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Los Angeles is exploring banning cashless businesses, following the example of New York City, Philadelphia, Massachusetts, Colorado, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington, DC
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Yes, this absolutely should be restricted. If cash is the legal tender it needs to be accepted.
I agree. Leaving issues of social equity aside, businesses should be required to accept currency issued by the United States government. I don’t mean that I should be able to pay for a car with a truckload of pennies or anything absurd like that, but come on, it’s money. I should be able to give it to you in exchange for goods or services.
I'm on the same side...but man I love not having to carry cash around. Using a credit card via Apple Pay gives me so many layers of protection against someone taking my money. Cash in my pocket has none.
Still, it's the coin of the realm and should be accepted anywhere.
On the business side, taking cash also has a huge amount of risk of theft from employees and general criminals. I know a guy who runs a business delivering supplies to cafes and he stopped accepting cash because it increases the risk of the drivers being robbed.
But taking any sort of card usually incurs a fee from the card issuer, which can add up quickly.
I really feel like there should be a government-issued debit card system, where the card fee is just the applicable sales tax. I don’t want to give scummy credit handlers any more money than I need to.
The cost of handling cash is almost always higher than card fees, unless you are factoring in tax evasion with cash use.
Cash is nothing but risk and cost.
It takes a significant amount of payroll to deal with counting tills, safe drops and withdrawals, end and start of day procedures. It also slows down transactions.
You're a robbery risk. Having tills, having a safe, needing to do runs to the bank (which necessitates an armored courier for a sizable operation).
As an individual, carrying cash makes you a mugging risk. A world where cash is unusual reduces this.
Whole classes of violent crime have trended way down because cash isn't the norm anymore, and good riddance. I find it annoying to deal with, even aside from the risks; I want up to date balances on my phone, and I want the ease of tapping a card or my watch to make payments. I want to pay online and not have the bottleneck of cash register lines, if at all possible.
Yes, businesses have costs. But we require a lot of these costs so that businesses include everyone in society. Renovations for ADA compliance cost a lot, too - but we require them so that less mobile people can use businesses. Accepting cash has a cost - but we should require it so that people without bank accounts or phones can use businesses.
All the comments about "cards/digital payment is convenient and I don't use cash" are irrelevant. As long as anybody uses cash, businesses should be required to take it.
This should be alongside access to bank accounts, so that un/underbanked people can use banks - which would also alleviate these costs.
How would you provide access to people who don't have phones?
Considering just how integral smart phones are becoming to our lives, at some point, we likely will just have to start providing government-issued smart phones to those who want one. So much business is being conducted using smart phones. Paper forms are huge cost for the government. If we just gave a very basic smart phone to anyone who wanted one, we could use that to save a mountain of government paperwork costs.
You could probably get such a phone made quite cheaply. You're not trying to create a device to access the latest media and sites. Just a smart phone that could do some very essential functions. Have a phone that can run some basic payment app, install and run various state assistance apps, a DMV virtual driver's license app, etc. Have it set up that it can call governmental numbers and 911. Basically a smart phone just powerful enough to serve as a payment tool and portal to essential government services.
That might actually be the most practical way to do this. The potential savings in governmental paperwork, private cashless commerce, etc. are just so massive that it may pay for itself many times over.
One issue is with homeless people. Unless we also are providing government issued rooms with electric outlets, not everyone will be able to use phones. Even then, phones get stolen.
Ironically(?), the homeless often have smartphones to look for jobs. It's the hermits, privacy guru's, and anti-gubmint folk that tend not to have smartphones.
Unfortunately, homeless people also frequently deal with robbery and have to replace things like phones.
Cash is the number one thing people are looking to steal, that you're carrying on your person. If you get mugged, your cash is gone and that's the end of it.
Muggings don't typically happen over phones, even very expensive ones, because they're basically useless and traceable, unless you're connected enough to have a specialist fence...and the sort of people who commit robberies usually are not.
Robbery has neatly trended down in the US with the rise of credit and debit cards, as well as the advent of ubiquitous phones, from over 200 per 100,000 people in the 80s and 90s to 86.2 in 2018.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
"Homeless" is a very broad context as well. Plenty of people who are homeless have cell phones and bank/credit union accounts. The bar to obtain those is much lower than the bar lose housing. Some have cars too.
Slightly different issue, but I remember being eight and shopping at a nearby convenience store for snacks and comic books. I would never have been allowed to have a credit card at that age.
Some homeless people have few to no possessions. You are right that it isn't all of them, but for basic survival supplies we really need a system with multiple fall back positions rather than relying only on a phone or card.
