I'd starve in NY!

and they can get more customers thru and served w/o cash. This is a good move, cashless marginalizes several groups.

for delivery and pick-up.

The government wants to track your every movement and the bankers want to be able to sell your purchasing habits to third parties.
they can't track you or sell your purchasing habits if you use cash. I very seldom use my credit card, I use cash for all my everyday spending. I withdraw my money at the bank and not from an ATM.

All it takes with a cashless system is a flip of a switch and your money is cut off. When the economy crashes and people are in the streets, you're going to want some cash on hand.

Depending on how bad it gets, cash is on it's way out.

You get more customers served if they pay quickly by card than if they rummage for cash, hand it to the cashier, and then deal with change. Increases sales per cashier and lets you deal with more customers with a given POS device.

Then there's having cash on hand, shorts and overage in the cash drawers, dealing with getting can to and from the bank and the rather rare employee theft.

This is from experience supervising management in the mid 1990s, so it's not a new idea.

It's about control and freezing out the undesirables.

Oh, you voted Democrat? Sorry, you can't bank. Sorry, no bank card, no food!

It says right on the bill “This note legal tender for all debts public and private”.

You can ask your clientele if you prefer, but it’s right on our money.

that until the bargain is struck (i.e. a sale is made) no debt exists, so it’s perfectly legal to refuse to accept cash ahead of time. If I have a liquor store that is cashless that’s fine as long as no debt exists, no property has changed hands.

Now if I serve you a meal before payment then a debt exists and I’m obligated to take cash.

I mean it says right on the bill, all of them:

“This note is legal tender for all debts public and private”

I’m not a real confrontational guy, and back in the day I always brought my own food anyway. But I am a bit alarmed by the concept of a cashless society. At least my generation always had the money stuffed in the mattress to fall back on.

I’ve travelled a lot. Everywhere, the gold standard was the U.S. money. All my life it was something you could count on. Got enough of it? You can get where you need to go. But I imagine those days are ending.

I’ll miss the anonymity of cash. Not that I did anything wrong with it, I just appreciated the privacy.

until it’s been entered into. That’s just the way it is, and why these cities are specifically passing these laws. If the situation was actually as you believed then new laws would not be required.

Try buying a car with $1 bills and let us know how that works out.

If you owe a debt to someone, and you offer them US currency, then you’re good to go.

But as others point out, you don’t walk in owing these people money.

When I tried to find one that took credit cards in 2002 there were NONE. Maybe it has changed since then but this also happened to me in Chinatown in San Francisco in 2007.

Love of all things digital too maybe. It's esp. popular with the young, hip and affluent.

not getting hacked or just going kaput. People like that are the first ones to start crying when there is a problem and they can't access their cash. That is why I always have some hidden at home in case there is an earthquake or another emergency. Cash will buy a lot when the ATMs and credit cards go off the grid. Can you imagine not having cash at a gas station to evacuate during a hurricane?

and plenty of people argued for going cashless.

Once we had a nasty derecho summer heat wave storm with 97 degrees and all power went out, for hours- ATMS, drugstore cash registers wouldn't open, etc. Luckily I had some cash to use at a convenience store and gas station. Never leave home without it.

Cc transactions are reported to the state, no so for cash.

You don't pay tax on revenue that doesn't exist.

Most Chinese restaurants around here and a couple locally owned pizza places are cash only, not even debit. They all have ATMs (that charge a fee of course) within.

laundering money.

Hard to open a merchant account if the owner has an inconvenient financial or criminal past, and you certainly don’t want to use a bank account if you have had a misunderstanding with the IRS.

I knew there had to be an angle in it someplace.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/06/02/visa-payment-crash-and-the-dangers-of-a-cashless-world

Yesterday, Visa’s payment system crashed in Europe. Millions of people were unable to complete purchases. Some found themselves trapped overseas. It was a small glitch, apparently, but could have caused a major panic.

This situation should be a special warning to the people of the UK, who on average carry only £17 in cash at any moment, and where 1/4 of us will leave a store if paying by card is not an option. I count myself among those people.

As someone who has simply gotten completely out of the habit of carrying cash at all, this news is an eye-opener. Obviously, through OffGuardian, I consider myself aware of the deeper problems of society and of malicious political agendas, and yet I never thought of my financial vulnerability in a world where I literally have no control over my money.

Well, in a cashless world, where your money is entirely digital, you’re never more than a computer glitch or a power outage from going bankrupt. A hack away from identity theft. A forgotten pin from being locked out of your own money. A clerical error from the complete collapse of your finances.

Snip...

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Article is from 2018

The coffee shop in the building across from my department is cashless. Usually, not really a problem for me. I often get my lunch and frequent doses of caffeine there.

But it became one about a month ago. I went in for an MRI and forgot to take my wallet out. All of my cards were demagnetized. Swiping one of them was like swiping a playing card.

It took me a day or two to get my ATM card replaced. But in the meantime, I was utterly unable to buy anything at this coffee shop. They wouldn't take cash, which was all I had.

