Philadelphia is the first city to pass a law requiring most retail establishments to accept cash.
Swiping cards is convenient for many of us.
But, 8.4 million households didn’t have bank accounts in 2017. The video quotes a Pew Research Center study…
34% of Blacks
17% of Hispanics
29% of people earning less than 30k
Rely on Cash
I have to agree it’s discriminatory for businesses to refuse cash sales.
I generally use cash for transactions less than $20.
Do you agree that retail businesses should be inclusive and be required to accept cash?
Is a golf course discriminatory if it requires its patrons to own their own clubs?
Is an airline discriminatory if it requires travellers to wear shoes?
Not even slightly.
Cash is filthy, time-consuming to exchange, and heavy and bulky to store (in a wallet, cash register, etc.).
Additionally, I’m not exactly sure how things work in the US of A, but can’t anyone get a basic bank account (with corresponding debit card)?
I don’t know that discriminatory is the right word to use since it implies purposeful exclusion. Voting laws demanding forms of ID which many poor people don’t have are discriminatory because they are purposefully crafted to exclude as many of those people as possible.
I imagine that the vast majority of businesses which go cashless do so because the convenience outweighs the potential lost revenue. No cash means no deposits. No register to fumble with (or skim from). No worrying about whether your employees know how to make change. And so even if you’re losing money from cash-only customers, you’re making it back on all the other benefits. I can see it being simple business sense for a lot of small entrepreneurs.
But even if cashless businesses aren’t ‘discriminatory,’ they do harm a population which is already vulnerable in a million other ways. I generally approve of legislation which benefits at-risk communities, so I’m on board with the concept.
Not really. There are significant numbers of working poor who can’t meet the requirements at most banks to get an account. At least, this seemed to be the case with banks back in the early 90s, when I was transitioning from the military to civilian life. The fact that a lot of WalMarts, low end supermarkets, and payday loan outfits offer paycheck-cashing services suggests to me that this is still the case.
I’ll go along with that. I understand the business reasons (some amusement parks I know have gone cashless for anything other than admission) but I’m also one of those dinosaurs who prefers using cash. If its a matter of age, race or other factors some big segments of people will/do get shut out.
I realize I’m overthinking this, but which question is the OP asking an answer for?
Because the question about whether it is discriminatory is a pretty hard one; but I’m not really in favor of requiring businesses to take cash unless the discrimination was firmly established.
The article and video raised the issue of people being discriminated against. So I based the poll in that direction.
But the main question is whether businesses should be required to take cash. That means everyones money has the same respect and value. Regardless of its origin, cc, App or cash.
Eventually the entire country will eliminate cash and go to electronic payment.
IMHO, That transition should be coordinated and planned. Make sure everyone is issued a payment card and all wages and other income get credited to it. Making this work will take some careful implementation.
A piecemeal approach with businesses making the decision will create too much confusion and hardship for people without bank accounts or credit.
(Yes, the US is barbaric in some respects. Let me tell you about healthcare “coverage” here…)
You don’t have to go to a golf course or use an airline. You DO have to engage in financial transactions at some point to get food, among other necessities.
As someone who works half the week in the store cash office I have to agree with you - cash is filthy and disgusting. On the other hand, it also is part of what keeps me employed right now so I might be biased here.
Why didn’t Mike Rowe ever do an episode on cash-handling for Dirty Jobs?
If businesses want to encourage cc or App payments they could offer a 3% discount. That would reduce cash payments significantly without refusing to serve a third of our population that relies on cash.
There was a time when cash sales got discounts. Times have sure changed.
Uhm, I asked which question you were asking, and you just repeated the two questions that I said I’d answer slightly differently without saying which one you were asking.
You can’t solve the problem by just giving a discount for non-cash payment. There are a lot of costs a business incurs just by taking any cash at all, no matter what nonzero percentage of sales they make up. You need a cash register. You need a person manning the register, or to make your self-pay stations a lot more complicated to handle the cash. You need to have change on hand, both small bills and coins. You need to make regular trips to the bank, carrying something that’s easily stolen. You need means for detecting counterfeits. All of those are things you’d rather do without.
No. If you’ve ever made a mistake with a bank account and not been able to pay it off immediately, it’s impossible or hard to get an account. You MIGHT be able to find a bank or credit union offering some kind of condescendingly-named product like a “second chances account” with a large monthly fee and limitations.
Even among people who could get an account, there are people who don’t want one because of the real or perceived risk that it would just cause them problems.
