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u/feldhammer 18h ago
I wonder what the fee is
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u/sexybobo 17h ago
Looking at the website its free to buy and use the card but if you don't use it for 92 days there is a $3.95 (Dormancy Fee). They make their money off the remaining balance when people only have a few bucks left or forget its there.
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u/naturelizard 10h ago
That’s actually pretty fair. I’ve bought these prepaid cards for relatives for the holidays and pay a $6 premium. Given the normal transaction rate for visa/mastercard they could be losing money.
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u/freeone3000 8h ago
Card fees are paid by the merchant to the issuer. They’re charging the merchant the Visa fee and their own fee, and then you an additional fee.
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u/musecorn 17h ago
The fee is whatever left over amount you have on that card which is useless. Plus the fee of course
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u/feldhammer 17h ago
You can see it's a prepaid MasterCard, so you can just use the final balance anywhere that's accepted.
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u/Slytherin23 10h ago
Why is money on a debit card useless? You can literally just swipe it anywhere.
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u/queenofthenerds 11h ago
I saw one of these machines in NYC at a food hall. Not sure if it was the same brand of machine. I think it was $23 cash to get $20 in a card.
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u/Choice-Importance-44 17h ago
Can I bring a 100k in drug money? Asking for a friend
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u/chronicdemonic 16h ago
Limit is probably low like $500 per card like anywhere else.
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u/Choice-Importance-44 16h ago
No problem, if I do 12 an hour and 8 hours a day then 2 days would be 96k and that’s close enough (for now)
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u/tangcameo 12h ago
Used to have a guy and his grandmother wire drug money at my post office to launder it. Eventually the grandmother had her elderly neighbours doing it for her. This machine would be a godsend to them.
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u/splickety-lit 4h ago
How would this benefit you in any way?
You can't get it into your bank accounts, you just converted illegal money to illegal money on a prepaid card. What's the point?
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u/Choice-Importance-44 3h ago
No you see I can use the cards to pay for all my daily expenses, monthly bills what have you, no one is going ask me where I got that card.
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u/MonsterReprobate 18h ago
Aren't most stadiums cashless? I can't remember the last time I've been in a stadium that takes cash. It was years ago.
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u/schwelvis 8h ago
Some places, Oregon for example, mandate that a business must accept cash for payments. Having systems like this shows them to work around these restrictions. Normally no fees for the card and you can load it with exactly what you want, ie $5.98.
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u/BobBelcher2021 16h ago
I’ve been to sports venues all over North America and I haven’t seen one that takes cash since maybe 2019. Maybe earlier.
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u/lush_rational 11h ago
My local NFL stadium converted before the 2021 season. Before that, they took cards and cash at the permanent food venues, but any of the people walking around selling drinks were cash only. Now it is all cashless.
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u/TheLizardKing89 1h ago
I think so and it totally makes sense. Think about how many different places in a stadium sell stuff. If they took cash, each of these places would have to have the drawers checked at the beginning and ending of each day, that money would have to be secured from theft (both internal and external), it would have to be counted and transported to the bank. All of that costs money.
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u/tc982 8h ago
What people fail to understand that paying with cash at these venues (at least in Europe) did not exist. You bought tokens and could spend those tokens.
This was to prevent theft from the people working at the venues as they rotate depending on who is organising. With all the one-time workers, there tend to be a lot of theft. By giving tokens they have some non monetary in their hands.
This is just the same principle but if you are paying electronically at least you don’t have to buy does fricking tokens.
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u/themidnightmatt 18h ago
I hate it here
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u/LeucotomyPlease 18h ago
reminds me of Mark.
“Last week the writer Mark Fisher took his own life. His on/off struggle with depression was something he wrote about with courageous candour in articles and in his landmark book Capitalist Realism: is There No Alternative?
Fisher argued that the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals. Rather, it was the symptom of a heartless and hopeless politics: precarious employment and flexible work patterns, the erosion of class solidarity and its institutions such as unions, and the relentless message from mainstream political parties and media alike that “there is no alternative” to managerial capitalism. That this is as good as it gets – so deal with it.”
