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Philadelphia Is First U.S. City to Ban Cashless Stores
- Thread starter TarpitCarnivore
- Start date
I hope other cities follow suit. Wanting to get rid of physical currency and give all the power in transactions to banks is an awful idea.
Really? In Austria, you can just buy tickets with cash or card. Feels extremely silly do refuse cash there.
Movo might not charge a fee but retailers certainly can. And loading funds can take days.
Everything should accept all legal US tender at the expense of the business (it's a cost of doing business).
Fuck cash only. Fuck cashless. Fuck debit/credit minimums.
Fuck cash only. Fuck cashless. Fuck debit/credit minimums.
It's not instant that's the problem. Someone has to count the cash and typically the earliest it's done is the next morning, and that's if your business is counting every day. Then you have to prove it which isn't as easy as saying you did it. It's pretty easy to get away with a couple 20's without even knowing as long as you're doing it sporadically. People get greedy and go for more and that's when I catch them. A lot of places don't count coin just rely on the bank.
Most companies offer the option to give their checks on prepaid cards, and you can get prepaid cards from walmart for practically nothing. This is absolutely not the reason.
As for the real reason companies want to get rid of cash... Theft. Specifically employee theft. Your cashiers can't steal from the tills if there is no cash in them. And yes, employee theft is much higher and more of an issue than that 3% fee they are paying to Visa.
Oh yeah it's pretty much a pawn shop, pretty sure he resales goods as well. See a couple of guys I've ran into their bartering with the owner.
In Brazil is a safety concern to walk with money, so debit and credit cards are a godsend here.
If access isn't the issue and this doesn't impact poor people, why are cities and states banning the practice?
Well actually, they do! Subway stations in Philly have machines where you can buy single use subway fares (or reload reusable cards).
What do you mean by prove it?
For me, once a week, I take 10 minutes to hand in the cash I got from register work. Meanwhile, the bulk of my cash is in my own partition of our safe.
They tell me exactly how much I owe, and count what I hand over. It's all in the system, so any missing amount is noticeable. If I don't hand in the correct amount, I got 2 choices: I pay up with my own money (that's why giving correct change is pretty damn important to me), or... I guess I get fired if I refuse? Depending on the amount, maybe law enforcement? Idk. Both have never happened to me.
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I stay away from cashless purely from the analytical standpoint of my data being used against me to potentially deny services. (health insurance, life insurance..etc)
I... don't think I understand what you mean. The stores will deny you service? Or the health insurance will be denied because you went to some store?
It's more of a hypothetical regarding the use of the data from my purchases being sold to industries that can use that data to deny or raise prices for such things as health insurance (a person who has a history of buying fast food...etc). Not saying it's in fact something that happens today but that data isnt going anywhere and can be used when it needs to be. (takes off tin foil hat)
Lmao, what a pointless law. They just gave the market to Amazon.
If you're going to half-ass it why bother.
A place near me charges extra if you pay in cash. A handling fee since they worked out to get the cash collected and brought to the bank and pay the bank charges on depositing the cash was more expensive than cashless. They also don't accept cheques or cards with the chip and pin disabled.
It doesn't actually cover Amazon since Amazon Go stores don't require a membership. That carve-out does apply to Costco, though.
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This is already happening in many ways with your credit or debit card. Using those store discount cards that give you sales, yep they're tracking you
You're on Europe I assume? That's the only place I've had that shit, at least the pin part.
Where i work, there is a Dos Toros that I used to frequent at least once a week. They also went cashless and I stopped frequenting there. I think one of the big caveats is the crackdown on robberies where around the store there was a robbery by the jewelery store near by. That is the lone real positive I see for stores and workers out of this. Not that I support it because I like to spend cash.
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For those saying "just use prepaid cards"
You can comfortably keep an appropriate balance on there to satisfy shopping needs. Id be needing to track it every cent and spend time reloading it.
You can comfortably keep an appropriate balance on there to satisfy shopping needs. Id be needing to track it every cent and spend time reloading it.
This. It puts a de-facto "you must make at least this much money to shop here" limitation and that's real shitty
The same exact thing is happening in San Francisco. Blue Bottle recently announced that they're going cashless and city officials have already talked about a possible ban on cashless stores.
They added that for Amazon though. They already had one in place for Costco.
They... thought they did, but it's arguable whether it actually applies.
(I hate playing this card but one of my good friends helped draft this bill so I'm pretty familiar with it lol)
i thought cash was good cause you can totally hide some $$ from the IRS? or use it to launder drug money?
This is what i have learned from watching too much TV..
This is what i have learned from watching too much TV..
It's easy to skim cash and there's a 100 different ways to do it. Sure you can mitigate it but that requires investment, all of which diluted revenue. I get why not accepting cash is bad, but as a retailer there's valid arguments for doing so
Yup, it's a practically insurmountable barrier for many people. I've been poor my whole life and I work with poor people through volunteer and community work, and it's (still) not unheard of for people to not even have checking accounts.
Mandate bank accounts?
With balance minimums and overdraft fees on some of the biggest chains?
Last figures I could find were from late 2016. At the time, the FDIC found that 7% of households did not have bank accounts of any fashion. Note, not 7% of people, but 7% of households.
19.9% of households were considered "underbanked", meaning they "have a bank account but still elect to use services like check cashing, money transfers, payday loans, and pawnshops."
http://fortune.com/2016/09/08/unbanked-americans-fdic/
