signage, then the argument that “card doesn’t work for me” isn’t an ability to pay if you have a working card, but a refusal to pay.

This can also be a dicey scenario. Some foreign cards have no fees for global use, while cards not designed for foreign use can have absurdly high fees if used outside the country. I would plan on using only cards that are reasonable and perhaps carry the very costly cards for emergencies.

It’s also seems a bit haphazard that businesses only have to specify “no cash”, but not necessarily the forms of payment they take. So a customer could pull out a Diner’s Club card and find it’s not even compatible. This is another problem that would normally be easily solved with a cash option.

Your comment is mostly sensible and I appreciate your insight on the obligation to post cashless signage, but this seems a bit off:

What about the case where someone enters with bank card(s) that are in a broken state, unknown to the card holder?

What if someone enters a place that takes cash, thinking they can pay with dollars (which happens at a non-zero rate in Amsterdam), or rubies and gold? The answer is the same in both cases: that’s the customers problem.

EU law has established the definition of legal tender in the eurozone to include euro banknotes and coins. Each eurozone member state keeps its own laws as far as defining the role and purpose of legal tender (and that creates a bit of a mess, but it is what it is). I think a member state can include more forms of money as legal tender, but euro banknotes and coins are mandated by the commission to be part of the legal tender definition. So there can be little confusion about other currencies having legal tender status. There is also an EU Recommendation that legal tender be accepted on payment toward debts, and I believe running a tab and paying later must be a debt (as opposed to a point of sale). In any case, gold and rubies would not have equal standing to euro banknotes in Amsterdam.

I cannot say I put much stock into any guesswork that a broken card would be treated as if the customer brought nothing to pay with. Banks can (and often do) spontaneously disable cards at any moment without communicating to the card holder. The card may even be functional while you eat, and the bank could disable it 5 seconds before you tap the payment terminal. It could be entirely outside the card holder’s control – by an shitty anti-fraud AI mechanism (which I have been at the receiving end of lately). It would be absurdly and embarrassingly harsh for a society to treat a victim of AI like a deadbeat freeloading non-payer. I can’t say you’re wrong because I don’t know Dutch law and procedure, but it sounds like conjecture.

Sometimes the card and card holder’s bank is not even at issue. Some machines rejected my perfectly valid card in Netherlands. The logo for the payment network matched and my account was funded. Machine rejected it saying “contact your bank”. The bank said there’s nothing wrong with the account… no blocks… card should work. The bank did a deeper check and said the transaction attempts were never even transmitted to the bank – that the card processor itself decided to reject the card. So the machine that rejected my card lied, and erroneously implied the problem was on my side.

So when a card fails to pay out, that failure can potentially be entirely on the merchant side of the transaction. E.g. some merchants refuse foreign cards, which violates the terms of the Visa merchant agreement but it’s not enforced so merchants are happy to break it. And the messaging cannot be trusted. So surely as someone is in a bar or restaurant with a failing payment, there is no way to know with certainty on the spot where the fault is, amid false error messages. It requires investigation which may take some time. On top of that, some banks charge high hourly fees for investigations. This is why I’m interested in what Dutch law and procedure is in this situation.

Most card only shops/places have a sticker on there door. But as a non Dutch person you probably don’t know how they look.

I noticed one shop with a no cash sticker that looked like it could be a standardised placard. The bar I was in did not have any indicator of any kind on the door or exterior. So I’m asking what the law is on this. Is there a legal obligation for cashless shops to disclose it? If yes, what rights does the business lose if they fail that?

Well, the good news is that that’s true for EU people too. (emphasis mine)

Indeed; confirmed. I have several quite simple purely EU cases that have been just sitting idle for years.

And yes, GDPR is limited to companies that do business inside the EU. That is also the leverage through which enforcement can happen - losing access to the EU market.

Well, I suppose if a non-EU consumer opts to use a bank card of a bank that also has an EU presence, that might give a slight advantage over their purely domestic cards. OTOH, banks seem quite careful to separate themselves across national borders, even within Europe. Ing in Netherlands is likely a different company than Ing in Belgium. So if two banks are only sharing the same branding, I wonder to what extent HSBC in the UK (or wherever they are headquartered now) would be the same bank as HSBC in NL in terms of legal action exposure.

Theoretically that’s true but I’ve already seen it fail. Using a non-EU card to buy airfare from an EU airline website still results in all flight details (flight number, time, origin, destination, name of traveler) being needlessly¹ shared with the credit card network and with the bank. So non-EU people can only fantasize about getting GDPR protections on EU transactions.

And now that I’m thinking about this, the GDPR protection is limited. That is, the bank must know that a bar is on one side of the transaction (legal basis would be a “contract” if not “legitimate interest”). The GDPR limits the bank from sharing that info and also limits the bank from using it internally for purposes unrelated to the performance of the contract (e.g. the bank cannot send you beer ads as a result).

So consider the non-EU customer angle. The non-EU bank would also know that a cardholder spent X amount in bar Y. Do you believe that non-EU bank would recognize that bar Y is in Europe and thus not sell that info to data miners for whatever the data is worth? If yes, what would the enforcement recourse be? Could the non-EU person report their non-EU bank to a data protection authority under Art.77 in the member state where the bar was located? I’m a bit fuzzy on this cross-border aspect of the GDPR. IIRC there are DPAs in some non-EU countries that the EU considers acceptable (which ironically includes the US), but I’m quite skeptical of their powers or willingness to use their power to handle an Art.77 complaint. I suppose there must be some mechanism in place but I’d be quite far from trusting it.

¹ Sharing airfare data happens because some credit cards include travel insurance and the bank needs those details to trigger the insurance coverage. But not all cards have that insurance yet it seems the sharing is automatic regardless.

(They might also know it by its Dutch acronym, AVG.)

Good point. It was an English conversation but indeed I should have said AVG. In any case, you just lowered my degree of surprise that they didn’t know the GDPR.