Why is your default to disallow it? I understand there is the interest of society and all in preventing crime but a reporting requirement like in the US would do the exact same thing and produce useful intelligence instead of just making all large cash transactions go underground.
It's not rare, happens every day. How else are you going to buy it from another private person safely? You want to have an instant transaction. You give somebody money and get a car, thats the safest transaction for both sides. Are you going to wire somebody 10k+ for a car you can't have instantly? (note real time bank transactions are only now becoming a real widespread thing around here in Germany)
> How else are you going to buy it from another private person safely?
SEPA transfers take 30 seconds to clear.
> You give somebody money and get a car
or you give them the money and get back nothing, because "what money are you talking about?"
> thats the safest transaction for both sides
that's literally the less safe!
> Are you going to wire somebody 10k+ for a car you can't have instantly?
If you are buying something worth more than 10k and you need it now, something's obviously not right.
Keep in mind that to actually have more than 10k cash immediately available it means you only deal with cash and keep them somewhere they are less safe than a bank or cost you a lot more than a bank.
Which, again, is already very suspicious.
And no, it's not about regular people, median account balance in Germany is less than 5.000 euros but suddenly there's a need to pay 10k in cash to buy cars that you need right now and you casually had the money in your pocket, because it's a common thing to do.
not entirely true, there are several countries in europe in which a SEPA transfer is shown in the beneficiary the next day, the most famous one being Italy.
Italy also being the one with specific laws against mafia and terrorism, therefore such transfer would require you to add some additional papers.
> > thats the safest transaction for both sides
> that's literally the less safe!
well so it's a bank transfer because once the money has been sent you cannot get it back, the bank acts only on specific cases.
there's literally a million of cases of scams via ebay or similar that involved bank transfers and for which the bank was just "sorry".
> If you are buying something worth more than 10k and you need it now, something's obviously not right.
you are confusing "out of the ordinary" with "not right" and i'd like to remind you our legal systems in EU are still based on "innocent until proven guilty" principle.
I don't think I have ever paid for anything over a few hundred in cash. Criminalising the use of cash seems a bit authoritarian, but I don't think there is any legitimate reason to pay for anything in cash with that amount that couldn't be done by a BACS transfer.
In the UK you have to register with HMRC under money laundering supervision regulations if you are a business or trader that takes in cash payments over 10,000 euro.
If I'm transferring €10k to someone I don't want it to be anonymous. I want to know who got my money so I can go after them if it turns out to be fraudulent.
It's free in most EU countries. I've never paid for a bank transfer. The third party doing the transaction gives me some protection that I wouldn't otherwise have.
Can't argue against the anonymous part of it but when the transaction is between me, the seller and the bank, I'm not sure why it would need to be anonymous.
unless you print the money at home, it always gonna involve three parties.
I believe that by anonymous you meant secret.
It's not anonymous, the person who sold the item already learned a lot of things about you and you about the buyer, including your faces and what was the transaction about, which is often more than enough to identify people.
What difference does it makes if the bank knows about the transaction?
And why you wanna hide it from the bank?
There's probably a good reason, but it raises more questions than it's worth, so the reason must be veeeeeery good.
Do you not think that straight up robbing somebody requires a different level of commitment than fraud?
The guy using a fake app to pretend that they didn't receive a wire transfer isn't going to end up in a fight, the guy robbing someone of their cash might.
Not only that, bank transfers do not protect you from robbery. You can be forced to make a wire transfer, just as you can be forced to hand over cash.
I don't know what kind of prehistoric banking system exists in the US, but that just won't happen. The buyer has a bank transfer id and both parts can check the status with their bank.
There are also instant transfers that cost around 1€ of fixed commissions. They complete in about ten seconds after which the other side can check their account and the money will be there.
And finally you can use a money order if you really don't want to do a bank transfer and prefer paper.
>I don't know what kind of prehistoric banking system exists in the US
I wouldn't know, given that I am European.
> The buyer has a bank transfer id and both parts can check the status with their bank.
Generally there is no quick and easy way to verify that the beneficiary has actually received their funds.
>There are also instant transfers that cost around 1€ of fixed commissions. They complete in about ten seconds after which the other side can check their account and the money will be there.
So what? There are lots of banks which do not support instant transfers, sometimes instant transfer money just doesn't show up instantly and there's very little visibility that end-users would have into that.
