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As More Retailers Ban Paper Money, It's Making Things Awkward For Customers Without Plastic (wsj.com)

Posted by msmash on from the where-we-are dept.

An anonymous reader shared a report: Sam Schreiber was mid-shampoo at a Drybar blow-dry salon in Los Angeles when someone from the front desk approached her stylist with an emergency: a woman was trying to pay for her blow-out with cash. "There was this beat of silence," says Ms. Schreiber, 33 years old. "She literally brought $40." More and more businesses like Drybar don't want your money -- the paper kind at least. It's making things awkward for those who come ill prepared. After all, you can't give back a hairdo, an already dressed salad or the two beers you already drank. The salad chain Sweetgreen has stopped accepting cash in nearly all its locations.

Most Dig Inns -- which serve locally sourced, healthy fast food -- won't take your bills either. Starbucks went cashless at a Seattle location in January, and at some pubs in the U.K., you can no longer get a pint with pound notes. The practice of not accepting cash has become popular enough to catch the attention of American lawmakers. [...] Despite the popularity of debit- and credit-card transactions, plenty of people do still pay for things with actual money. Cash represented 30% of all transactions and 55% of those under $10, according to a Federal Reserve survey of 2,800 people conducted in October 2017.


6 of 698 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Legal Tender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are two reasons that a business can reject cash even if it is “legal tender for all debts public and private.”

    First, this statement means that the only circumstance when someone must accept the bill is when a person owes the business a debt. If no debt has been incurred, a person or business is not legally required to take U.S. currency.

    Let us say it is very late at night and you need gasoline for your car. Many gas stations in the U.S. do not take large bills late at night to prevent robberies and theft. If the gas station requires customers to pay for gas before pumping it into their car, they have the legal right to refuse US$50 and $100 bills. They do not have to accept large bills because until the customer has put gas into the car, the customer does not owe the station owner anything. However, if the customer is allowed to pump gasoline into the car first and then pay, the owner must accept all types of U.S. bills because the customer has a debt to pay.

    http://theconversation.com/if-...

  2. Re:Legal Tender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm the OP, and I absolutely agree with you. However, TFS posited a situation in which the debt is already incurred.

  3. Re:Legal Tender by dfenstrate · · Score: 5, Informative

    For all debts, public and private.

    Leave it on the counter and walk out.

    Bingo. If you deliver services prior to obtaining payment, you must accept cash. Refusing to accept a cash payment after-the-fact would leave you without much recourse to collect in other ways. You're basically depending on the customer's kindness and patience with you.

    Starbucks is another matter because they collect when you place your order. They can go cashless because there is never a 'debt' involved with 'pay first.'

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    Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
  4. Re: Legal Tender by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you drank the beer, you owe a debt. And have the right to pay with cash. The only way they can 'protest' is to demand exact change (or the excess becomes a 'tip')

    In Norway, you have a right to pay cash in all cases, unless this necessitate over 30 units of money (bills/coins). So you can demand to pay cash at restaurants, but not ridiculous things like a big bag of low-denomination coins. You can't demand to pay a house that way, as it'd usually require over 30 of the biggest bills. Also, it might be dangerous for the recipient.

  5. A retailer answers by DogDude · · Score: 5, Informative

    Handling cash is not expensive. It's much less than 1%. A big store spends about one man hour a day counting, and about another two man hours a week re-counting and going to the bank. We much, much, much prefer cash to cards. We do have to account for an extra 3% in our prices to pay for the cards that most people use.

    When I'm out and about spending money, I always use cash.

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    I don't respond to AC's.
  6. Re: Legal Tender by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's a fascinatingly weird law.

    Not really: it's an anti-dickhead law. Thing is if you say all cash is legal tender then someone can pay back a $100,000 debt using a dump truck full of pennies incurring a large cost on the recipient. Anti dickhead laws only tend to come into effect after sufficient numbers of dickheads cause the law to be changed.

    The UK has different rules stating for example that 1p coins are only legal tender for settlin a debt of up to 20p.

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    SJW n. One who posts facts.