this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
608 points (98.6% liked)
People Twitter
8103 readers
1367 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Serious question to Americans: why don't you pay your friends in cash instead of dealing with this bullshit?
I do. It's literally the only reason I carry cash around. I'm not comfortable banking on my phone.
We don't usually work with cash. Most people I know don't carry cash at all, and it's a pain to get, since most paychecks are direct deposit. You've gotta head to an ATM or the bank, or ask for cash at checkout at the store.
It’s the same in Europe (salary being bank transfer), but ATMs are ubiquitous and if you use cash when buying e.g groceries at the local farmer's market, the seller doesn’t have to file it (I mean legally they have to, but let people enjoy life a little). Nice thing to do with ultra small businesses where the owner is the only employee or maybe they have like 1-2 other people. Same with small garages and such, they may even give you a discount if you pay cash - and some won’t even have a card terminal. All things considered, if I’m paying 40 euros to get my tires changed and the guy pays himself a salary, about 25 euros to the tax man. If I give him 40 euros cash, he keeps all of it.
Am I advocating tax evasion? Maybe. Well, I’m advocating letting ultra small businesses decide how much income they’re gonna claim. So I like to carry a little bit of cash for that. Grocery stores and such, I just tap my phone or card.
Many ATMs here take a fee, so using em when there is a feeless way to do it requires both finding an atm and shelling out an extra $2-4. Add in that most only do $20s, and your friend may also not have cash to pay you back any difference makes electronic transfers preferable.
Ah yeah, heads would roll if they did that here. Some no longer hold 5s or 50s though so it’s mostly 10s and 20s.
Yeah there are machines that do multiple denominations here but the vast majority are just 20s.
Record of payment is one of the pros of electronic transfers
Can't deny that you receive the money when the other person can pull out receipts.
Banks love it too, because then they can sell your purchase history records to the big data surveillance capitalism companies, they also have a really good idea of who your family and close circle of friends are due to repeat small payments - valuable data for the same data companies.
The same thing that leads to dealing with all the other kinds of bullshit & enshittification: convenient and free! Just sign here and tell us about yourself!
Honestly though once you're set up it seems like it's pretty simple. I don't actually use any of them, but my wife uses Venmo and Paypal for some stuff. There's a small business that I order my hobby supplies from, and I just ask my wife to send whatever dollar amount to the guy who runs the place when I text him about what I need. He could just invoice me and I could pay like you would on any online store, but this is somebody I've worked with for years so I'm not worried about preemptively sending the money over.
Sometimes it is a large amount of cash, like settling up at the end of a vacation. At that point, it is better to electronically transfer the money.
Also, I may not see those friends all the time. If they want their money immediately, they can get it electronically.
Finally, some friends don't use cash a lot. At that point, the money is more useful if I send it electronically.
Exact payments, no making change. Jimmy paid for your lunch it was $12.35 after tip, he got back 12.35, no overpyament, no underpayment nothing owed or borrowed.
Nobody gets mugged because no one has any cash on them. ATMs have cameras, and phones are as good as dead once they're stolen and reported.
You can collect a small amount to hold an item you're selling online to make sure they'll pick it up. Pay them without being there.
Not American, but cash is annoying af to deal with and I'm not gonna try and figure out how to pay a 5€ bill with a 20€ note.
You give them the 20 and they give 15 back?
I'm talking about paying a friend who might not necessarily have cash to exactly give me back.