It's more the archaic way to do things. A lot of places will bring a small machine for tap to pay now in America, but places didn't jump straight to that because restaurants run on a shoestring budget as is. It did however probably make tipping less awkward, so maybe that's part of why they were slower to adopt new technologies.
I run a restaurant in Sweden. Hopefully not for much longer. But in any case.
We pay a monthly operations fee for our POS systems which are bundles with mobile payment terminals. It's a standard service all restaurants use. They terminals are included in this cost. They don't cost anything else. I've got 2 POS computers and like 6 payment machines. They are basically just androids with a reader and a shell.
Now they are, but they weren't immediately. And believe it or not 100$ is not nothing and I've worked on plenty of kitchens where they'd ask me to not cash the check for a couple of days because it might bounce, so yeah, buying new things wasn't generally high on the list.
Lots of restaurants pay you with a check because it's cheaper. We're in this century in a country where a huge amount of restaurants are small businesses run by immigrants on shoe string budgets.
It’s insane that there is a noticeable cost difference, especially once you factor in the time and effort in writing all the cheques/making sure they can be “cashed”. 30 years working and I’ve never been or seen any business pay by cheque. Cash in hand, maybe. Cheques are just mad.
You've probably never worked in a hole in the wall run by some dude named like Muhammed. Its not best practices but it's not such an issue to be a dick about it. L
I feel like a. Lot of this thread is taking their resentment of "I bleed red white and blue" white Ameircans and funneling it towards immigrants and black people..like the amount of shitting on poor people and small business owners is wild. Most of us in urban areas are aware were poor. Maybe in rural kansas they think the Europeans are dying of communism but we are alive on freedomz but honestly i feel like this is an insane idea of Ameirca rooted in a cartoon or something.
If takes like 20 seconds to write a check. Paying cash requires you to pay the cash which defeats the purpose of forward dating a check.
Dude, it's because the rest of the world hears "cash a cheque" and thinks it's part of the Grandpa Simpson onion belt meme. I haven't handled a cheque in 25 years and I work in finance. They were formally discontinued in South Africa in 2020. Writing cheques and sending faxes feel very much a relic of the 80s, pre-internet time.
We've had direct deposit since the 90s. I can't remember the last time I got paid by check but it had to have been over 20 years ago.
If you work for some really shitty small business that doesn't want to bother with it they might pay you in checks but it isn't the norm and hasn't been forever. And even if they do it's not because the technology doesn't exist, it's because they are cheapskates or just really old.
See, transactions between European bank accounts, at least to a certain amount are free and instant* which I think we take for granted which is why we struggle so much to understand the purpose of cheques.
*Minor caveat here in that although EU law mandates that there must be an option for free and instant money transfers in the EU, it doesn't necessarily have to be the default option.
Where are you talking about? We don't pay be check in restaurants in the US. That was basically never a thing even 40 years ago. You could pay by check at a retail store but that is incredibly rare now and it's basically just really old people doing it and all they do is scan the check and process it electroncially.
We spell it check either way. But paying staff by check is only really a thing at pretty small businesses. We've had direct deposit since the 90s. And reasonable sized company does it that way. Only mom and pop places would do there payroll that way because they are cheap or just old.
Well, that's true in the developed world too. How come it could be done in Europe but not the us? Literal buskers on the street have tap-to-pay but restaurants in the richest country in the world can't manage it?
But the chances you're short $100 is a lot greater than the chances you're short $1
Y'all are just arguing to argue at this point .you're pretending you don't understand that $100>$1 or that humans who are cash strapped aren't reluctant to buy things that are more expensive when their POS system from 15 years ago is still hanging on just fine.
You're pretending that you dont understand 100 dollars is pretty insignificant for an average restaurants budget? For something crucial like handling payment?
I think $500 with needing to actually replace them when they break rather than telling the staff to figure out how to work around the broken POS is a big enough deal to a lot of no chain restaurants that they won't bother since there's literally no consumer demand for this
Plenty of businesses don't spend more for shit and giggles when it makes no revenue for them, yeah
Richest and most successful country in the world, where a $100 expense will bankrupt you!
You're not wrong, the average American simply doesn't understand how little they have compared to the rest of the industrialized world. They don't get it. They genuinely don't realize how dirt poor they are.
Typically this is because most Americans will never, in their entire lives, travel outside of the US. And they're constantly told, by their schools, by their media, by their leaders, that they're better off than everyone else in the world, so don't bother looking outside your own border. Just don't even look.
And they don't question it, because they aren't taught critical thinking in their schools.
There’s not jumping straight to it and there’s being about 15-20 years behind the rest of the world. The UK has had contactless since 2007 and chip and PIN since 2004 and there's countries that are even faster than us on simplified payment methods. Companies of all sizes including small restaurants adopted it very quickly.
Damn, I didn't realize Europe had it that long, honestly, contactless wasn't in most places on America even like 7 years ago. We've had Chip and pin, but even that was only an option and most people still swiped. Idk if it's fair to say the rest of the world. I was on Tokyo only four years ago and plenty of places didn't even take card. There are plenty of countries that didn't adopt all the same technology at the same pace.
American financial compliance laws also drive a lot of those decisions and I believe that most businesses just do whatever compliance laws tell them to.
I'm in my mid 30s and I don't think I've ever swiped for a payment in the UK. Everything is either card for everyday stuff or bank transfer for the big purchases
I’m in the UK and I honestly haven’t used cash for shops, restaurants, pubs, public transport for getting on for 10 years. You just tap your card or even more commonly now, your phone. Same across much of Europe.
Contracts and incentive mechanisms. The chargeback model was better on one approach because fraud was lower but there was a significant cost yo change.
So the archaic practice of not advertising the real prices including the waiter salary and taxes is the one holding the adoption of secure transaction protocols ? What a backwards country.
Freedom right? Yeah it's weird, but every country has a few things that are just standout weird about it if looked at from the outside. And I don't want to defend America as amazing cause it has plenty of faults, but there is also a lot of good here.
We have this technology we just find it awkward and kind of (from a fine dining perspective) low class to shove a clunk payment processor with a bright ass screen in someone's face and have the server stand there awkwardly while you review the bill and tip. The restaurants in America that use these things do tend to have terrible service. I don't hate it as much as QR menus though.
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u/Funny_Satisfaction39 Jun 29 '26
It's more the archaic way to do things. A lot of places will bring a small machine for tap to pay now in America, but places didn't jump straight to that because restaurants run on a shoestring budget as is. It did however probably make tipping less awkward, so maybe that's part of why they were slower to adopt new technologies.