No more cash payments for Slovak Telekom

[Mercado4]

So I am in Slovakia for a few months re: family issues. I needed to get a SIM cad, so I checked the market. There are 4 main providers here - Orange, O2, Telekom (ex T-Mobile) and 4ka. All of them offer pre-paid plans but the costs they quoted me were quite high - as much as Euro 0.10 - 0.12 per minute to call - more info here: Slovakia. However, to get a postpaid plan was a bit of an issue as I am a foreigner. Having been turned down 3 times, I finally convinced Slovak Telekom to get me a postpaid plan. Everything unlimited for EU32 a month. Of course I needed to show my passport.

However, the truly interesting thing which was not mentioned during the purchase, is that they do not accept payment in cash. My invoice says:
Payable via bank e-transfer, QR code, or credit card.

So no cash.

This post is just FYI as the global digital rule is slowly creeping up on us step by step.

Slovak Telekom is a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

For comparison, I have recently (6 months ago) visited Spain and was able to get a 15 EU SIM card for 30 days of unlimited calls, SMS - anywhere in Europe - and 150 GB data. No ID
required and cash payment OK. The provider is LEBARA.

Cheers

 

[JohnnyDoe]

I think it has to do with their accounting system, no big brother plan in this case.

 

[Mercado4]

I think it has to do with their accounting system, no big brother plan in this case.

That is entirely possible, I do not know how Deutsche Telekom does its accounting. However, the end result is the same.

 

[JohnnyDoe]

That is entirely possible, I do not know how Deutsche Telekom does its accounting. However, the end result is the same.

Accounting for low value high volume sales in cash is an expensive nightmare. The waste of time and resources from the moment cash is put on the desk is enormous: check the bills. Put them in the drawer. Write a receipt. Store the receipt. Count the cash again at shift end. Reconcile drawer versus receipts. Investigate discrepancies that are almost always human error. Fill out the cash log. Bag the cash. Secure it. Transport it or schedule pickup. Risk loss, theft, or simple miscount on the way. Hand it over. Count it again with a second person watching. Sign off. Deposit it. Wait for bank confirmation. Pay cash handling fees. Deal with rejected or suspicious bills. Answer compliance questions. Match the bank deposit to the internal cash report. Match the internal cash report to individual receipts. Post aggregated entries into accounting. Allocate VAT or sales tax line by line. Archive paper receipts. Store them for years. Retrieve them when one goes missing. Explain why a ten euro difference exists three months later. Book adjusting entries. Close the period. Do it again tomorrow.

Credit cards make it much simpler, at least on the surface. I’m not sure if less expensive though.

Crypto fixes it.

 

[Mercado4]

Good answer.

A few points though.

It is all well and good to outline the cost of handling cash. I completely agree with your points. In fact, that was my pitch some 20 years ago when my startup built a cell phone based payment system (2005) so the good old Nokia phones and similar were used and iPhone was quite a few years away.

We enabled the very first cell phone payment in North America for on street parking. Per our consultants, accountants for large cities or parking conglomerates, the cost of handling the cash in context of parking operations was anywhere between 18% and 25% of the total collected. This was due to the all the points you outline plus the fact that collecting cash from parking meters, which are all over the city, represents an extra cost. And there is of course, theft.

At the same time though, the mode of payment accepted should be a choice of the vendor, not of the government nor big corporations. I leave it up to a reader to decide whether there is much difference between the last two.

In Canada, there is a proposed bill - C2 Understanding the Strong Borders Act (Bill C-2) - Canada.ca - that would OUTLAW any payment over CAD$10,000 (est. US$7,100). See here - Opinion: Why does Ottawa want to put cash out of business?

Canada is well on its way to become a police state and IMO this is just one of many steps leading there. While I am happy to have left Canada a few years ago, it still makes me unhappy to see its gradual descend into a dictatorship. This includes any attempts to remove cash as a mode of payment. Whether it is Deutsche Telekom or a Montreal's bagel shop.

The choice ought to be exclusively with the vendors.


Cheers

 

[JohnnyDoe]

The choice ought to be exclusively with the vendors.

Totally agree.
Last time I checked cash was not (yet) illegal in Europe: each country has its stupid low limit.
There was a time when NOT accepting cash was punished with a death sentence.

 

[dimacmiles]

Totally agree.
Last time I checked cash was not (yet) illegal in Europe: each country has its stupid low limit.
There was a time when NOT accepting cash was punished with a death sentence.

Probably around the same time where there was an official exchange rate for exchanging money for gold.

The same time that they paraded gold on train tracks to make it seem like they had enough gold for everyone.

Just before fractional banking and fake currency/cash took over.

Before the husband used to be able to provide for his wife and family of 5 children.

Now wives need to work 9-5 and we need mortgages to fund a poorly built house.

Standards of living dropping steadily.

Families rarely have 3+ kids.

Never forget what they stole from us.