How could that work? There's no way to tell if the sender or recipient is being dishonest.
Another common scam involves the buyer using a fake bank app to pay for goods, seller sees the money transferred right in front of them but never receives it.
> In what circumstances have you or someone you known ever needed to pay for something over €10k in cash?
Anyone involved in the construction business.
But yeah, if you're a wage slave in the tertiary sector, you're very unlikely to realize how and why cash is necessary or even a matter of survival for a large class of workers out there.
Why not a BACS or any other type of bank transfer for that industry/sector? It sounds like a good way to do tax evasion if you just take cash in hand payments.
I know someone in Switzerland who bought a car in cash, 12x 1k chf notes.
If you're paying for a big-ish shop, e.g. over 100chf, the major supermarkets won't blink if you proffer a 1k note because that's how the older generation get their pension. I've personally paid for about 20chf worth of stuff with a 200 note.
And why do you need to justify that something should be made illegal just because your personal circumstances don't include it as an experience in your life? Unless something is explicitly (or sometimes implicitly) harmful to others, it should not be banned just because you don't live it. Part of even a basic respect for un individual freedoms means not automatically trying to ban things that don't rigidly fit a common notion of how you "should" live.
I'm still not sure who buys a car that expensive with cash, seems sketchy, inconvenient and unsafe. I wouldn't take cash if someone wanted to pay me that much, in fact someone did, they paid me for a contract with $5000 in used 20s and it was really fucked up, I didn't know how to get it into a bank or use it for anything without setting off alarms.
Cash is king. If you are buying a non running classic car and have a tow vehicle and trailer ready you can drive a hard bargain in the moment.
Suggesting laborious bureaucratic transactions over several days removes this common occurrence in that world, along with at many other gatherings of specialists - antiques, pedigree animals, whatever
"Cash is king. If you are buying a non running classic car and have a tow vehicle and trailer ready you can drive a hard bargain in the moment."
If I send a 10k payment to someone via bank transfer it's in their bank account in 10 seconds. Maybe you live in a country where there are much harsher restrictions?
I live in the US and UK/Europe. The vast majority of older people at a swap meet or similar are not going to trust smartphone app transactions. Cash is king.
They don't trust a smartphone app provided by their banking provider but they trust a random bloke they've never met with 10k in their back pocket. Right. Makes sense.
Scenario one - Person A bank transfers Person B $10,000 for their classic car at the car show. Person A leaves, and then several days later the money is clawed back from Person B's account as it turns out it was sent from a stolen/compromised account. They now have no money and no car.
Scenario two - Person A gives Person B $10,000 in cash for their classic car at the car show. Person A leaves, and Person B could give a shit about anything to do with Person A as soon as they are out of sight.
It is about speed. If someone offers 10k in cash and someone talk about wire transfer blahblah, sellers will always prefer the buyer just paying in cash.
If they pay by transfer they can charge back, the bank might cancel for some credit reasons, might flag it as they want to verify first why it was made, and so on. Cash is problem free if you live in a low crime area.
I do myself all higher priced purchases in cash, even go to the bank and withdraw the money to go to the shop next door. For the same reason I use a VPN. My provider and my bank have no right know what I do or not do.
I'm always taking the wire transfer any day of the week. Nowadays, I generally straight up refuse payment in cash. Far too much of a hassle to handle. I think there is a major cultural divide between some parts of Europe and the USA on this subject which is partially due to how behind its time the USA banking system used to be.
I bought a somewhat rare car with cash several years ago. The seller had a buyer lined up across the country (and showed me evidence), but said that if I could bring him cash he’d sell it to me instead. I went to the bank, brought him an envelope of $100 bills, and it was mine.
The seller can turn around and spend the cash instantly, anywhere, whereas the cashier’s check takes at least a day to clear, and in theory the bank could hold the funds for some period of time while it investigated the transaction for fraud. https://www.helpwithmybank.gov/help-topics/bank-accounts/cas...
Why? Just take it to the bank and give them the envelope(s). That's not a large amount of money to a bank. They drop it in a counting machine, and it blitzes through that amount in a few seconds.
It's probably a good idea to have some reasonable amount of cash on hand for times when electronic payments aren't available for whatever reason (natural disasters, for example).
