Using tap-to-pay combined with the transaction dispute regulations that govern credit cards in the US allow me to feel confident about paying with my credit card at gas stations. I wouldn’t ever use a debit card to buy gas, however.
If you want to take that risk and deal with those hassles, be my guest. I certainly do not want to, nor will I ever do that. And besides, I like saving money.
Given the value of my time and the benefits provided by my card issuer, paying cash costs me more, bottom line, than using my credit card everywhere I can.
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I do use my credit card at times, especially for larger purchases. And it is convenient, along with some “smallish” monetary benefits. But most of those uses happens in a “controlled” environment. But for getting gas for our automobiles, no way, Jose. I’ve seen too many reports of scammers placing devices inside the scanner at the pump, and I am not willing to risk my valuable information. Besides, paying cash comes with a per gallon discount that is just about the same as the cash back percentage I get from my credit card company. I would just rather be safe than sorry in such situations.
If I wanted to use my credit card at a gas station, I would have the card swiped inside the little store/station at the gas station. That would be safer. But again, for me paying cash is easier, faster, and safer.
Actually, swiping, no matter the location or point-of-sale device, is less secure than tapping. And any time a human is involved, the potential for fraud increases.
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Yep. And therein lies the rub.
People like to fool themselves into believing cash back is some kind of free money. It’s a scam. You paid for your “free money” through inflated prices. Money going around in circles. And the only people who truly make a buck from this circus are the CC companies.
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Continuing the discussion from It’s Time to Move On from Bootable Backups:
In what way?
I pay my credit card bills in full every month and therefore never make an interest payment. And none of my cards have annual membership fees. And I get cash-back rewards for using my card.
I realize that gas stations in some locations impose a surcharge for using a credit card, but that’s not always the case. Even in places where these surcharges are common, there are always stations that don’t impose them. And where I live, very few stations have these charges.
The way I see it, using my card is saving money.
I’ve read all about skimmers in gas pumps as well (Krebs On Security has a great series of articles on the subject). All I can say is that I’ve been paying at the pump for a very long time and this has never been an issue for me.
There have been a small number of attempted fraudulent charges on my card over the past 30+ years. In every case, my bank intercepted the charge, blocked it and contacted me within minutes.
But this is also why love using Apple Pay so much. I’ve read all about how this tech (which includes, to a lesser extent, contactless cards in general), and it is far more secure than using a magnetic stripe.
A stripe contains enough information to clone a card. But the data transmitted by a contactless card (or Apple Pay) does not. The chip in the card/phone is an active participant in the transaction, with the most critical data items protected by device-specific ID numbers and cryptographic hashes, making it exceedingly difficult for a thief to use that data to make a fraudulent transaction or clone the card/device from just the information transmitted during the transaction.
… which the people paying cash pay without getting anything back. Although “cash discounts” are popular in some limited areas (like gas stations), they are far from the norm. They also (at least used to) violate the terms of a credit card merchant agreement.
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Indeed. And when the suggested solution is “entirely remake the world economic system” then I think I’ll go with the cash back cards.
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I do use Apple Pay / tap-to-pay whenever I can, but I’ll just link this post by Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin to add to the discussion.
privacy is another good reason for paying with cash. What’s the point of using encrypted comms or ad blockers or taking other privacy-preserving measures and then buying everything with a payment card? Payment cards allow data brokers to track every purchase you make, every business you visit and when. When you split a check with someone else, it lets them know who your friends and coworkers are. The amount of privacy lost using payment cards is astounding.
I am fairly certain that using Apple Pay helps with this, because there is no definitive number that links the payment card for every transaction. But, of course, not everyone supports tap-to-pay. Most sit-down restaurants in the US do not for sure.
This was the second in a thread that started with this:
If you’re choosing locally owned businesses for your coffee, groceries or other things, kudos for supporting alternatives to corporate-owned outlets. A reminder that paying with cash allows them to keep the full proceeds rather than sharing them with moneygrubbing banks and payment processors.
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We’ve been discussing security, which I view as different from privacy, but I agree cash can be the best method in a lot of cases from a privacy perspective. But, as with security, privacy involves weighing many tradeoffs, including convenience, cost, and time. Cash, in any case, is not 100% private in all instances. Crossing international borders, activity at financial institutions, and real estate transactions, for example, all have governmental reporting requirements. Or if you use a store loyalty card or shop at a membership warehouse, your purchases are tracked no matter how you pay.
