http://www.silverdoctors.com/italy-to-ban-cash-transactions-over-e50-in-2013/Courtesy Google Translate:
Rome – The technical Rome government wants to limit cash transactions in Italy.
From 2013, citizens may pay amounts in excess of 50 euros only by credit or debit card. That the Council of Ministers decided today.
The measure is intended to reflect the money laundering and black money payments to clamp down. Since July, the government has banned cash transactions over 1,000 euros.
i spent some of my honeymoon in rome... icecream there costs more than €50. can't see this law going down too well with tourists.
Hope that was a "as much ice cream as you can carry" offer
Of course inflating prices for tourists is national sport, but I never paid a single ice cream more that 3€.
As for the actual topic, I really cannot understand how they hope it could work. If you are a law-abiding citizen, you just have an expense added. If you are a criminal already ignoring tax laws (as many are), you will wholeheartedly laugh at just one more law to ignore. I am afraid I must agree with
The law is a bit messy to be onest: in fact the text say that a shop is forced to accept an electronic payment for every transaction over 50€ if the customer request so, not that is banned the cash transaction in se.
The big trouble is that POS in Italy will cost a lot of money to shop, specially for little ones (something in the 20-40€/month + a fee for every transaction from 2 to 4% for bancomat and up to 5-6% for credit cards,). A small shop will don't survive all that added costs (in some cases the fees will be higher than the earnings: on a phone card sold at 50€ there will be less than 0,5€ of margin but 1€ at least of fees, so for a PC sold at 500€ on wich there is a 60-70€ of earning but 10-20€ of fees).
Big shops and supermarket have a big discount on fees (usually the pay a fixed monthly fee so the higher is the volume of money cashed by POS the less it will cost for every € processed): is a kind of law written to help banks and big owners (the fact that our prime minister is a member of Bildberg Group and is a Goldman Sachs advisor and Moody's one it's just a coincidence )
...and to think the members of Parliament are arguing on ways to convince him to be president for another 5 years, in spite of the fact that he says he doesn't want to!
