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Many homeless people take contactless payment, these days. Some even put it on their signs.

Anyone with a smartphone can do it. Few people don't have smartphones, anymore. Most people don't even carry cash.

You can literally get a Square dongle for free, to swipe cards.

Homeless people jumped on Cash App faster than dealers.

Who is we?

This reads like a copy and pasted PR statement from a bank’s website.

You can get a card reader for free?

Bad bot.

Another issue would be low income and “unlawfully” employed individuals who take cash as payment. I’m not talking about dealers, but perhaps immigrants and those getting paid in cash for their labor.

Access to digital currency is also a trick. If you live in a large metropolitan city, you have access to internet, banks, ATMs; but if you live out of town or in the country, or maybe just don’t have reliable transportation and internet, you are also screwed.

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Yes, but it comes with fees. 2.6% + $.10

So if someone gives you $10, you get $9.64

And for those wondering, the government does provide phones to homeless people who apply. It's a program that started with Reagan with home phone service, under Obama it applied to cell phones and has seen need applied to smartphones

I can't give money to those people, since in almost every case, it's just a scam. If you want to help homeless people, support local policies that support the homeless, volunteer at a soup kitchen, become a speaker for homelessness issues in your town. Giving them $20 doesn't help them.

Maybe bad for tip based wages too. Do tips from cards get taxed?

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But it's great for governments taking their cut from the productive class!

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Yeah, I do think people are much more willing to go and get cash out of an ATM though to pay in a cash only store or pay a dealer, so it definitely affects them less than homeless people but I agree with you.

Edit: everything I said was dumb ignore this lol.

Maybe in America. I can tell you the homeless people I walk past every day and recognise, the ones I see sleeping out in the cold late at night, they’re not scammers.

Probably yeah, didn’t think of that so much either. More or less of an issue depending on which country you’re in as tips vary massively in how much they contribute to your wages.

Absolutely perfect for that.

That’s for everyone, though, not just the homeless. I use Square as one of my payment methods when I run booths at fairs and markets.

I assumed there was ones that aren’t free that didn’t charge you a fee, that’s what my statement was based on.

That just means it's horrendous across the board.

Usury is a sin in most religions.

Nope, I wish there were!

Agreed. A flat fee for using their service, I can see, ‘cause they’re in it to make money, not be a charity, but the fee plus taking a cut of the sale? Unfortunately, they ALL do it. And half of them are just PayPal in disguise.

Not really. Now the homeless people in my area are playing on a smartphone while they sit there asking for money

Yes, it’s taxed. Technically even cash tips are supposed to be reported and taxed, but realistically most cash tips get pocketed and not reported. Tips on cards tend to be reported to the tax services by the employer, so they have to be claimed and taxed.

Ah yes I’m sure all homeless people live a great life with increasingly limited access to money.

I don’t think tips should be taxed really, it’s like a gift for doing good, don’t get taxed on gifts generally.

Cold snap before christmas I gave the dude my scarf, as no cash, and he had no scarf. It was a good scarf.

Yeah, I’m not mad at anyone underreporting tips on taxes either. I think the US tip/pay system is junk and needs to be scrapped anyways.

That’s very good of you.

The US tipping/waiter pay system is terrible, it should be illegal to have the majority of wages be tips.

Even in Europe I think tips shouldn’t be taxed though.

I confess I was in two minds about it, because I got the scarf as a gift, but it was absolutely biting cold, and I was off to a warm home. Had a quick chat, he seemed in good spirits though. So I think there's a good chance he's ok.

Also bad for for power/internet outages, one fast food restaurant I used to work at had problems with their debit/credit payments almost twice a month due to connection problems

Most people would be in one mind about it, “no that’s my scarf I want to keep it”, so being in two minds about isn’t a bad thing at all.

Thanks, OP. I appreciate the support.

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You may not turn their life around with your $20 gift, but you might buy them a sandwhich, and some reason to stay in a heated place for a while. That's definitely helping. Helping does not equal fix everything forever.

If you're homeless just buy an apple watch with Apple pay and transfer funds.

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Nobody has even mentioned how digital currency makes it easier for "un-banked" people to store and use money. Checking and Savings accounts can be near impossible for some people to obtain, but digital currencies can make it easier to pay for things that usual require a bank account.

Not even in America, the commenter is just ignorant.

Source: I’ve talked with many, many homeless people in the US through NA and happenstance

There are 3rd world countries that have gone digital. And the unhoused there have cell phones (cheap phones work just the same). It works fine.

Society as a whole doesn’t care about transients on any level. This might get downvoted and you will certainly see a lot of pro-homeless virtue signaling in your post here, but if you truly want to accurately understand how the average Joe feels about homeless folks, read the nextdoor app, like pick any random neighborhood in the US and just read for about 10 minutes.

So basically what I’m saying is outside of really visible social media where there’s things like likes, retweets, upvotes etc… nobody cares about them and thus nobody gives a shit if they get fucked by the transition to digital currency

It's better for them. People don't always carry physical cash.

This.

I believe Hillary Clinton made that a campaign promise, but for obvious reasons that never happened

The point is that if you give the $20 to a homeless charity they are going to use it to provide 20 or even 40 meals in places where real homeless congregate. Giving money to panhandlers is vastly less efficient not just because many are scammers but also because you aren't reaching most of the homeless population or an organization that can leverage economies of scale to buy efficiently. The people who hang out at busy intersections with signs, particularly in suburbs where they know many easy marks exist, are not representative of the real population or problem.

I know many "homeless" "freeliving" people and they all have cashapp,venmo,chime,and usually PayPal. Sometimes multiple accounts of each. I've sold flowers for donations and had my info on a sign before. I made Hella money doing that.

