In Germany I have a monthly plan. I got a physical card with an NFC chip inside it. No app shenanigans. I can pause and renew my plan from home: log into the Bahn website, go to my account settings and adjust things there.
The real issue is not smartphones, iOS and Android or apps. The issue is that independent technical standards are intentionally ignored. There is no reason that I should not be able to set my plan through curl and hand-draw the QR code with pen and paper. Sure, I would not want to actually do it like that, that's not the point. The point is: if I can use curl and pen & paper, then I can use whatever else I want. If I want to use a smartphone I should be able to code my own app according to a well-documented public API. Those APIs already do exist, otherwise the official app would not work, so it's no extra work for the service provider.
We need a law that mandates open specifications for access to all publicly available services.
The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash, or payment methods beyond the ones that cover 99.9% people well. You pay more for the extra hassle the whole system has to serve that .1%
You may not like or disagree with it. But it's the true answer.
And for some transactions that makes sense. But for something that is supposed to serve everyone, and where there is a (natural) monopoly, that cannot be and acceptable answer.
Also, having your entire economy depend on companies that are not under your control, and that are even actively being weaponised, that seems like a stupid thing to do.
Also, nothing in all of that precluded a web app.
It'll take a couple of years but people will figure it out eventually.
There are operational issues with phones (e.g. batteries running out).
This has nothing to do with handling cash. It is to do with the elimination of paper tickets for monthly passes. Where I live you can pay cash for one off tickets, but they refuse to sell you paper monthly tickets.
Are you implying that there isn't an operational cost for maintaining the infrastructure to support cashless payments or that it's cheaper? Unless I see actual numbers I am not convinced and that 1% you mention sounds completely random to me and not really "the true answer".
How does that compare to the operational cost of developing an app, maintaining an app, paying for the infrastructure behind it, and having the payment processors take their cut, operate customer support etc?
If paying cash is more expensive for a company then so be it. One should not be forced to pay extra simply because one uses the official method of exchange provided by the State.
If legal tender is offered as a method of exchange then it should automatically be the best (least expensive).
Frankly, what's happened here is outrageous. By not legislating and outlawing this practice we've another instance of government ineptitude.
You dont have to handle cash directly, you can have kiosks that are dedicated to adding cash to a public transit card and they will solve the problem you are talking about.
First: You can have kiosks (in central locations like metro stations) or you can have dedicated points like where a market collects the cash and they add the balance that way.
Second: The public transit company. we aren't splitting the atom here.
> The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash...
Really? From TFA:
When comparing the prices of First’s weekly bus pass in my area, which is available to purchase on the bus, and its monthly pass, which is exclusive to its app...
If the reason were "operational cost to handling cash", you'd expect that cost to be substantially less for the one where you handle cash only once per month than the one where you have to handle it four times per month, no?
I don't know Britain, but in my part of America the extra costs of taking credit cards are so high that most gasoline (petrol) stations give a ~3% discount to customers paying with old-fashioned paper cash. And I know little grocery stores with signs by their register, asking customers to please pay with cash - because margins are tight, and the bank takes an X% cut of every credit card payment and a Y% cut of every debit card payment.
Well from what I've heard folks in US frequently revert credit card transactions, something almost impossible to do with same companies in Europe for example (tried it once, got automated feedback email in 2 weeks and nothing happened).
Just life frequent insurance accidents, this raises overall costs. May be some other forces too of course
I don't' know what "that" you're referring to, but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
> ...but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
This may be true, but State and Federal law prevail. In California, this [0] looks to be the relevant regulation:
1748.1. (a) No retailer in any sales, service, or lease transaction with a consumer may impose a surcharge on a cardholder who elects to use a credit card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means. A retailer may, however, offer discounts for the purpose of inducing payment by cash, check, or other means not involving the use of a credit card, provided that the discount is offered to all prospective buyers.
Most mom-and-pop places I shop at here in San Francisco either offer discounts for paying in cash or have signs up suggesting that folks pay in cash so the business keeps more of the transaction.
