Yup, I keep a fair amount of cash on hand at home in case there's some kind of mass outage so I can at least get essentials to last until power is restored. Oh, and I also use it for my kids' allowance and for baby sitters, but I have larger denominations as well in case of emergencies.

That said, I have been considering using cash more often because I really don't like all the tracking that already goes on, and I certainly don't want the government having that data as well. But cash is super inconvenient because of small change, so I haven't made the switch yet. If we could get rid of the small change and just round prices a bit, I would seriously consider going back to cash.

It already happened in Ukraine during the NotPetya attack by Russia in 2017

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Ukraine_ransomware_attacks

The risk of the payment system getting shut down and people being unable to make payments for a while is real. And it is one good reason to be less reliant on digital payments.

Or entities. The USA had a brief oil crisis recently because one of the major pipeline companies had their billing system hacked. Since the company couldn't verify whether someone had paid, they just didn't supply any oil.

Couple that with some misleading news stories and social media panic, and it blew up into a proper shortage from people hoarding all the petrol, and leaving none left.

Having that data for every citizen of a country could enable efficient profiling of people in the country using big data analysis technologies.

You don't need an external actor for that, a government can very well do that to their citizens...

I don't like using cashless anything because I know part of the cost is my privacy. Having said that, convenience is a powerful draw and cash can be a pain, especially when you have to find a spot for small coins.

It's largely a non-issue in the Nordic countries as you basically have to voluntarily opt out of any government aid programs to be homeless, which understandably most don't. This goes for most, if not all, vulnerable groups; most of the help is decently robust, at least enough to keep you fed and in housing. So I don't think it's a very large portion of the consideration, almost everything is paid via mobile pay, checks (any, not just from working) are all done digitally as well.

In Germany any EU resident has a right to a basic account, in case you're homeless you should have an address because you're in a shelter, if you insist on sleeping rough (or the municipality is just too fucked up, happens in places) you can give the address of a social work organisation (those are all over also doing debtor counselling and a lot of other stuff).

Only valid reason for a bank to refuse basic business is if you tried to defraud them. They don't have to give you a credit line, but they do have to accept your money, store it, and let you wire it (incl. POS payments etc).

Identity fraud is not an issue because they'll want to see a proper ID which, if you're legally in the country, you have.

It's less about paying, though, you can always pay with cash in Germany, it's about the welfare authorities not wanting to handle cash and cheques only if actually necessary.

Woot! It's been a while since I looked into Taler, but I've long held that we should be using it or something like it for digital transactions. I'd love a browser extension that compensates creators for removing ads, for example, and I think this would be a fantastic way to do it. But having it at a national level is even better!