Money

(crossposted from !cash)

From the EU payment services directive 3 proposal:

● Provisions concerning cash withdrawals
Operators of retail stores are exempted from the requirement for a payment institution license when they offer cash withdrawal services without a purchase on their premises (on a voluntary basis), if the amount of cash distributed does not exceed EUR 50, in line with the need to avoid unfair competition with ATM deployers.

^ That proposal is from 2023. Anyone know if it has been implemented?

Searching eur-lex.europa.eu is a disaster. I could not find any docs on any successors to this proposal, or whether it was implemented.

Blocking shops from offering a decent amount of cashback is shitty. But it’s also shitty how one ATM cartel is killing off competing independent ATMs in each country. It would make more sense to allow shops to offer large cashback amounts (they usually only have small amounts anyway), but then limit the number of ATMs per bank in each region so more independent operators can compete.

(cross-posted from !cash)

Albert Hein has removed their ATMs in Amsterdam. I don’t think the machines were part of the Geldmaat cartel, so this move reduces ATM diversity and empowers the Geldmaat’s monopolizing stranglehold… makes the data collection more centralised. You are extra fucked when Geldmaat rejects your card because in some cities you have no other kind of ATM to try.

Some Spar locations previously had a quite generous cashback service. You could pay by card and get back as much as €150. It’s unclear if it’s just one Spar location that has cut this option off or if all of them. The generous cashback policy got me through the door. I would buy snacks and drinks I don’t really need just for the cashback service. It was a refuge from the ATM shit-show. If the whole Spar chain quit cashback, it would be cool if thousands of people would approach the register with a basket of food, ask for cashback, and abandon the food when refused. I wonder how many people would need to do that to create the perception that they are losing sales over the change.