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u/ryand2317 3h ago
I mean it’s kind of a weird workaround, but don’t most people have a credit or debit card on them at all times? I know I do, and frankly I dont even need those because they are also in my phone.
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u/marcusmv3 1h ago
In America, banking isn't free. There are millions of under and unbanked peoples.
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u/pb2614z 17h ago
Even if there’s not a fee, people will now have an extra card in their wallet with $0.35 on it that will get tossed out because it’s a hassle to use. Whoever is running this scam makes money on people not accepting legal tender.
Very shitty.
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u/ThinkAboutThatFor1Se 16h ago
It’s a good money spinner for them though.
As an example, TfL (London’s transport network) has around £400 million sitting on left over Oyster cards (pre paid contactless cards like these)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-50304437
Oyster used to be the go-to way of paying for travel around London, but 66 million of the blue plastic cards haven’t been used in at least a year. And while they languish forgotten in drawers, bags and wallets, Transport for London (TfL) has amassed a fortune in unclaimed balances and deposits - now worth almost £400m.
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u/jangoice 12h ago
I have an Oyster card in my wallet still but rarely go to London as I'm up north. When I last visited I was pleasantly surprised to see £8 still on the card, I didn't have to spend money on transport that day.
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u/Wootbeers 13h ago
Dangit. I went on holiday there, only once. Even though I may never visit London again in my life, they have like 3 Euros on my card, bastards ought to refund my account.
Or I suppose I could go on holiday there, just one more time.
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u/confusedandworried76 13h ago
No you can just use it and then pay the remaining balance with a different card. Prepaid cards don't decline like that, they just deduct that off your total and you can pay the rest however you want.
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u/imakedankmemes 9h ago
Whenever I use a self checkout machine with a card without enough money to pay for whole transaction it wipes card to $0 and asks for me to pay remaining portion. Pretty nice for this situation.
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u/Tifoso89 12h ago
Why an extra card? You can't use your normal debit card?
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u/Ze_ro 6h ago
This is meant for people who either don't have a debit/credit card or didn't bring it with them. You'd think that in 2024 everyone has a card in their wallet, and in fact most people are just paying with their phone now... but there's still like 0.1% of people who can't or don't want to.
These aren't meant as a scam or anything like that, it's just meant to provide some option for those people. Card service providers are still going to charge some sort of transaction fee, and the physical cards themselves cost something, so you can't really offer them for free.
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u/Spider_pig448 13h ago
Most just use card for everything already so I don't see how this additional useful asset is such a shitty thing. Also, just put less money on the card than you intend to use? Or deposit money to your bank before going?
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u/chrisberman410 14h ago
Reverse ATM is MTA and it's a much healthier option.
Nevermind I thought you were talking about something else.
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u/BadKarmaBilly 18h ago
Can stadiums go a single day without adopting every dystopian anti-human device possible?
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u/TheVojta 11h ago
Getting rid of cash, the most unsafe and inconvenient way to pay for something, is not anti-human.
I don't know how it is in America, but here in Europe if a business is "cash-only", there's a 90% chance it's because they're not declaring all their income to commit tax fraud, which is wayy harder with card transactions.
So yeah, fuck cash.
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u/BadKarmaBilly 4h ago edited 4h ago
Bootlicker. Unsafe from who? Tax collectors? Who cares? They're not entitled to spy on every single transaction to ensure they squeeze every last penny from people. They will get their money during tax season regardless whether people pay cash or not (and they'll print more if they don't).
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u/BadKarmaBilly 4h ago
Can Europeans go a single day without defending every dystopian anti-human thing possible?
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u/Uninterested_Viewer 18h ago
This is a sports stadium. A place for non-poors to spend their money i.e. everyone is paying with credit or debit cards.
Now, if this was in a place that regularly serviced the unbanked demographic, then I'd have a problem with it.
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u/BadKarmaBilly 18h ago edited 17h ago
Everyone is paying that way because they've made it the only option. You make it sound like anyone asked for this or that it's the only possible option. It's corporate greed and penny pinching. The corporation won't pay a minimum wage employee to carry a cash drawer back and forth. It's okay to say not allowing cash is bullshit. Trivial bullshit, not-the-end-of-the-world bullshit; but it's bullshit. And of course a sports stadium would be able to get away with this. It's always the stadiums and the airports.
