Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

I think open payment systems, letting people just tap their credit/debit card, would the logical evolution. Anything else has too many issues.

I'm not in that demographic, but there is a demographic of people who don't have cards. Probably more in the US, less in Canada, and almost zero in NZ ("the unbanked"). Come to think of it, I do not remember seeing any payday lending in NZ, but that's a different topic.

In Auckland it is impossible to get on the bus and pay cash. You can take the train (another reason trains > buses unless you are actually doing LRT right) but you can't take the bus. This can be really annoying; with open payment less so, unless you don't have a credit/debit card.

Probably these days if we went to China we'd all be in the "unbanked" category, with the prevalence of electronic payments...

Travelling can definitely put one in the "unbanked" category based on how prevalent visa/MC  is in the country you're travelling to. While the Netherlands is heavily digitized for banking (some checkouts don't accept cash, I think self checkouts also only accept cards, and some entire stores also only accept cards, no cash at all) Visa is not ubiquitous. Many restaurants, stores, and even the entire major grocery chain Albert Heijn accepts only Maestro, the equivalent of Interac.

So if you travel to the Netherlands, from Canada or the US, best to bring cash because a lot of places won't accept visa (and frankly, don't advertise that fact at all).

Fortunately, most transit seems to take visa as well even on buses which is very cool, but I've never tried cash for transit.

And while the country has a famous and mostly excellent national fare card for transit, they are transitioning to using a visa (or maestro) payment card for the same purpose with the same universality, which is, frankly on brand for the country's generally excellently integrated infrastructure, they're even doing a nice thing where you'll be both able to access your transit records online for your visa card, and also billing you at EOD for your days total so that it's clearer how much you pay (rather than having a hold, and debit, and a credit every time you transfer between transit vehicles).