I’m looking to get a card for general spending that’s not tied to any account. Is a gift card the way to go? Are these reloadable?
Don’t say cash - lots of places don’t take cash any more.
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Not sure which country you’re in but in the U.S. I haven’t seen many gift cards that are contactless tap-to-pay so you would want to double-check. Without tap-to-pay those type of cards would need to be added into a phone app (Google Wallet / Apple Pay) to be able to tap-to-pay using it.
It’s possible outside the U.S. it’s more common for gift cards to be able to tap-to-pay.
Or if you’re talking about store gift cards then the same applies, most of those aren’t tap-to-pay either so you’d want to double-check.
Even inside google wallet many are still not tap to pay, the most common one is by barcode scanning + PIN
Thanks. Hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Don’t say cash - lots of places don’t take cash any more.
where do you live?
here, afaik, they’re obliged by law to accept cash
ps: i checked. Cash can be refused only under specific conditions (Dirty, torn, counterfeit, more than 50 pieces &c
Above these
Wat.
I live in a building where these contactless and cashless washing / drying units are provided for residents to clean their clothes.
Around my area, “contactless payment” became further normalised during the initial Covid lockdown (of all the changes to keep, we went with that one 🙄). Many of the smaller businesses seem to prefer it. I suspect it reduces error and effort - fewer errors during the transactions and direct data-to-data conversion in the accounting. I wouldn’t be surprised if it saves them money on insurance, too, as there’s no reason to rob a bunch of debit receipts.
I’m sure you -could- insist on paying with cash, but unless you’re have exact change, it’s not going to be a smooth, unremarkable exchange. And that also defeats the anonymity factor of privacy: they’re definitely going to remember the “weirdo” who insisted on paying cash, who argued about your sign being illegal, and then the PITA it was to find them change.
Don’t get me wrong, I make an effort to dominantly use cash. And I also recognise there are some places I either have to accept I can’t use cash (my pharmacy, which talks to my insurance, so moot point anyway), or have to find an alternative that does take cash (my favorite ramen place, RIP).
Probably these: https://usa.visa.com/pay-with-visa/cards/prepaid-cards.html
That’s for the US. I don’t know about other regions.
Are these private friendly? I would assume that an ID would still be made on you based on purchases.
You can typically pick them up the the grocery store or something and load them up. And then reload them.
People don’t take cash anymore? Where do you live?
