That’s the one that really lights my fire.
Good idea – I’ll ask the kid. The system in Canada is called Interac, and all the banks participate. It’s a system that – as the saying goes – works very well until it doesn’t. 95% of the time transfers are virtually instantaneous if the recipient is registered for automatic deposits – literally within a couple of seconds. Longer if they’re not registered and have to correctly answer a security question.
And the system occasionally glitches. It’s very rare, but of course when it does happen, it always happens when the Interac transfer is an unexpected gift or a relatively large amount that I’m sending and I look forward to the recipient getting it, and they don’t – for sometimes as long as an hour or more instead of the usual couple of seconds. My explanation for this is that it’s an attempt by bank executives to raise my blood pressure in the hope of causing me to have a heart attack, because they hate me.
All you need is the kid’s e-mail address and you can do a transfer straight to his bank account, if he’s set it up on his phone.
Yeah, but you have store them upside down and they don’t stand very well.
Now, now, my good dog. They don’t hate you. Do not fill your majestic head with such unhappy thoughts.
They just want your blood and money, that’s all. No hate about it; just business. 
what about your neighborhood bar that only takes cash? Hopefully, they also have (expensive!!) ATM nearby
Yes and they’re inferior to toothpaste tube type packaging. It’s annoying (and costly) to throw away 10% of my mustard with every bottle I buy.
Safe? Safe?!? That’s no fun. YAWWWWWN!
You Canooks are so boring and square. I bet you think everyone should have health insurance provided. When are you gonna step up and live life on the wild side? We Americans like to play fast and loose with the rules. After all, bilking others is how you get ahead in life. Don’t they teach that valuable lesson to Canadian kids growing up?
So primitive! You guys probably use turn signals, too.
And we get out of the pool on request.
You disgust me. Have some balls and shit on everyone around you. It’s what Jesus would do.
Fucking commies the lot of y’all.
Moderating:
I know it’s meant in fun, but this is a bit over the line for this forum. Let’s tone it down a bit. Thanks.
Sorry. I figured the obvious sarcasm was… obvious.
It just happened the other day that I needed new passport photos, and the shop I went to only took cash, not credit cards. (Their computers were down.) So it happens.
Hence the emergency cash. But it really is an emergency, or at least an abnormal, circumstance when cash is needed.
Clearly we live in different neighborhoods. The majestic @wolfpup would never frequent such places.
I suppose Wolfpup, like most non-Americans, is somewhat puzzled as to why a neighbourhood bar would only take cash.
I know why some do, but I hardy think that motivation or that custom is unique to the USA.
Lotta small places can avoid paying tax on a lot of income by just never recording it anywhere. Credit cards leave a wide paper (electronic really) trail. Also, lotta places have to pay a silly percentage of their take in credit card fees on each purchase. A way to keep more of each sale’s revenue is to refuse CCs.
For a bar, restaurant, or small retailer whose target demographic is already mostly living in a cash economy, what they lose by refusing CCs may be negligible compared to what they can gain / steal by running off-books plus what they gain by avoiding the CC companies’ 3 to 5% vig.
This might be a reason not to take credit cards but does not explain why they would fire all customers who don’t want to use cash.
Hmm. I am mystified by this last post. One of us is confused, and it may well be me.
I once worked in a shop like that. They sold mostly antiques, but some local art as well. Everything had a label that told the salesperson the minimum acceptable price. The actual price would depend on several things: How well-dressed the customer was and their accent. How keen to buy they were and how long the item had been in stock. Women were generally more gullible than men.
Naturally, we allowed customers to haggle the price down if they wanted to, but since we would usually start off at 200 or 300%, there was plenty of room for manoeuvre.
I was taken to several auctions where sellers were blatantly defrauded. Buyers would agree in advance not to bid against each other for some choice objects, which meant that they were sold for much less than the true value. Later, in a back room at a local pup, there would be a private auction, the true price paid and the “profit” split (with a bung for the auctioneer).
When I bought books or other stuff from US retailers they billed me the net price, German customs looked at the invoice included with the parcel and decided whether price+shipping it was below a certain threshold. If that was not the case customs assessed import VAT on price + shipping cost (that regulation is in place to avoid sellers invoicing low price + high shipping cost), and sent the parcel on with the parcel service collecting the assessed VAT* from me COD.
In some cases that did not work because the shipper did not include a meaningful invoice, and I had to visit the regional customs office 15 km away to submit proof of the amount paid, and in one case to describe what the gadget was for customs classification purposes. So it sometimes is a PITA to order from US sellers who don’t know how to write a proper invoice for customs purposes.
*) plus customs duties, but these are nominal or zero for most classes of imports from the US
People will pay with regular bank cards and if the bar doesn’t take them they will go to another bar that does because who wants to use cash?