In Houston, a lot of homeless people have cell phones lol
If your income is low enough, in the US you can get a free govt LifeLine phone. I help my clients (I work in Homeless Outreach) get them all the time. They're shit. They break constantly, sometimes for no visible reason, and have terrible service. If they weren't the only option for my people I'd go with anything else (when they have some income I encourage them to buy a cheap prepay phone as well so they have a backup), and I wouldn't want to have to rely on them for my own personal banking/ability to purchase necessary services and goods.
That’s definitely an issue, but not necessarily for all businesses. @redwall_hp was talking about the costs from a business perspective. If your target audience is relatively well off, it is not an issue for you as a business. I work at a relatively high end winery. I don’t want us to discriminate against anyone, but I can’t think of a single guest we have ever hosted that does not have a phone. If there are any, there is definitely none that do not have a credit card.
While there is a high correlation between target audience and their financial status, taking in cash serves as an alternative to the most common forms of payment should these fail or come down.
I recently found that in places like India, there has been a shift towards using these kinds of virtual payment platforms. For better or for worse, having an option that's backed by the government (or one that doesn't incur heavy fees) will be beneficial for both the customer and the business. There are a LOT of small business owners in India that operate through a local "cashapp" which does not have the absurd fees other companies charge; these are your street vendors that sell things like produce. This topic is beyond my knowledge of economics but I am aware of the duopoly that VISA and Mastercard hold on the U.S. given that they're responsible for most transactions.
Lastly, we can't forget the importance of cash when all these virtual services fail. If the network goes down, there is a loss of power, the company's payment system is compromised, cash would be the only option available. Having a backup wouldn't incur heavy losses, specially when there seems to be a shift towards electronic payments across the globe.
Everything you said is true, but it just isn't relevant to business owners. I don't make the decisions for my company, but if I did, I also might choose to not take cash.
If the power goes out, we have a backup generator. If our internet goes out, we have company cell phones we can hotspot from. If the cell phone carriers go down, it probably means another wildfire is coming through our area of California and we should be evacuating anyway. If somehow all those come to pass, and we don't need to evacuate, and we still have customers, we can always write down card info and charge the customer later. We still have a credit card imprinting machine (although many cards don't have embossed numbers anymore). If we didn't want to take credit card info, we can always just start taking cash. It takes exactly 0 seconds to start taking cash again. So cash is always a backup even if a business is "cash free".
I don't really have a horse in this race. As a customer, I will not shop at a place that does not accept credit cards. This is for the simple fact that I do not carry cash. But I can understand how business owners choose to go cash free.
I agree with you that it’s gonna be very rare for the cascade of events to genuinely shut down a card-only business to occur, but I’d like to strongly disagree that it’s not much trouble to start accepting cash at a cashless business. If you physically don’t have a till, how will checkout staff give change, and where will they store the cash between transactions, and how will your system reconcile inventory changes and cash changes if you don’t already have a bunch of cash infrastructure in place for the business?
Maybe it’s a business that can support cash and they just keep a till stocked with change but locked away in a back room somewhere? On the rare occasions that it comes out and you run cash again, are your staff trained up on the processes and procedures to get that running?
I think suddenly accepting cash is a lot more tricky than your comment seems to suggest.
That is definitely highly dependent on the business. I work in wine, which is a high margin product. We can easily discount the product to cover not being able to give change to a customer. But, as you point out, that is not possible for all businesses. In my company, I know how easy it is to switch to taking cash because we do it on a regular basis. Most of the time we are cash free (mostly because the supervisors don’t like dealing with bank deposits). But if a customer insists on paying cash, we will accept the cash. We keep a till, but we don’t necessarily keep it stocked with change, so it may be difficult to make exact change. We also have the added benefit of receiving tips, often in cash. So we can make change from the top jar, or possibly from one of our staff’s personal cash. At least where I work, switching back to cash really is not a big deal.
I can’t comment on other businesses. I could imagine how much extra cash infrastructure would be needed for something like a grocery store.
Ah okay, that makes sense. Yeah my experience has been at a supermarket so high volumes of smaller transaction amounts and we definitely couldn’t just round down for each customer coming through. Thanks for explaining your experience, suddenly makes a lot more sense that it’s low friction to switch to cash in those circumstances.
But wouldn’t this be a circular argument then?
Couldn’t we argue that if it doesn’t take much to accept cash, then why not do so?
Also, I’d say that this affects everyone. I haven’t looked much into it but there are studies looking into what a cashless society would need to function and I’m not sure if we’re there yet.
Additionally, I don’t think all businesses have the alternative options you mentioned; I.e., the gas station doesn’t have their own generator as a Walmart does. Again, there are only the two major companies that issue cards, their network, and then there’s everything else. There is no central, widely accepted method of payment that replaces cash as of yet. Not one that’s accepted everywhere at least.
