Monthly Archives: February 2023

Three ways to pay. Only one of them respects your privacy.

Fareshares has been cash-based since it started, and the majority of payments are still made in cash. For a few years now, people have also been paying by bank transfer, and recently we also acquired the means to accept payment by bank card.

Now we are asking you to continue to pay in cash, please.

Cash is private. When you hand over cash, it’s just between us. There are no third parties involved. There’s no collection and sale of data, no profiling, no surveillance.

Cash is tangible. When you hand it over, you know how much you’ve paid, and how much you have left.

And cash is resilient. When infrastructure fails, you can still buy your food.

As a self-organised, decentralised collective, we support the direct, unsurveilled, unmediated, autonomous transactions that cash enables.

We support, defend and prefer cash.

We want cash services to continue to be available, and to be available they have to be used. If nobody withdraws cash, the cash machine will be closed. If fewer people pay cash in, the fees for handling cash will go up. It’s use it or lose it.

So please use cash.

Thanks!

Top 20 reasons why cash matters

A note on card payments…. The financial sector successfully lobbied government to make it illegal to pass on what it costs us to receive a card payment. So if you do pay Fareshares by card, please be kind enough to add at least the 1.6% the transaction is costing us, and if you can add a donation as well (which can be easily forgotten when you’re not paying in cash).

A note on bank transfers…. We provide our bank details in the shop, so if you have a mobile device with a banking app on it, you can set us up as a beneficiary there and then. Please show the shift volunteer that the payment has been made successfully. Bank transfers have the advantage of being cost-free.