Japan to start stamping out rubber stamps and tearing up faxes as new digital agency given Sept. 1 start date Japan has passed laws that will allow it to create a new Agency to lead a national digital transformation effort. The nation has already introduced an identifier called “My Number”. The new plan calls for My Number to be recognised across national and local governments and to merge with other identifiers like health insurance …
a few years ago while we were passing through Los Angeles, my wife saw a pay wave terminal at the shop we were buying stuff from & just wafted her (australian) credit card over it to pay. The cashier seemed to have a brain meltdown - she’d never seen it before let alone known her machine could do it.
I look after a business that collects income related to a contract a charity has with a local farmer.
I've been raising invoices twice a year for the past six years, all of which include include details and instructions for electronic payment, but the agent still insists on paying by cheque. Cheques are a real pain, as the bank makes it very hard to pay them in by post and a trip to the nearest branch wastes about an hour of my time - last trip required me to wait outside for 20 minutes in the rain "for social distancing" (there were three people inside a branch the size of a sports hall).
I thought this might change during the pandemic, especially as I added "Due to the ongoing Covid pandemic, electronic payment would be appreciated" in 1.5cm high, red text. Even that failed to make a difference :-( I don't get why a business wouldn't jump at the chance of paying electronically.
A friend of mine was in a similar situation a few years back, almost everyone had switched to paying electronically, which they'd been encouraging for a few years. All except a couple of companies, one used a cheque, the other put cash in an envelope!
Their solution was to add a surcharge to non electronic payments, to cover administration costs.
>I suggested this to the accountant, but I was told it would not be legal.
Ask the accountant for the legal basis.
I suspect you merely need to amend the terms of supply/conditions of sale to include an admin fee.
Various companies I've been involved with have been charging an admin fee of 12% since the 1980's additionally, they included an interest clause for late payments...
Businesses holding out with cheques do so for one of two reasons; either wee Mary in accounts doesn't know how to modernise and has heard scare stories or more likely because they know it'll take you longer to cash it - if at all - meaning the money stays in their account longer or indeed indefinitely.
See Spotify et al.
Only stopped due to a campaign along the lines of "What about people without smart phones"
It wasn't quite that simple, but there's lots of history at https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/information-hub. Cheques are here to stay, but processing of them is now done by electonic image.
Barcleys allow this. I'm a chip and sign user due to my dyslexia, and run a business. The first thing you have to do to setup the app? Choose a 5 digit number.
I asked why they think I can remember a 5 digit number when they accept I can't remember a 4 digit pin, and their reply "It's not a PIN, it's a passcode".
Yes, they honestly told me that as it's got a different title, that should be enough to over come my inability to remember numbers in the right order :(
It's as helpful as asking someone if they have tried not to be ill?
Using words would mean I don't just have to now get the letters right in the word (and in the right order) but to also beable to count them.. which means writing them down so I can count them. I might as well just carry the PIN written with me.
... and my local branch has closed. But I found that Post Office counters would take it[1]; basically you get a specially printed envelope, write on your a/c number etc, and put the cheque in it. They send it off and eventually the money appears. I hope.
[1] This might depend on your bank; I'm not sure.
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Yeah, it's not easy if you want to collect donations. I was looking into this for a local charity, and the best I could find for card payments was no monthly charges with something like a 1.7% transaction fee v 0.3% for cash (with a minimum of £3).
My (soon to be ex) business bank charges more for cheques than electronic credits*. New one does everything "for free" (except cash).
* I always thought it was a right con being charged £0.25 for an electronic credit - surely that should be covered by the general account administration charge as it doesn't (well, shouldn't) cost extra for the processing?
Thankfully card payments are much easier now that the market is flooded with options like SumUp, Zettle etc.
The likes of WorldPay have been fleecing businesses for far too long... pay ridiculous sums up front for the terminal (which you then still have to return after the contract ends!), pay every month whether you take payments or not, pay a large chunk of the transaction value, handle all the PCI compliance stuff etc etc.
We only switched to SumUp a few months ago but so far it's been a night and day difference... even their most expensive terminal with data SIM was about 1/3 of the cost of the WorldPay one we had, no standing charges, only ongoing cost is the very reasonable percentage of each transaction. Refunds etc are free, payment comes through to bank pretty quickly too.
back in the 1990s when I ran a "small" business (lots of $10-$30 transactions) in New Zealand the effective bank cut using cards and terminals was 30% (terninal rental, premium number charge, percentage cut AND a transaction fee)
If you think that's bad, they charged $2 per cheque handled AND cash handling fees as well as stinging business accounts similar amounts for direct debits and inwards BACS transfers. It effectively wasn't worth letting customers pay less than $30 even if they wanted to do so
>Any other type of transaction costs us money: Hire or purchase of card reader, % of transaction, connection to the internet. So why go digital?
Don't operate an online fundraising platform?
[ https://fundraising.co.uk/2018/02/09/round-up-low-cost-no-cost-fundraising-platforms/ ]
Whilst they will charge a % they will also handle the tax rebate on donations...
When articles appear saying that Japan, assumed as one of the most technically advanced nations, is still dependent on paperwork, rubber stamps, faxes and couriers, to run their daily lives. That probably explains Fujitsu.
Also, if I remember, isn’t it lawyers in the US that are the only reason why there is still a typewriter manufacturer somewhere? Oilyvetti perhaps?
Decades ago I was a consultant for the Department of Defense and I had a rubber CLASSIFIED stamp. Any piece of paper that I stamped became officially classified (my boss had the SECRET stamp so I couldn't run amok).
Rubber stamps are going out of favor but embossed seal stamps are still a thing.
"When articles appear saying that Japan, assumed as one of the most technically advanced nations, is still dependent on paperwork, rubber stamps, faxes and couriers,"
Much of it has to do with the complexity of their written language which is much easier (for a Japanese speaker) to read when their subset of Chinese characters are present. Until relatively recently computers did Kanji (Chinese characters) poorly if at all. So the Japanese evolved a modern office/business culture that made a lot more use of handwritten material than Europeans are used to.
Not necessarily better or worse. Just different.
BTW, I saw a Kanji capable Japanese typewriter once back in the 1970s. It looked to be a mechanical wonder. But I'm not sure any sane person would want to use it.
>When articles appear saying that Japan, assumed as one of the most technically advanced nations
By those who have never been there...
Back in the early 90's it was known that whilst most of the western world had extensive cash machine networks and most shops accepted cards; Japan cash was king and using your plastic typically meant a visit to a bank, the completion of lots of paper forms and their inspection by numerous levels of clerks before you finally received your cash... The laugh I had was at no point was my card actually read electronically.
In Spain we have a National identity number which is linked to health and most other things, in Spain it works fine, if I lived in the UK I would trust any government to not take liberties with it.
Banking here generally works smoothly, even old farmers in the rural area I live in, will pay by contactless card.
As for cheques, the only time we really use them is for a ' porta d'or', translates more or less to 'carrying gold' you just take it to the branch where the issuer banks and they pay you the cash value, no questions other than showing you ID number.
On the news in Japan last night, the vaccines are finally starting to roll out, and the paper form for recording vaccinations comes with a standard 1D barcode and the serial number printed below. There is an iPad-like tablet for reading the code, but 1. the autofocus doesn't work correctly half the time and 2. the app actually ignores the barcode and tries to read the serial number below, which also fails another half of the time because autofocus isn't correct or otherwise dodgy OCR code.
The government fix is to send out aluminium stands so that the tablet can be placed the regulation 7.5 cm away from the form.
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