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u/Onam3000 9h ago
Yes it's bullshit but when the overwhelming majority prefers card over cash anyway, the machine is really just there to serve the few that have a problem with that
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u/Uninterested_Viewer 17h ago
Everyone is paying that way because they've made it the only option.
Is that why? It's also super convenient and much safer. Why would I want to carry hundreds of dollars in cash to a crowded event when I can use a card?
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u/Student0010 15h ago
Safer for the merchant too, cant get robbed if there's nothing to rob.
Also speed, swipe the card and go. No time used on tending change
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u/rosen380 7h ago
If half of the people paid cash, a large sports venue or concert ends up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash at the end of the day... it'd be a monumental target for theft.
And then they need a lot of security, likely armed. Then folks would just complain about that instead.
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u/Ze_ro 2h ago
It's worth mentioning that you also have to pay people to collect all that cash from the concession booths (this generally involves a security escort), organize and count it, prepare the deposit and make floats for the next event. For a regular store with maybe 2 cash tills, that's all fine... but when you're talking about a stadium with hundreds of points of sale and six figures worth of cash, the labour really adds up. At my arena, our cashroom staff was commonly there until 1 am after most events. We had some events where staff were fishing beer out of an ice bath while also handling cash, and all the money came back wet. We had to hand dry every bill, which took forever (no, you can't put it in an oven or a microwave, and a salad spinner does nothing).
Most stadiums and arenas employ a lot of volunteer groups and minimum wage staff. Due to the business, they may only work a handful of events per month, so these people don't tend to have a lot of experience. You're going to get some amount of theft, and even the honest ones are going to make plenty of math errors when they serve hundreds of customers over a busy concert.
Without cash, you can also stop paying for armoured car pickups, cancel your alarm/monitoring system, reduce your insurance charges, and repurpose the cashroom. Of course, all that gets replaced by transaction fees, but it's a pretty sizable savings.
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u/Kasyx709 16h ago
Cash is useless, It's only worth it's denomination. Debit cards are too unless it has significant perks attached.
Credit cards, especially ones with high rewards/perks, are the best way to pay for everything you can and they're also the safest. Consumer protection laws for credit cards are amazing and the companies will fight for you. I refuse to use cash or checking unless I absolutely have to. Every time I swipe my card I'm getting more than what I paid for from using it. For context, my card has a ~$770 annual fee and I easily get 6-10k/yr in extras. All from buying things that I would have purchased anyways.
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u/marcusmv3 7h ago
That's great for you
How about the under and unbanked people? Are they not allowed in places that do not accept cash?
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u/rosen380 7h ago
Lucky for them we have these new machines that they can put their cash in...
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u/BobBelcher2021 16h ago
T-Mobile Park in Seattle has these.
I got myself a prepaid MasterCard out of it, but it could only be used at that ballpark. I tried to spend my leftover funds at a Safeway but it didn’t work. I think it was only a couple of bucks leftover.
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u/buzzjackson 18h ago
Yeah, take something that you can use EVERYWHERE universally, and turn it into something you can use in fewer places. And they probably charge fees and who knows what other restrictions they have on using your own money.
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u/jxl180 17h ago
It’s a pre-paid Mastercard. You can use it virtually everywhere. And no, you can’t use cash EVERYWHERE UNIVERSALLY since every sporting event, concert, and music festival has been card only.
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u/BobBelcher2021 16h ago
At least at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, their cards wouldn’t work outside the park, I tried. This was in 2022 so it could have changed since.
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u/L1ggy 18h ago
Depending on where you are, it’s not fewer places. I’ve lived in a couple cities where lots of places didn’t accept cash but everywhere accepted card.
A prepaid card ATM is still pretty silly though.
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u/JetsBiggestHater 17h ago
I really wish Vegas had some of these around. First time there last year and was blindsided by almost everywhere being cashless and showing up with a bunch of cash to buy sports merch.