The gas stations doing it have large, permanent roadside signage displaying the different prices for "Cash" vs. "Credit". So there may be exceptions in the fine print of those payment processor agreements. Or the gas stations all know the laws giving them such rights, which the agreements can't override. Or something.
£264.00 per year, per head extra, is operational theft, and it will be MUCH higher than 1% of rides, and further more , cash rides will exist in perpetuity as there is NO OTHER WAY to deal with edge cases and contingencies of public transport, making the 'extra' cost look more like some wienie frustrated managers little play at despotism.
Same is happening in Germany as well, including the supermarket apps mentioned at the end of the article.
Even better, in NRW region some ticket models are only available on the app, nowhere to be found on the ticket machines or at the counter on the stations.
I find it weird that you have to pay every time you get on a bus in the UK it seems?
Are there no passes? e.g. in Budapest I have a monthly public transport pass and I just board the vehicle when it arrives without having to validate or purchase a ticket every time.
I have the same issue but regarding paying for groceries. I have to pay more because I don't have access to the grocery store's coupon app because I don't use a smartphone.
That's exactly what loyalty programs are. You sell your data for a discount on purchases. It's not even a secret, that's the actual goal of loyalty programs.
Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare. Vs. the easy route of trusting a cheap & convenient app ecosystem (helpfully run by SpyCo, CreepTech, and DataHarvest Ltd.) do all the hard bits. While the authority basks in feeling cool and trendy. Plus, smartphone fare fraud looks really complicated (vs. counterfeit metal tokens or whatever) - so the authority feels no pressure to do anything about it.
Less cynically, a good national policy might be to treat all "excess" revenues collected by organizations providing better deals to those passing various wealth/class/fluency tests ("has bank account", "has smart phone", etc.) as "poor taxes". Which are totally legal...but must be accounted for in excruciating detail, and every last farthing turned over to the greedy nitpickers staffing the Poor Tax Dept. of His Majesty's Revenue Authority. Every month, no excuses. So, to avoid that monthly misery for their so-privileged selves, the managers at every org with the paper power to collect poor taxes work hard to make sure that they are not doing so.
> Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare.
Then why did they remove the option that has them "work[ing] at taking your fare" once per month and leave in the one that has them doing that four times per month?
Hell, one can pay cash on the bus itself for a ticket to ride the bus. If cash-handling were the motivation, that'd be the first to go... the author of TFA mentions "First's weekly bus pass" and that they're in Scotland. This leads me to a company called "FirstGroup", which operates "First Bus" and "First Train". First Bus has this to say [0][1] about acquiring tickets on a bus:
With a wide range available, including weekly and monthly tickets, there’s no need to have the right change as you can make your purchase in advance. ... Contactless payments, Apple pay, Google pay and cash are accepted on our buses.
Again, if it's actually about the work of taking the fare, you'd expect the fares that are the most work to gather to be the ones to move to "Payment via Google Android or Apple iOS only" fares.
[1] You might note that First Bus says it operates in England and Ireland but makes no mention of Scotland. IDK why that is, but this Scottish tourism website [2] links straight to First Bus's website to answer the question "Where can I find accessible bus and coach travel in Scotland?", so I believe the omission of a mention of Scotland to be an oversight.
In Germany I have a monthly plan. I got a physical card with an NFC chip inside it. No app shenanigans. I can pause and renew my plan from home: log into the Bahn website, go to my account settings and adjust things there.
The real issue is not smartphones, iOS and Android or apps. The issue is that independent technical standards are intentionally ignored. There is no reason that I should not be able to set my plan through curl and hand-draw the QR code with pen and paper. Sure, I would not want to actually do it like that, that's not the point. The point is: if I can use curl and pen & paper, then I can use whatever else I want. If I want to use a smartphone I should be able to code my own app according to a well-documented public API. Those APIs already do exist, otherwise the official app would not work, so it's no extra work for the service provider.
We need a law that mandates open specifications for access to all publicly available services.
The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash, or payment methods beyond the ones that cover 99.9% people well. You pay more for the extra hassle the whole system has to serve that .1%
You may not like or disagree with it. But it's the true answer.