Not everyone takes diners, or Amex, for example, but, as you stated, anyone could take cash.
In order to replace cash, something that’s accepted in its place should be accessible to everyone. I’ve seen people have to ask me or others to pay for them due to the restaurant not taking certain cards but they still take cash. I’m not saying cash should stay forever but I don’t think the problem is solved either. Specially not with the duopoly visa and master card have on businesses. Ex: they suspended payments for the infamous only fans due to their “lose" policies on content and age of consent. I say "lose" because it's really difficult to manage and operate a site that scaled as fast as they did. Now imagine this problem for an essential business and the impact this can have locally for the community.
Why do we need to provide access to those without a phone?
I won’t say phones are inexpensive, but I don’t think every business needs to cater to everyone (obviously not referring to the disabled) and at this point not having a phone is a choice. Hell even here in Houston many homeless have cellphones
I think a business owner should be allowed to refuse cash, because you’re not refusing someone with a disability. Just someone who has made the choice not to pay by phone/card
My first experience with a cashless business was a Cloud10 Ice Cream store, and no I don’t think a place like that should be forced to accept cash
If they’re really cutting out a huge market of shoppers, then another store will just cater to that market instead and out perform the cashless business
I don’t think we should treat not having a phone like having a disability
A few businesses not accepting cash is OK. When that becomes the norm, however, it can severely hamper innocent people—people who have lost their phone in some way (theft, malfunction, domestic abuse, etc.), people who forgot their phone at home, people who have not bought their first phone yet, people who are visiting from overseas and have not gotten their phone working in the country yet, etc.
If it becomes difficult to buy a phone or to get your phone working without already having a working phone, we effectively shut some people out of the economy.
Not to mention, using a phone can absolutely be difficult or impossible for people with certain disabilities.
Edit: According to this, 15% of US adults (i.e., over 38 million people) do not own a smart phone.
What you're actually arguing for is creating a culture where someone without a phone is de facto disabled. Saying that it's classist or just broadly unsettling to refuse to allow truly destitute people to...buy food without buying a phone plan and holding a bank account... is not an argument for special accommodations.
Still, who says we can’t accept all? If you don’t want to carry cash, don’t, what’s the problem?
The cool thing about being made to accept cash is that you can still also accept credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, G Pay, and any other form of payment you might like to. You would find no difference to how you pay, but people without the resources to pay in the ways you do will find their forced exclusion lifted. That's a pretty solid outcome for those with empathy for others (not insinuating you lack this quality at all), if you ask me.
Just further evidence that pennies are obsolete.
At this point we might as well do away with the decimal altogether.
Our whole currency set needs to be rescaled honestly. We ought to have $1, $2, and $5 coins to replace dimes, nickels, and pennies. The smallest paper bill ought to be $10 and the smallest coin should be 25 cents.
Oh wow, TIL the US doesn't have $2 coins.
FWIW, Australia has $2 coins and the smallest AUD coin is the 5-cent coin (which needs to go, too, it's a waste of time and vending machines already don't accept them).
Yeah, we have $2 bills which are pretty much only used as a novelty.
Yeah the only time I've ever seen a $2 bill was when I received it as a gift from old people growing up. They sure love gifting $2 bills. Someday I hope to carry on the tradition and be that weird $2 bill giving old guy.
If you call a local bank branch you can ask a teller if they have an odd currencies in stock ($2 bills, 50c coins, etc).
Tooth fairy is more fun with weird but real money.
In Australia we also have $5 coins, but I don’t know if they’ve ever been minted except as part of special occasions — so they’re definitely worth more than $5, which means spending them as cash is a terrible idea.
That's not far off from what Japan does, coins up through ¥500 (roughly USD $3.50 with the current exchange rate) though they still have ¥1, ¥5, and ¥10. Had a coin pouch when I was visiting for a while to carry more change than I'd handled since I was a child.
Agree that the ¥1 was pretty useless but ¥10 coins in particular were handy for the ubiquitous vending machines since prices were often something like ¥130 for a drink.
In the US though the penny at least should be dropped, for greater denominations I can see more of a debate.
Most other countries also print their “paper” money on some kind of durable polymer and the bills have different sizes so blind people can more easily tell them apart.
So much of our cash money in the US is behind most other countries.
I mean...what can you buy for a quarter on its own?
I guess there's still a few things that exist in the space between $1 and $2, but not many.
We already have the $1 coin. Switch to dollar as the base unit, ala yen. Anyone retaining fractions just rounds down to nearest dollar upon totalling.
$1 stores recently became $1.25 stores for one, and the price certainly won't be going back down if we get rid of quarters.