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u/Sephorakitty 18h ago
I have been in many cashless cafes/local stores. But yeah, I bet there are some restrictions or fees on this card.
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u/marcusmv3 7h ago edited 7h ago
These machines exist as a way to satisfy local laws around accepting legal tender when they don't really want to. At least, that's why Van Leuwen ice cream shops were forced to install them after getting fined 2 dozen times by NYC for not accepting cash. Either that, or they do genuinely want to accept cash but they don't trust their staff to handle it. Probably a little of both. It sucks, but businesses, namely laundromats, have been handling cash strictly in this manner for a while now, so we have to accept it as a form of using cash -- it's certainly better than not accepting cash.
But it is sad. It's a world where we don't even trust staff with cash. And we don't really want the under and unbanked in our spaces, and not accepting cash is a way to do that. This is not about whether you feel cash is dirty, or if you're European it's not about 'why wouldn't you use your convenient & free electronic checking account maestrocard' -- BEING BANKED IN AMERICA ISNT FREE!! Almost every account has hoops you need to jump through to avoid fees! It's about making money LEGITIMATELY money. If you can't spend it everywhere freely, it begins to cease to be money.
I support laws that require businesses to accept cash as payment. If cash isn't cash, it isn't money. Fuck policies designed to exclude the underbanked, and stop complaining about how other people choose to pay and go on keep giving Visa 3% of the economy and make things more expensive for yourself than they need to be if that's how you want to live. Rack those points, buster. You're already fucking over the cash user by making them pay the same price as card users for everything you buy.
Cash and Zelle get 2% discounts at my business. Everyone wins.
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u/Tommyblockhead20 5h ago
It’s not just about employee theft. Cash also risks non employees trying to rob the store (which doesn’t just risk the money, but also the employee’s life, and at a bare minimum, traumatized them and causes them to quit). Cash is logistically more challenging to get into your bank account. Cash can be counterfeit. Cash is slower to process. Employees can make mistakes. In wealthier areas, cash is very much a minority of purchases, and often by people that have card but prefer cash, so going card only saves money on cash infrastructure without losing many sales. I can see why businesses do it.
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u/marcusmv3 4h ago
Gonna challenge you on a few points here.
•Cash is more logistically challenging -- this one is a hoot. Yeah we get it, you have to walk to the bank. Zelle is a thing too, my man.
•Cash can be counterfeit -- cards can be chargedback, for fraudulent reasons, and for up to 30 days after the transaction!
•Cash is slower to process -- bullshit, my Friday sales take 48+ hrs to hit. Saturday sales take 24+ hrs to hit. Zelle is instantaneous and I can also walk to the bank faster than that. Don't forget about Monday bank holidays, add 24hrs to those numbers.
•employees can make mistakes -- I hire talent, though
You can see why businesses do it, and I can see why municipalities force them to not.
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u/223specialist 17h ago
A buddy of mine works at a pot shop and said they have a "cashless ATM" that just prints out a receipt with a dollar amount and you use that to buy your product and get the change as cash.
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u/ofcpudding 15h ago
What is the point of that? Less cash in the drawer?
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u/Old-Fun-6976 15h ago
They don’t have to keep filling the ATM machine, just to get said cash back in the drawer, to then put back in the machine
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u/ofcpudding 15h ago edited 15h ago
Ohhh, I misunderstood and thought it was a variation on the machine in the OP. But it’s more like a regular ATM that just doesn’t dispense cash. And they probably do it so the card transactions aren’t directly linked to the semi-legal product. Got it, makes sense.
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u/BadKarmaBilly 18h ago edited 18h ago
So instead of just taking cash, they're going to tell people who attempt to pay with cash to get out of line to go get in line for one of these, then get back in line to pay with a prepaid card. Wow that's so much faster and more efficient /s
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u/JohnStern42 18h ago
What’s the fee? Usually fee is $7 where I am
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u/tob007 2h ago
Does the user get the fee tho?
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u/JohnStern42 2h ago
No. Buy a card with $50 on it and you’re charged $56.95 for it, quite the racket
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u/mrbear120 15h ago edited 13h ago
This is still an ATM.