And for some transactions that makes sense. But for something that is supposed to serve everyone, and where there is a (natural) monopoly, that cannot be and acceptable answer.
Also, having your entire economy depend on companies that are not under your control, and that are even actively being weaponised, that seems like a stupid thing to do.
Also, nothing in all of that precluded a web app.
It'll take a couple of years but people will figure it out eventually.
Public busses aren't a luxury, so this doesn't matter.
Making all the allowances for wheelchairs and the blind costs way more, yet you don't charge them more.
That is even if it were true enough to matter, which it's probably not, and there were no other ways to address it, which there absolutely are.
There are operational issues with phones (e.g. batteries running out).
This has nothing to do with handling cash. It is to do with the elimination of paper tickets for monthly passes. Where I live you can pay cash for one off tickets, but they refuse to sell you paper monthly tickets.
why are they so focussed on "monthyl paper tickets"? are these any different to daily paper tickets?
Yes, they are good for a month and you get the monthly rate which can be much less than the daily rate. In my area the difference is about 20%
Cheaper per ride over the month usually.
Are you implying that there isn't an operational cost for maintaining the infrastructure to support cashless payments or that it's cheaper? Unless I see actual numbers I am not convinced and that 1% you mention sounds completely random to me and not really "the true answer".
How does that compare to the operational cost of developing an app, maintaining an app, paying for the infrastructure behind it, and having the payment processors take their cut, operate customer support etc?
If paying cash is more expensive for a company then so be it. One should not be forced to pay extra simply because one uses the official method of exchange provided by the State.
If legal tender is offered as a method of exchange then it should automatically be the best (least expensive).
Frankly, what's happened here is outrageous. By not legislating and outlawing this practice we've another instance of government ineptitude.
That's a public service that should serve everyone, no ?
You dont have to handle cash directly, you can have kiosks that are dedicated to adding cash to a public transit card and they will solve the problem you are talking about.
Who collects the cash? Who maintains the kiosks?
First: You can have kiosks (in central locations like metro stations) or you can have dedicated points like where a market collects the cash and they add the balance that way. Second: The public transit company. we aren't splitting the atom here.
Contractors. There are companies that provide cash handling and equipment maintenance services.
> The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash...
Really? From TFA:
If the reason were "operational cost to handling cash", you'd expect that cost to be substantially less for the one where you handle cash only once per month than the one where you have to handle it four times per month, no?Older people cost the NHS more than younger people but tax rates are the same so yes we can do socialism and it can be a good thing!
Then why should I have to pay more if I don't use Apple's and Google's smartphones? I use a GNU/Linux phone. Web app would work flawlessly.
True in theory, except in many places that Web app comes packaged inside a Web view.
I don't know Britain, but in my part of America the extra costs of taking credit cards are so high that most gasoline (petrol) stations give a ~3% discount to customers paying with old-fashioned paper cash. And I know little grocery stores with signs by their register, asking customers to please pay with cash - because margins are tight, and the bank takes an X% cut of every credit card payment and a Y% cut of every debit card payment.
Well from what I've heard folks in US frequently revert credit card transactions, something almost impossible to do with same companies in Europe for example (tried it once, got automated feedback email in 2 weeks and nothing happened).
Just life frequent insurance accidents, this raises overall costs. May be some other forces too of course
That is illegal in the UK.
I don't' know what "that" you're referring to, but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
In the UK it is actually against the law.
To give discounts for cash or for the payment processors to charge above 0% from the sellers?
A discount for cash is the same as an extra fee on cards.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/finance-and-tax/making...
(Yes, I know UK isn’t in EU anymore but pretty sure their rule is legacy from EU)
Id guess the discrimination itself between these two things and putting it in a contract?
> ...but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
This may be true, but State and Federal law prevail. In California, this [0] looks to be the relevant regulation:
Most mom-and-pop places I shop at here in San Francisco either offer discounts for paying in cash or have signs up suggesting that folks pay in cash so the business keeps more of the transaction.[0] <https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-civ/division-3/...> The official place to find this would probably be [1] , but that's super down for me at the moment, so I link to something unofficial.
