I know, y’all ain’t lawyers, and this ain’t a legal advice board, but without actually spending $$ hiring a lawyer, I don’t know any other way to find this answer …
Note that by “cash” I don’t mean a bag of nickels, I mean paper money in reasonable denominations (e.g., using five $20 bills to buy something costing $100, or five $100 bills to buy something costing $500).
This question arose when I read a news report that Apple, via its brick-n-mortar Apple Stores, refused to sell the new iPad to people trying to pay with cash. Simply based on the legend & concept that cash is “legal tender for all debts public and private”, shouldn’t that be illegal?
The question comes up every now and again and basically the answer is that merchants can demand anything they want in payment. If they want payment in gerbils, they will lose customers but nothing is stopping them.
If they haven’t given you the iPod yet, then where is the debt?
IANAL, but I think it’s legal. Note that at no time during the purchase of an iPad do you have a debt to Apple, so “debts public and private” doesn’t come into it. Another example of a merchant refusing to accept cash is the airlines – specifically United – selling snack boxes on board the plane, and only accepting credit cards, presumably because having the flight attendants handling cash would create problems.
We have covered this before, but I’m too lazy to look up the past threads.
The bottom line is that at the point of sale in a store, there is no debt involved. The merchant is offering an item for sale, and the purchaser is offering to buy it. At that point, the merchant may require payment in any form he chooses, whether that be cash, credit/debit cards only, or shiny pebbles from the stream bed.
Only if you leave the store with the merchandise and an agreement to pay for it at some later time does the concept of “debt” enter the transaction.
“Legal tender” means that the currency printed and minted by the government can be used for transactions. There is no law that says it must be accepted. A merchant can specify whatever medium of exchange it chooses, whether cash or plastic or cowrie shells.
There’s also the counterfeit concerns - there are few businesses here still taking $100 bills (and I think fifties are being turned down, too). We got a $100 bill from Wal*Mart one day for cash back, and we were starting to think we’d have to go to a bank to be able to use that stupid thing. Safeway grudgingly accepted it (after the manager was called over).
They only allow a few ipads to be sold to any specific credit card. This makes it harder for some guy to buy 50 iPads and do things that Apple doesn’t like.
Basically, the “legal tender” notice on cash simply means that, if a vendor accepts it as payment for a debt, they can’t later sue you for non-payment.
Here in Canada, back in the early 60s, I learned of the concept of legal tender which as I understood it meant that there was a limit to how many pennies, nickels ,dimes, and quarters that a person or business must accept in return for goods and services.
This was significant to me at the time as a paper boy when collecting every Friday on my paper route as occasionally I was paid in full for a weekly service with pennies in full. I accepted anyway.