This wasn't really a major hardship for me; I had a new ATM card the next day, and I was able to get what I needed at another store that actually took cash. But I can imagine this would be a more serious problem for anyone lacking ATM or credit cards, or who have cash onhand, but not enough money in the bank.

About two weeks later, my ATM card ended up getting shut down because I used an ATM machine in which someone had installed a skimmer. I'm grateful the situation was addressed by my credit union quickly, but I was out of town and unable to get a new ATM card until I went back home three days later. I also haven't replaced my demagnetized credit cards; I really don't use them in stores that often, so I haven't bothered. But without my ATM card, I had to pay for everything with cash. I didn't know how much of a hassle paying for gas has become if one is using cash.

They should take cash. Not everyone can get credit cards, or make enough to use banks

I believe that cashless is a bad idea.

Just like strip malls. The only thing keeping economy growing is building unneeded buildings.

The data you're giving the credit card and banks about your shopping habits when using their cards is incredible. It's nobody's business but mine what I spend my money on.

that I enjoy bagels, jersey sheets, and Coke Slurpees? What’s the desire to maintain some sort of consumer secrecy rooted in?

The safety claim is usually debunked by the existence of a cash tip jar. If it was really about safety there would be no cash allowed period.

So every Sunday morning I have to make sure I have cash on hand. They know lots of people forget and I often hear them giving directions to the nearest ATM to first timers or the forgetful as they try to pay a the register.

In college I was without a bank and had to pay all my bills, including rent, in cash. Even back then it was problematic. I could not rent a car or make a air reservation without going through a travel agent (remember them?).

I have always taken the "all debts public and private" seriously and wondered how that was not enforced. I wonder if you could call the Treasury agents on anyone that does not accept cash. They print the cash. They should be willing to enforce the contract.

Or maybe that's just me.

of “debt.”

I strongly suspect these laws requiring the acceptance of cash are Unconstitutional.

... simply because they are too poor.

And grocery stores in NYC like cash because it helps them evade sales tax.

And point-of-sale is not a debt, public or private.

DeBlasio isn't being a bad guy, but I opine he didn't think this through.

Upsides
- easier accounting.
- lower physical security risk (less likely to be robbed).
- lower potential for cash shrinkage.
- faster checkout (no need to physically handle money).
- no need to actually go to a bank branch to make a deposit.

Downsides
- not everyone likes to use cards or even has cards to use.
- dependent upon an outside service to process payments (downtime).
- keyboard critics.

As to the commentary about cash being "legal tender":

- the argument can be made that if the business clearly posts that they only accept cards before you place the order, you will have entered into a contract accepting the terms and conditions for payment.

- the business is accepting US money just in a different physical form.

- This is virtually no different than a business posting that they do not accept anything larger than $20 bills.

and lets face it - there's cash in the store cashless or not.

off the top of my head...

- security risk - data breaches/theft/hacks of millions of credit card user's info (much more likely to impact an individual than a physical robbery simply because of the scale)
- processing costs for small businesses. Credit card processors take 2 to 3% of the charges to cover processing costs. As a small retail business owner in a low-margin industry, those fees are the reason I sometimes can't cash my own paycheck. For giant companies, it may be a wash because they have to pay employees to count their cash drawers after their shifts, more room for human error, etc. But for the little guys like me, it fucking sucks.

Nobody will be able to buy a thing or even get money out of an ATM in the event of a major power outage.

I am sick and fucking tired of businesses always coming up new ways to make it harder for customers and easier on themselves.

My apt complex has a laundromat that only accepts plastic. That flats sucks. I do not trust situations like this.

Not once in all of my years have I ever run into a cashless store.

Daily Provisions, opened by Shake Shack's Danny Meyers, just opened on the UWS. I'm in favor of the ban as I consider it just another way banks will pick our pockets. Sooner or later they will figure out how to do so and if we are completely cashless there will be no recourse. And there's also the possibility of more and more intrusion into private matters. Then there is the discrimination issue.

“A 2019 report by New York City’s department of consumer and worker protection found that 11% of households in the city have no bank account, while about 22% of households are “underbanked” – meaning they use alternatives to bank accounts for some payments.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/24/new-york-city-ban-cashless-businesses-discrimination

Wish Maryland had the wherewithal to make it the law here too.

I pay my bills with cash and money orders. I don't like electronic banking. I only have a cellphone.
Limited data because unlimited data is a lie.

that's including various cell-phone based payment methods. Not just chip.

I can't use cash for a fishing license

https://wildlife.ca.gov/Licensing/Fishing

Might as well rail against the incoming tide or the phases of the moon.

Alipay or Wepay are the methods of payment. Not cash.

And what will you do when there is a system crash, and no digital transactions can be made?

How do plan to eat?

Before you accuse me of being a Luddite, I am in favor of tech, not just with this one.

or minimizing the inherent issues, I’m just saying it’s inevitable. I believe that developed economies will be cashless, and within my lifetime (for reference, I’m 50.)

It's been open for decades and is packed every day.

Trivia: They are the real-life establishment that the TV show "Alice" was based on.

I prefer to use cash! 💰