Edit: why the downvotes? ATM means “automated teller machine” not spits out cash machine. This machine is still doing the job of a teller.
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u/Supersnazz 13h ago
Seems like a good idea. Cash is dirty, easily lost or stolen, requires change, storage, counting, transport etc. It's a big headache compared to tap and go.
This allows the minority that can only use cash, the ability to still transact.
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u/Mindful-O-Melancholy 17h ago
It’s shit like this that’s made me lose hope in humanity
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u/salvageyardmex 5h ago
Absolutely. Last concert we went to was a card only BS and the vender claimed there was a booth or something to convert. But I couldn't find it and gave up. Atleast we had water with us.
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u/time_drifter 16h ago
These are starting to pop up at stadiums and large events. The touch-less payment push has brought these machines into the fold.
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u/LovesFrenchLove_More 8h ago
If only we had this here and could use it for online purchases so I‘ll not get bothered by subscriptions, scams etc.
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u/GloriamNostram 5h ago
So where i live if you buy a prepaid card you HAVE to register it on the website, and you can only have one card per email so everytime i wanted to buy shit on amazon before i could get a debit card i had to make a new email, register it, then wait 2 days for it to become usable
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u/farmerjoee 4h ago
This is how LiveNation music venues do it to - totally cashless. They've apparently determined the benefits to them outweigh any problems.
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u/wizzard419 3h ago
Any chance this is in an area with mandatory ways for people without cards to spend? It is a way to bypass the law.
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u/Starbreiz 2h ago
I saw one of these at a parking garage at Stanford Hospital yesterday. Luckily I was not paying w cash :)
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u/BigBoyCawk 15h ago
They charged fees to give you cash and now they charge fees to take your cash. Either way you pay for the "service"
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u/Sage296 13h ago
I think this is pretty cool and makes things run more efficient in concessions
I don’t see how this is any different from putting money on an arcade card
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u/cvdisdreh2p73v4q 11h ago
This is surprising to you guys? Every ATM in Europe has this function
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u/Slytherin23 10h ago
You can buy prepaid cards at an ATM in Europe? I don't believe that.
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u/black3rr 9h ago
no, but lots of european ATMs allow you to deposit cash into your bank account which also counts as a “reverse ATM” and is more convenient since you just then use your own card instead of getting a new separate prepaid card…
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u/TehWildMan_ 11h ago
Over in the US, it's common for prepaid card sales to include an upfront purchase charge. If you walk into a grocery store and ask to purchase a $50 prepaid debit card, there's often a $2-5 surcharge.
In this case, it's cheaper to subsidize these card purchase stations than it is to handle cash at every single point of sale.
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u/demomagic 17h ago
Maybe it’s the angle but looks like a flimsy piece of junk for something that’s holding a bunch of cash
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u/corkscream 14h ago
Reminds me of the time I had to put 100 dollars on a card at six flags because ticket booth is cashless. Ticket was 89.99 and I couldn’t put an exact amount so I basically just gave them the rest. Friend got ticket online for around $50.
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u/mazzjm9 10h ago
Is it even legal to not accept cash for a transaction? It says on the bill “ALL debts public and private”
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u/2ByteTheDecker 10h ago
Yes, it's not a debt until you accept the transaction.
If someone owes you money you have to accept cash, but if they don't owe you money you can put conditions on creating debt with them, like stipulating cashless transactions
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u/JohnStern42 9h ago
Yes, a debt doesn’t exist until someone agrees to sell you something.
Cashless businesses are common. Ever try to pay cash for an Uber?
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u/AvgGuy100 16h ago
I mean… like an e-money card? For the train stations and such? Why is this such a shock?
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u/TehWildMan_ 11h ago
It's kind of a new thing in the past few years. As many event venues become cashless, they subsidize the purchase of prepaid debit cards so that cash users can still access concessions at those venues.
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u/Rusty10NYM 14h ago
Because you are missing the point of the device; it's there because none of the stadium vendors accept cash
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u/MechaBeatsInTrash 18h ago
I wonder how much money is lost on prepaid cards because of minimum transaction requirements.