It's significantly more complicated because there's a protocol and negotiation involved.
If I want to give you $1, I hold my hand out and there it is. I can literally stuff it into your back pocket. You're not involved in the exchange, there is no exchange.
We can even do it UDP style - imagine that I check out of a hotel room and leave a dollar on the bedside table for the room staff. There's not even an ack.
By contrast this involves me asking if you have an iPhone, and then asking if it has this feature, and then we both get them out, and then I type in an amount, and then we tap. We'll just assume that it works perfectly first time. Maybe you need data, maybe you don't. It's not everywhere, basement of a bar, long distance train comes to mind.
It's not rocket science, sure, but it's way more complicated.
In the UK I can send payments using online banking. If I already know the payment details of the recipient, then sending a transfer is approximately the same level of convenience as cash e.g. I just choose the amount and press send. But the initial setup is far more onerous.
It's only simpler if you're a cash refusenik for whatever reason and so you first inject the whole "well then I had to go to an ATM". The equivalent would be like me saying "well first I had to get an iPhone", obviously that would be unfair.
The user doesn't know that any of that stuff is going on, though, and you don't need data for this to work.
It's not anywhere near as complicated as you're making it out to be. Those saying "I had to go to an ATM" are simply voicing a legitimate downside of cash that this doesn't have because you only have to get an iPhone once whereas you have to go to an ATM/bank every time you need cash.
I'm at your house and I've just done a thing for you. You want to give me some money.
This is the protocol: "Hi, can I pay you for this?" "Sure." "Do you have an iPhone?" "Yes." "Okay, here you go." <writes numbers in, taps phone>.
This is assuming I actually have one. Otherwise you have to do a fallback method.
Contrast with the protocol for cash:
<reaches into pocket, counts out $x, hands over $x>.
It's the same amount of effort as the very final step of the other protocol.
There is no fallback here because I can guarantee that I have cash.
The whole thing is just obviously overcomplicated. If you like cards and phones and stuff because they're techy, that's cool man. I like tech too.
But it's utterly false that they're somehow simpler or more convenient. They work in some specific golden paths whereas the only case in which cash doesn't work is online.
The whole ATM problem you're describing is also super contrived, you may as well say that baked beans are difficult to eat because every time you eat one you need to buy one. Well sure, but you don't buy them one by one do you.
And it's not as if the only place a person gets cash is an ATM, everyone who I pay or who pays me has just gotten cash from.... not an ATM.
I dunno man, whatever, this is just a really weird thread in general, it's like you're treating cash as this magical archaic thing Grandad used to use when to me it's an integrated part of my everyday life.
Is this one of those "Cus COVID" things that don't actually make rational sense but apparently loads of people do it now just "Cus"?
If I want to give you $1, I hold my hand out and there it is. I can literally stuff it into your back pocket. You're not involved in the exchange, there is no exchange.
We can even do it UDP style - imagine that I check out of a hotel room and leave a dollar on the bedside table for the room staff. There's not even an ack.
By contrast this involves me asking if you have an iPhone, and then asking if it has this feature, and then we both get them out, and then I type in an amount, and then we tap. We'll just assume that it works perfectly first time. Maybe you need data, maybe you don't. It's not everywhere, basement of a bar, long distance train comes to mind.
It's not rocket science, sure, but it's way more complicated.
In the UK I can send payments using online banking. If I already know the payment details of the recipient, then sending a transfer is approximately the same level of convenience as cash e.g. I just choose the amount and press send. But the initial setup is far more onerous.
It's only simpler if you're a cash refusenik for whatever reason and so you first inject the whole "well then I had to go to an ATM". The equivalent would be like me saying "well first I had to get an iPhone", obviously that would be unfair.