[1] <https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...>
The gas stations doing it have large, permanent roadside signage displaying the different prices for "Cash" vs. "Credit". So there may be exceptions in the fine print of those payment processor agreements. Or the gas stations all know the laws giving them such rights, which the agreements can't override. Or something.
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£264.00 per year, per head extra, is operational theft, and it will be MUCH higher than 1% of rides, and further more , cash rides will exist in perpetuity as there is NO OTHER WAY to deal with edge cases and contingencies of public transport, making the 'extra' cost look more like some wienie frustrated managers little play at despotism.
And?
Why shouldn't this (small) cost be mutualised? Why should everything be tuned and customised and priced to every single individual characteristics?
There's also operational cost to handling tons of different situations of people in every practical way of life.
EDIT: my point is that practicality is a clumsy way of disguising the fact that there is a objective, political choice behind it.
Same is happening in Germany as well, including the supermarket apps mentioned at the end of the article.
Even better, in NRW region some ticket models are only available on the app, nowhere to be found on the ticket machines or at the counter on the stations.
I find it weird that you have to pay every time you get on a bus in the UK it seems?
Are there no passes? e.g. in Budapest I have a monthly public transport pass and I just board the vehicle when it arrives without having to validate or purchase a ticket every time.
The article is about the cost and availability of passes. The cheaper passes are apps.
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Not sure if this is the case here, but it might be that you pay in data if you use the app.
I have the same issue but regarding paying for groceries. I have to pay more because I don't have access to the grocery store's coupon app because I don't use a smartphone.
People with the app are paying with their person Al data. Seems like a fair deal.
That's exactly what loyalty programs are. You sell your data for a discount on purchases. It's not even a secret, that's the actual goal of loyalty programs.
Not really, I still have physical fob with barcode.
What is the non-standard OS that the writer is using?
Graphene or similar, probably. Annoyingly a tonne of apps lock themselves out of working on it.
Could be postmarketOS, Mobian, PureOS or similar.
Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare. Vs. the easy route of trusting a cheap & convenient app ecosystem (helpfully run by SpyCo, CreepTech, and DataHarvest Ltd.) do all the hard bits. While the authority basks in feeling cool and trendy. Plus, smartphone fare fraud looks really complicated (vs. counterfeit metal tokens or whatever) - so the authority feels no pressure to do anything about it.
Less cynically, a good national policy might be to treat all "excess" revenues collected by organizations providing better deals to those passing various wealth/class/fluency tests ("has bank account", "has smart phone", etc.) as "poor taxes". Which are totally legal...but must be accounted for in excruciating detail, and every last farthing turned over to the greedy nitpickers staffing the Poor Tax Dept. of His Majesty's Revenue Authority. Every month, no excuses. So, to avoid that monthly misery for their so-privileged selves, the managers at every org with the paper power to collect poor taxes work hard to make sure that they are not doing so.
> Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare.
Then why did they remove the option that has them "work[ing] at taking your fare" once per month and leave in the one that has them doing that four times per month?
Hell, one can pay cash on the bus itself for a ticket to ride the bus. If cash-handling were the motivation, that'd be the first to go... the author of TFA mentions "First's weekly bus pass" and that they're in Scotland. This leads me to a company called "FirstGroup", which operates "First Bus" and "First Train". First Bus has this to say [0][1] about acquiring tickets on a bus:
Again, if it's actually about the work of taking the fare, you'd expect the fares that are the most work to gather to be the ones to move to "Payment via Google Android or Apple iOS only" fares.[0] <https://www.firstbus.co.uk/buy-tickets/buy-ticket>
[1] You might note that First Bus says it operates in England and Ireland but makes no mention of Scotland. IDK why that is, but this Scottish tourism website [2] links straight to First Bus's website to answer the question "Where can I find accessible bus and coach travel in Scotland?", so I believe the omission of a mention of Scotland to be an oversight.
[2] <https://www.visitscotland.com/travel-planning/bus-coach>
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