While I don’t regard the “cash back is evil” and “banks and credit card companies are killing small mom & pop stores” clichés as related to security or privacy, I have to say that in my experience, local governments and electorates do a lot more to hurt, obstruct, and limit small and medium size businesses than payment systems.
This is not true. Businesses have to pay cash handling fees to banks. Depositing money and getting change etc all cost money. There are many small local businesses in the UK that no longer accept cash because the logistics and costs of handling it are too onerous compared with being card-only. But card processing fees are around 10x lower here than they are in the US (e.g. %0.2–%0.3 UK/EU vs. %2–%3 US), so that will factor into the calculation.
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My spouse tacked a piece of paper to our refrigerator Saturday. It was a 4-figure rebate from our Costco credit card, which we use exactly the way @Shamino describes.
In my state (Connecticut), credit surcharges for gas surged for about 10 minutes, then disappeared again because so few people here carry cash. I know that’s not true just a hundred miles or so north of us, but even if we were surrounded by filling stages offering so-called discounts for cash, we’d still be far ahead.
With concerns about security, it’s possible to be undiscriminating and let even the smallest perceived privacy crack become a consuming worry. Yes, both Citi and Costco know my spending patterns. No, I do not care. Much.
I care far more about persons having unfettered access to my Social Security number and records. Fixing a credit card breach is a phone call, but fixing an identity theft is months of expensive and frustrating work.
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If you ask, a restaurant may let you tap-to-pay at its card processing terminal. In the past few years, whenever I have asked if I can use Apple Pay, I have been able to do so.
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In the UK, it’s illegal to levy a charge for payment by card (and, since even our legislators aren’t that thick, similarly illegal to offer a discount for cash).
In the past 5 years (at least - probably rather longer), I’ve not come across any establishment in the UK, of any kind, which accepted payment by card but didn’t take ApplePay. It’s reached the stage that I quite often leave the house with only my phone as a means of payment. When I was in the US last year, I was astonished to find that that wasn’t the case, and was very nearly highly embarrassed in one restaurant when I had no physical card and no cash (fortunately, I was able to discover my credit card number from the banking app on my phone and the restaurant accepted that, read out to the waitress, as payment). Having to sign a piece of paper to cover a tip was another novel experience: it must be over a decade since I last signed a credit card slip at home.
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I would be the one who would swipe, tap, etc. my card, not someone else. But again, and definitely at gas stations, I pay only cash.
Exactly…NFCU knows our spending habits because we literally n put almost everything on the card and write a single check at the end of the month and we get cash back as well. I could not care less that they know what we spend our money on….and we get well into 4 figures back every year.
We do always still carry cash…but probably 19 out of the last 20 times we used my were for a dinner or 50/50 raffles at the Elks lodge…used to use the card for those as well most of the time but the recent 2% or 3% bump up charge they instituted for a card we decline to pay.
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There are a couple of exceptions to that, especially regarding gas stations. At Costco, prices are cheap enough, but one must use a credit/debit card. Around the area we live, there are Union 76 stations on Tribal lands, and prices there are close to Costco. At those stations, one can use either a credit or debit card, or pay cash. But there is no cash discount. Those are the stations I go to, and pay cash.
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Yes. In Northern Virginia, most restaurants have contactless terminals at the register. You can choose to walk up and tap your phone to pay, if you like (which I frequently do).
Additionally:
- A few places have Ziosk terminals on the table, for direct payments there (contactless, chip or swipe - whatever your card supports).
- One or two places here are now using wireless terminals carried by the serving staff (as has been ubiquitous in Europe for quite some time), but those are not yet common.
- A few places are now putting bar codes for App Clips or web-apps on their printed receipts, allowing ApplePay without even needing a terminal. Although I have been skeptical about this in the past, it has worked surprisingly well.
Yes. I drew cash last May for a visit to family in our beautiful 50th state. I still have well over half of what I drew either in my wallet or in a secure hidey-hole. (Not at home, in case Paulie Walnuts fans are reading this!)
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Not only in the UK. And this is a problem, obviously, because it makes non-CC buyers pay for the extra expense incurred by the use of CCs. In such systems, the cashback scam works especially well because cash payers are forced to subsidize CC buyers against their will. Of course they have “a choice”: they could also use CCs to try to get some of that “free money” back that they already paid for. And that of course is exactly what CC companies want: a gun to people’s heads compelling them to use CCs if they don’t want to lose money.
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