Exchanging value between two economical entities using pieces of paper seems crazy when you have better ways.
Try to explain buying with cash in 200 years to someone who never seen it.
What if I need to pay just a little, do I tear a bit of the paper?
No, you can't tear. If your piece of paper is worth too much then the seller gives you other pieces of paper worth less.
Can I throw out the rest of paper after I'm done buying?
Not unless you want to lose a piece of your value.
What if I don't have enough pieces of paper on me?
Then you can't buy.
So I should just carry all my worth in pieces of paper on me at all times?
That's a bad idea because when you loose this paper or it gets stolen or destroyed you no longer own their value.
Where do I get the paper from? Your employer can five it to you every month or week and you hold it in your home. Alternatively employer transfers the value to the bank normal way and when you need paper the bank can dispense it to you through various devices or service points.
Are any of those devices handheld?
Unfortunately no.
What if my house get burned down or robbed?
Then you lose all the value associated with all the papers kept there.
Exchanging value between two economic entities using primitive card numbers seems crazy when you have better ways.
Try to explain buying with a credit card online 200 years ago to someone who has never seen it.
You type in about 23 digits (16-digit card number, 4-digit expiry month, 3-digit verification code) to make a payment.
But these digits only change every few years as you renew your credit card. So many parties will learn of your digits and you won't know who leaked them.
The merchant on the other end can take out any amount of money from your account; it's pull-based, not push-based.
The merchant on the other end can trap you in a recurring subscription without your knowledge or make it very hard to cancel.
People have credit limits in the thousands of dollars, and in any single transaction you are liable to lose that much money. Meanwhile, you can't lose more than the hundreds of dollars of cash in your wallet.
You can call your card issuer to dispute charges, but now you're at the mercy of an intermediary.
The intermediary skims about 2~4% of every transaction, for the luxury of being able to spend your own money.
You can't process certain types of transactions in an offline environment, such as debit cards during a power outage or on an airplane (though Wi-Fi is slowly becoming more common).
Just yesterday, i went with my friend to some place, we park but the spot is metered, the park meters have been replaced by a “more convenient” digital system, there used to be machines where you could pay and print a ticket, of course this was still inconvenient so the machines were removed altogether and now it’s an app-only system, wonderful but there are several apps for different zones so if you go to an unusual place chances are you need to install a new app then enter the location, the time you want to park, the plate number, a picture of the tag, the payment info, the 2FA code and receive the confirmation. All this replaced the inconvenience of popping a quarter in the meter.
I have almost never done that. I just touch my personal computing device to a payment terminal and it's done.
I agree that giving anyone your card number is insanity. I only did it few times in hotels and it required tremendous leap of faith from me. To be honest I should have gotten plastic prepaid for this purpose.
I don't think OP was arguing to completely get rid of all wired transactions. And for all the points you made you still missed OPs major gripe, paying a third party for every single transaction you make. Wanna give your children pocket money? bank gets a cut...doesn't seem right tbh
But you pay for facilitating the service of value transfer.
If you do it by hand yourself the effort burdens you and the seller.
You might argue that the cost is too much and maybe it should be state run and paid from taxes since it's the state that provides the service of money.
Try to explain buying with cash in 200 years to someone who never seen it.
What if I need to pay just a little, do I tear a bit of the paper?
No, you can't tear. If your piece of paper is worth too much then the seller gives you other pieces of paper worth less.
Can I throw out the rest of paper after I'm done buying?
Not unless you want to lose a piece of your value.
What if I don't have enough pieces of paper on me?
Then you can't buy.
So I should just carry all my worth in pieces of paper on me at all times?
That's a bad idea because when you loose this paper or it gets stolen or destroyed you no longer own their value.
Where do I get the paper from? Your employer can five it to you every month or week and you hold it in your home. Alternatively employer transfers the value to the bank normal way and when you need paper the bank can dispense it to you through various devices or service points.
Are any of those devices handheld?
Unfortunately no.
What if my house get burned down or robbed?
Then you lose all the value associated with all the papers kept there.
And so on.