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What Happens When Restaurants Go Cashless (usatoday.com)
There's a new trend starting: restaurants that won't accept cash. USA Today reports:
Restaurant owners say ordering is faster from customers who slap down plastic instead of dollars, cutting a few seconds out of the process. But most of the benefits appear to accrue to the restaurants: less time taken counting bills, reduced pilferage, no armored-car fees or fear of stickups. It's a risky strategy. For starters, upscale Millennials -- among the most coveted of diners because of their youth and affluence -- prefer to pay in cash, according to Bankrate.com data. Also, more than a third of Americans between the ages of 18 and 37 do not have a credit card. For customers, patronizing restaurants that don't take cash means one less payment option when they need a quick meal during an all-too-short lunch hour. Plus, it raises questions about whether it discriminates against cardless teens and the poor... A committee in Chicago is weighing Alderman Edward Burke's proposed requirement that merchants accept cash. Massachusetts has had a Discrimination Against Cash Buyers rule on the books since 1978... Lana Swartz, co-editor of the book Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff, says "One of the cornerstones of American capitalism is everyone's money is equal."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: Many business owners would rather be cashless. Cash actually costs money -- banks charge fees for cash deposits and to handle coins... And counting and checking cash and preparing it for deposit takes up time a manager could spend with staff or customers... Millions of consumers use little or no cash. In a survey released last month by the financial services company Capital One, only 21 percent of 2,000 people questioned said cash was their most common way to pay for things. But going cashless isn't a slam-dunk. Some customers who want to use cash point to a statement on paper money: "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." However, the Federal Reserve says on its website that private companies can make their own policies about cash unless there is a state law saying otherwise.
One Houston restauranteur changed his mind about going cashless, saying "You can't compete if you think you're going to create a whole set of rules and expect people to follow them." One Chicago restauranteur admits that "it has generated the most negative pushback of anything we've ever done," estimating revenue fell 2% just from angry cash customers who never returned.
But he persisted because his eight restaurants had experienced six burglaries, break-ins or armed robberies over the last eight years -- and got "dozens and dozens" of counterfeit bills from customers -- while by going cashless, he no longer has to pay for bank fees and armored car pickups.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: Many business owners would rather be cashless. Cash actually costs money -- banks charge fees for cash deposits and to handle coins... And counting and checking cash and preparing it for deposit takes up time a manager could spend with staff or customers... Millions of consumers use little or no cash. In a survey released last month by the financial services company Capital One, only 21 percent of 2,000 people questioned said cash was their most common way to pay for things. But going cashless isn't a slam-dunk. Some customers who want to use cash point to a statement on paper money: "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." However, the Federal Reserve says on its website that private companies can make their own policies about cash unless there is a state law saying otherwise.
One Houston restauranteur changed his mind about going cashless, saying "You can't compete if you think you're going to create a whole set of rules and expect people to follow them." One Chicago restauranteur admits that "it has generated the most negative pushback of anything we've ever done," estimating revenue fell 2% just from angry cash customers who never returned.
But he persisted because his eight restaurants had experienced six burglaries, break-ins or armed robberies over the last eight years -- and got "dozens and dozens" of counterfeit bills from customers -- while by going cashless, he no longer has to pay for bank fees and armored car pickups.
So the cashless restaurants are going to have lower prices and not charge like 12 bucks for a mixed drink?
Seriously, when I don't pay cash, I literally never leave a tip. When the machine ask if I want to leave a tip, I just press Ok on 0.00$ to skip that and go quicker.
So pay your employees a living wage instead a relying on tips.
Cash costs money but credit cards take a lot more depending on the size of the purchase.
The real question was never whether or not dealing with cash costs money and causes hassles. It's how those costs compare to merchant fees and securing your POS, and how much leverage is created by a process not dictated by Visa and Mastercard. It's a complex and fragile equation that, in practice, ultimately boils down to accepting any form of payment that still has a decent enough market share ot be worth accepting.
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I've seen enough stories where the restaurant has a fault with their credit card system, and thus has an extremely long delay in processing them (assuming that they still get processed.)
If there's any major failure, which will happen when an ice storm causes scattered outages across the city, the restaurant has no way to receive income. Either they accept cash, or they don't get the day's income.
I've also went into a fast food restaurant which also had a cash register failure. They still did business using pen-and-paper, taking payments in cash, and thus didn't have to close down. Even if slightly slower or less reliable, it's as if the cashiers knew how to handle the situation.
If they make that clear before the fact, I walk out.
If they only make that clear when I'm ready to pay, I tip a penny. In cash.
Screw businesses that don't care about customers' privacy and anonymity.
Other reasons for this: (1) Classism. "We don't want poor or immigrant customers who don't have a credit card or check card. We cater to millennial hipsters only." Good to know. (2) Bribery. There was an article last year about a major credit card company paying businesses $10,000 to go cashless. Good on Chicago for thinking about regulating this and Massachusetts for actually regulating cashfree businesses out of existence. Nice to see that some jurisdictions actually stand up for their constituents' privacy.
