this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
241 points (95.5% liked)
Privacy
31220 readers
848 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Interestingly enough the €3k is, when converted to USD, almost exactly what I paid for, in cash, to buy my Street Triple a few weeks ago. I was weary of giving a ton of cash to some random stranger, and wanted to do a cashier's check. He didn't know what that was.
This makes me wonder, are cashier's checks considered cash under this rule in the EU?
I had to look up cashier's check and it does not sound familiar at all. But searching a bit further it is a thing that exists, seems to be called Bank Check around here, it's just kind of expensive to use.
It's much more usual to pay in cash or use an account transfer (SEPA transfer) which is usually free, but with the delay of the transfer one of the parties usually takes a risk.
This year, in relation to the rule the post is about, they also forced banks that were dragging their feet to start supporting instant transfers.
I don't ultimately know the answer to your question though. I suspect the banks have to ask you for the origin, as if you turned up with 10k in cash, but I couldn't find anything definitive in the time I was searching around.
Cashier’s checks existed in Belgium a few years ago but I heard they are under fire and will be discontinued at some point.
Personal checks seem to be non-existent but I heard they can be requested but the banks give some resistance and try to steer people away from it. They only work domestically. I think if you gave a Belgian personal check to a Belgian, they would not generally know what to do with it.
Impulsive donations have been relatively killed off because cash donations are banned (I think because scammers impersonate charities). So that leaves check and electronic payment. Oxfam does not (AFAIK) carry payment terminals. Checks would make sense, but they are taboo. So they have to ask for a bank transfer, which gives donors a chance to be lazy and forget about it.
In my experience, charities try to get you on a recurrent donation nowadays instead of taking cash or transfers (although I am in the Netherlands, not Belgium). It's terribly annoying because they take the "being lazy and forget about it" and weaponise it against you.
I get rid of them pretty quickly by saying I have no bank account. I might start adding to that “take cryptocurrency?” so they leave with the idea that maybe they should be open to cryptocurrency.
I can't speak for all European countries, but at least in the Netherlands they're not a thing. We might still have money orders, which are similar, but I've never seen one used.
Instead we can just make instant bank transfers, even using a QR code, which you can generate in your own banking app and can be used with any other bank.