Arcade machines, candy dispensers, anything that costs 50c since half dollars are rare, soda machines, etc.
Innumerable things operate on quarter boundaries and they would all jump up 25-75 cents, which for cheap things like gum and candy, bulk items, etc. is a large amount.
The nominal price will never go down for macroeconomics reasons independent of currency denominations.
But it certainly will go up due to getting rid of the largest common fractional item of currency, which is what I'm saying.
Yea but that's where the 'round down' comes in. No reason we couldn't have the fractions as a phase-in, just anything less than a whole number gets lopped off on checkout.
Or they could just call it the "4/5 store".
Which would result in a price drop, and so they're going to adjust (increase) prices accordingly to avoid that and everything will end up more expensive.
Lol I wish. You can't even get a can of Coke at the "dollar" stores around me for less than $2. It's absurd.
I'm talking the true dollar stores, which just went extinct recently, not the stores that just have "dollar" in their name.
Yeah I stopped drinking coke and NOS and switched to the much cheaper faygo and rip it (they have a few good flavors like mandarin and live wild lime or whatever it's called) a while ago, but even those are going up in price a lot now.
old school parking meters
Just an aside, but people overstate what legal tender is. All that it means is that it must be accepted as payment in judgements of law e.g. fines, settlements, etc., and nothing more.
But that doesn't mean it has to be accepted when you're buying a candy bar from the corner store. It's only mandatory for debts, e.g. paying after you've already eaten at a restaurant.
Semantics that anyone that isn't a lawyer doesn't care about. Considering that phrasing predates electronic money I'd say it's kinda irrelevant...getting your items at the store and beong told the total is a debt presuming you walked out the store.
While I understand the need for specifics in law, there also needs to be more of a healthy dose of layperson logic.
The phrase was brought up as a legal obligation and now you're saying we should ignore the legal meaning of the phrase and just kinda look at what people think it means even though it doesn't? The layperson understanding of it means actually nothing. Money rules aren't just random stuff that laypeople guess at.
You can't just say "money says it's for all debts public or private so I feel like we should implement that the way I want to do so." That is literally the same as saying "law x says y but I think it means z so we should implement z."
Money rules are just arbitrary things we make up. It's not like they manifested out of the Big Bang. Just that the 'we' tends to be lawyers, and not regular people.
I'd bet a nickle if you ran a survey "If a vendor has a price listed at $20, would you expect the vendor to accept a $20 bill as payment?" it would be a landslide "Yes."
And your last paragraph is basically why we have the Supreme Court. Common interpretation of a law matters more than you might think. Both language and law is ever-changing, fungible, and subject to interpretation.
First off, I don't think this is the case. Online vendors rarely accept cash. And as brick and mortar stores slowly convert to card-only, people will expect it less and less. This has already happened in my country for example.
The same is true for cash. It's not like cash somehow is a natural default that came with the big bang.
Online businesses are a great counterpoint - should Netflix be required to accept cash? If so, are they required to provide change for $100?
I don’t think the solution for people being unbanked is to require everyone to accept cash. We need to find ways to bring everyone into the banking system that wants to be, either through incentives to existing financial institutions or creation of standardized bank accounts at the Fed.
Post office banking is a great idea that could be revived.
I agree. I never use cash myself, but people should be able to buy things without going through another company as a middleman.
Tbh I think the fight for cash is a bit too late. What id like to see is some kind of constitutional right to a bank account. So that every person is ensured to always have access to the banking system.
We saw something horrific in Canada where the government was freezing the bank accounts of protesters. This needs to be made illegal.
Any constitutional amendment will be an uphill battle given the very high barrier to enactment (TLDR: passed by 2/3 of both the House and Senate then ratified by 3/4 of state legislatures, or 2/3 of state legislatures call for a constitutional convention). However, expanding postal banking seems like a no-brainer to me, and would "only" require passage by Congress.
I agree 100%. An unpopular viewpoint should not make you an 'unperson'. Cancelling has already reached the level of job loss for some people, imagine if you could no longer have a bank account OR any access to money in a fully digital currency society because you didn't believe in whatever the popular ideas were of the time/political party?! It should be horrifying to all sides.
As a Canadian, that was not horrific, and they were not just protestors. Freezing the bank accounts of people funding the Illegal occupation of downtown Ottawa by people who spent their time purposefully harassing local residents to the point that they didn't feel safe in their own homes and couldn't sleep at night due to the noise was completely justified.
I understand that taking cash has risks for businesses. Nonetheless, I still carry cash specifically for tipped labor. There's way too much wage theft enabled by having all transactions going through the hands of business owners before tipped employees get their share.
Yeah, it's also way less awkward than looking someone up via Venmo or Zelle in the case of tipping individuals.