Where I live, the practice is that if the restaurant has a sign by the door that they accept only credit/debit cards and you still enter and order, then that counts as a "preexisting agreement" that you are supposed to pay with card.
That's legal wrangling for you but does not work with human behaviour. People miss those signs all the time.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I hate it when I get cash because I don't have an easy way to get rid of it. I bank with an online bank and have no means of depositing it. I have no cash in my wallet or coins in my pocket and haven't in ages. If forced to take change for some reason, I just tell the cashier to apply it to the next person's bill.
I've not seen a business that was cash only in years, but if one were, I wouldn't consider patronizing them.
I am Canadian. When I slap down money, it IS plastic.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
when dinner is finished, you hand your card to the wait staff and it's denied ?
I'm sorry, I don't have another card. Do you take cash ?
I prefer to use cash because every card compromise I've ever had ( including the latest chip cards ) have been wait staff at restaurants who simply copied what they needed from my card.
( They do it with gift cards too so use low denomination varieties so it gets used up in one go )
I don't have these issues with cash.
Probably go back to the old imprint-type credit card machines. Cha-chunk. Cha-chunk. Sign at the X. And you hope everyone's card turns out to be valid after the system comes back up.
by crooks. Lobby was Open 24 hours. I never did get robbed, but I knew people who had been. The owner of that restaurant? Started closing the lobby only after the police threatened to hold her criminally liable if anyone got hurt. They knew the robberies were happening, but they were sporadic enough that the profits from keeping the lobby open were > what was stolen.
Being cashless is a big plus for the employees at 24 hour restaurants.
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you can do offline transactions with handheld POS machines. you slide the card and do the transaction manually, then it prints the receipt with a longer blank area, place it above the card and rub something so the thermal paper picks up the embossed numbers.
some debit cards, like most of the ones here in Argentina, don't have raised numbers. they very explicitly say, on the front of the card, ELECTRONIC USE ONLY. So if the system is down, it's done. You can't use the card.
When I eat in a restaurant, I usually pay for my meal with a credit card. However, I never charge a tip. Instead, I always leave a cash tip.
Why? There are several reasons.
Some restaurants divide charged tips, giving some of it to the non-service employees such as cooks and dishwashers. That way, the owner does not have to pay everyone the legal minimum wage. This practice was prohibited by the Obama administration but reinstated by Trump. I give a cash tip in an attempt to provide my server the full amount and also to force the owner to pay non-service employees properly.
When a restaurant submits my charge to its bank, there is a fee deducted from what is credited to the restaurant. Some restaurants reduce charged tips proportionally. I want the server to get the full amount, not a discounted amount.
If the total amount of a purchase is less than $10, I pay with cash, not a credit card. Whatever happened to "The customer is always right."? If they do not want my cash, I do not want their product or service.
Afterwards, if they don't like your payment offer, what can they do? They could sue you - and you could pay the judgement in cash :)
They sue you. You cite the legal tender laws. They lose.
The law, as I understand it, is this:
- You agree to a purchase denominated in dollars.
- They deliver on their side, creating a debt on your side.
- You offer payment in Federal Reserve Notes.
- They either:
1) Accept the payment, settling the debt.
2) Refuse the payment. The debt is cancelled because they refused to accept payment in Federal Reserve Notes.
This we settled (with some governmental violence against people who didn't want to accept FRNs) about a century ago, when FRNs were first introduced. Lots of people who expected payment in real gold and silver coins, made of amounts of valuable metal approximating their face value, or paper notes giving a government promise of on-demand exchange for the equivalent value in silver, didn't want to take bank-generated paper money backed by nothing but the government's promise to make people accept it. So the Federal Government had to force a bunch of people to accept it until they gave up and played along.
The Federal Government has a strong incentive to keep enforcing the rule. Otherwise the system (which lets them skirt constitutional prohibitions and print fiat currency by proxy) falls apart, along with the economy built around it.
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https://www.federalreserve.gov... A private business does not have to accept cash, unless a State law exists specifying that.
As long as they clearly indicate that they don't take cash it's not a problem. I just don't want any surprises. I use my card occasionally at restaurants if the bill is over 50 dollars or so. But mostly I prefer cash for small purchases, certainly any in the 20-30 dollar range. As long as I know their policy though I can avoid them. Not likely to be a problem for me in the near future as there are plenty of place to eat that don't treat their customers like shit.
I've never seen a place that won't take cash. But I know several cash only businesses.
Why? Because the CC companies charge fees in the form of percentages of your purchase. I know several others who will charge you more for using a card too.
The online equivalent, I've seen places put the charge for using something like Paypal back on your bill too.
Usually the cash only places are awesome too, small businesses with no equivalent elsewhere, like a German meat market owned by an immigrant master meat maker.
It's not discriminatory providing cards are available to everyone without having to pay fees... Providing there are prepaid cards widely available, anyone can go to a convenience store and exchange their cash for a prepaid card.
However, by using cards we're handing too much power to the card issuers.. Cash is issued by the government, but cards are entirely commercial so the companies wouldnt think twice about cranking up the costs once you're locked in and cashless becomes the norm.