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It's terrible for anyone who values their privacy and doesn't want the government to know about their entire spending habits right down to the cent

Also for anyone who lives in any area that doesn't have a decent enough internet service

/s ?

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That's a fair point. All I'm saying is it doesn't not make that one homeless person's day. Maybe you see the same people every day after a while.

How could you take that seriously?

Exactly.

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If I have some spare cash I will always give it to them but never ever in my life will I pay a homeless person by card.

I visited London in 2019 and it was pretty common there to see beggars/street preformers with card readers. Looked pretty bizarre to me but I'm happy it helps them survive.

This is shower thought it's true but I think everyone should carry some cash on themselves at all times. Even if you never use cash. Mostly it's important to have cash on you because your phone may break. Carrying some money on yourself isn't hard, doesn't weight, and in the unlikely chance that you run into a problem, it can help you out.

I think your comment is definitely skewed to a US perspective though, I’ve definitely seen Americans mention like “it’s a nice area but there’s a lot of homeless people” and similar things, which would be a weird thing to say in the UK. However I still agree that even in the Uk there isn’t a lot of care/respect for them sometimes and a lot of people lack empathy for their situation.

People don’t carry cash, 99% of homeless people only accept cash. Therefore it’s bad for them.

Street performers aren’t homeless, they just do that as a job. Homeless people with a card reader isn’t something I’ve seen before but I know it does happen.

Give money to people if you feel like being generous, regardless of what you think they may or may not do with it.

But you do have to pay taxes for gifts over a certain threshold. In a practical sense it only ever applies to things like cars and very expensive items.

My friend, you are far out of date. Many homeless people will take digital currency, because it's harder to get robbed when your money is on the cloud.

Donate that money to charities for the homeless. It’s better spent.

As I’ve said in other threads, I live in the part of the UK with the most homeless people and I have never once seen any of them with a card reader. I’m aware it happens, more commonly in the centre of the city, but at least 99% of them only take cash.

That’s why I said “generally”, there are exceptions of course.

You don't need a card reader since you can just transfer with Cash app Granted, I don't know about the UK's homeless situation but in the US this has definitely been common since I was homeless about 8 years ago

Well yeah, and one of those exceptions is hundreds of dollars worth of tips that you get as part of your income.

Card readers or a smart phone then I should add. Definitely more common that they will have a phone/smartphone but then there is the issue of actually having access to a bank account and card without an address to link it to, plus then keeping the phone charged to spend it. I’ve personally never met a homeless person who’s accepted anything besides cash.

You’re once again talking about the US, tips in the UK aren’t “hundreds of dollars” forming a large part of your income.

The whole benefit of Cash app and similar apps is that they do not require a bank account or an address. Whenever we needed a charge we would either head to the library or one of the public outlets at the park, if not in a shelter somewhere.

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I saw plenty of people with it on the streets there. Some were street preformers but some were just begging.

Yeah like I said, I’m aware it happens, I just haven’t seen it myself yet.

Sorry then maybe I’m confused, how do you spend money from Cash App if you don’t have a card or account? Sure you have the money sat in Cash App but how can you then actually use it?

Cash App isn’t really used at all in the UK so I’m not massively familiar with it.

You get a virtual card number, and they also send you a physical card if you request it nowadays. Typically a shelter will take mail for the homeless, or the post office can hold it for you. NFC payments are in just about every cheap phone now so even that isn't needed anymore.

If you wanted cash you would find someone who had cash on hand and/or a bank account of their own, and simply trade some of the balance for their cash minus a small cut off the top for the trouble. Could also buy something and then sell that for cash. I used to do that with cigarettes. Buy a pack for six bucks sell all 20 for a dollar each since I don't smoke anyway.

Are you saying you can do contactless payments from a Cash App balance on your phone?

That's exactly right

Times are changing, my friend. I work in a city with a very large homeless population (Google Campbell River, B.C. + homeless, if you wish). They were all given cell phones by the city. This may not be true where you live, but it's 2023, homeless people will soon have means of accepting and using digital currencies if they can't already.

Wow that’s actually very useful, I didn’t know that. I’m not sure if shops in the UK accept Cash App Pay as I’ve never seen it and can’t find anything about it online, but definitely very useful to the homeless population in the USA and hopefully something that gets adopted more here.

I hope they will soon have means of utilising digital currencies but majority of them where I live currently don’t so at the moment it is bad for them. It will be potentially beneficial to them when they’re able to utilise it more but where I live it’s currently not the case. I hope it becomes the case of course.

Well, I'm pretty sure cash app recently expanded to the UK and besides it's not the only online payment out there if they take an American Visa card then they will likely take cash app

We primarily use PayPal but I’m not aware of a way to use that to pay in stores either.

Stores tend to accept any major debit/credit cards, and Apple and Google pay.

Here you can simply add your PayPal account to your Google Pay or Apple pay wallet and it just works. It's what I use pretty much every time I'd tap to pay these days

That’s super cool, Googling about that shows only results for PayPal and Google Pay in the US making me think it’s another USA only thing. Just goes to shows there is ways that it can be used to help homeless people they’re just not widespread enough yet I suppose.

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This is by design. When we are finally cashless, it will be the easiest thing for them to snap their fingers and decide we can’t access our “money”. Or you can’t fly on this plane because of your credit score. Or you can’t buy x because you posted x on your social media (that they very much gather data on) and this company doesn’t like that. It’s a harrowing thought

I think it’s going to be easier to distribute stimulus. The government will push people to set up accounts to get access and control stimulus payments.