There's also the issue of standardisation... Visa and Mastercard are pretty universal and work almost anywhere, but there's also various local payment schemes. Many customers of restaurants are tourists, so if they're accepting a payment method that's only open to local residents you're cutting out these foreign tourists.
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"For starters, upscale Millennials -- among the most coveted of diners because of their youth and affluence -- prefer to pay in cash, according to Bankrate.com data."
I'm sorry, what? I'd love to meet these people. I'm in this demographic and there's 0 people I know who prefer cash. It seems like every time we go out, everyone is trying to throw down a card, occasionally there's a flurry of Venmo payments, but it's almost never cash. Upscale millennials are not unbanked, nor are they without access to technology or credit cards. Why would any one of them prefer cash?
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
So long as they declare up front what method of payment they accept, then they have no obligation to accept cash.
The fault is yours if you accrue a debt when you know that you'll be unable to repay it.
It does work the other way round, if the restaurant has a mastercard sign on the door and you present a mastercard to pay for the meal but they tell you their card machine is faulty it's not your responsibility to provide cash. I've had that happen a few times with restaurants where they want to take cash (tor tax evasion purposes) so they claim the card machine is faulty... When you point out that's their problem and you're not carrying any cash it usually magically fixes itself.
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A lot of these places don't print receipts. They either want to email you the receipt or not give you one at all. I don't want to give my email to another business, but I do want my receipt.
Do what I do - Get an email service that does Catchall addresses.
Then when you go to Bob's Fine Eatery, give them the email address Bob'sFineEatery@yourdomain.com.
The address you set up to receive all anonymous emails will get that receipt, as well as any spam generated.
Why bother? Because when you get spam from Bob'sFineEatery@yourdomain.com, you know EXACTLY which asshole sold your email address to the spammers.
I honestly stopped caring years ago. The folks who want to oppress me have much, much better ways to do it than keep track of where I buy gas & food (and no, they don't know what you're buying, that much data isn't collected by the businesses).
Everytime I hear about privacy I think if this xkcd comic. I'm not saying we shouldn't work to stop oppression, I'm saying there's better places to spend your time and effort. For example, show up to your primary so you can get some candidates that aren't corporate sell outs.
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Last time I was at a cash only restaurant, I only had 3 bills in the denominations of $5, $50, and $100 dollars. My bill was $15.
So I try to pay (at the register) with my credit card and they say "cash only". At that point I am excited, because I actually have cash, which I rarely bother to carry. So I pull out the $50 and they would not take it because of fear of counterfeit dollars. They said they won't take any bill higher than $20.
I was like "uh, your sign says 'cash only', it doesn't say 'cash only in bills less than $50'. If you don't take credit cards, you actually have to accept the cash".
Long story short, they let me have my meal for free because they were afraid to lose money by making change with a possible counterfeit $50. I eventually went back later and repaid them because I felt bad, but it highlights the issues that they're facing: Afraid to take cash, afraid to pay the credit card fees.
It also highlights how fucked up the money situation has become in the US. Some places won't take ANY cash. Some places won't take bills over a certain amount. Some places won't take credit cards. And if you are going somewhere new YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT THEY WILL TAKE! You used to be able to just leave the house with a $50 bill and be good to go. Now you have to have a bunch of $20s, your credit card, your ID (in case they check), and maybe your phone to pay with that. Things seem to be getting harder, not easier.
Most tipped positions fall under IRS exemptions for reporting actual tips. If you have worked for tips at multiple places and are unaware of this, it is probably because your State has laws incompatible with IRS methodology on the matter.
The IRS has multiple ways to get this exemption, but perhaps the most common is TRDA (as the employer knows it) aka TEPA (as the employee will know it.) Under TEPA the IRS has a low-balled estimate of your tipped income and taxes you on that estimate regardless of how much you actually have received in tips.
Additionally, some industries have their own laws in place, for instance GITCA for the gaming industry. This one is very favorable for both the tipped employee and the employer as they are provided complete safe harbor against audits related to tipped income and as with TEPA the rate is set based on a low-balled estimate of your tipped income.
My guess is you live in California, where State law makes being under any of these an onerous burden on the employer.
"His name was James Damore."
I'd be tempted to tender payment for my debt in any form that the law of the land states is a legal tender. If the restaurant refuses then my debt is already paid and the refused money is returned to me as a gift.
I'd suggest you research that idea a bit more before you find yourself having a problem.
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This! The restaurant is unlikely to win in court (small claims or otherwise), because of that notice on Federal Reserve Notes. Take a video of the restaurant staff refusing FRNs to play back in court.
And then the restaurant is going to point out that there's no federal law requiring payment in currency or coins to a private business, and the judge is going to agree unless there's a state law to the contrary, and then it'll be up to you to prove otherwise. Text on the currency itself does not mean a thing, and there have been countless cases lost where someone did something stupid like trying to pay with thousands of pennies.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Pretty much. I confine my CC transactions as much as feasible to reduce the risk of falling victim to e-fraud. Unless I eat there regularly, I am going to pay cash, and if you don't take it, you won;t get my business.
Someone had to do it.