Philadelphia Bans Cashless Stores (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, Philadelphia's mayor signed a bill that would ban cashless retail stores, according to The Morning Call. The move makes Philadelphia the first major city to require that brick-and-mortar retail stores accept cash. Besides Philadelphia, Massachusetts has required that retailers accept cash since 1978, according to CBS. The law takes effect July 1, and it will not apply to stores like Costco that require a membership, nor will it apply to parking garages or lots, or to hotels or rental car companies that require a credit or debit card as security for future charges, according to the Wall Street Journal. Retailers caught refusing cash can be fined up to $2,000.

Amazon, whose new Amazon Go stores are cashless and queue-less, reportedly pushed back against the new law, asking for an exemption. According to the WSJ, Philadelphia lawmakers said that Amazon could work around the law under the exemption for stores that require a membership to shop there, but Amazon told the city that a Prime membership is not required to shop at Amazon Go stores, so its options are limited. A top official in Philadelphia's Chamber of Commerce said that the ban will prevent Philadelphia from modernizing with the rest of the country. Cashless companies argue that cash slows down transactions when change needs to be counted and creates security risks for employees locking up at the end of the night. Supporters of the new law argue that "not accepting cash hurts poorer residents who may not be able to afford or qualify for a credit card or who want to avoid fees that come with changing cash into a prepaid debit card," reports Ars. "Additionally, privacy advocates say that being forced to use a digital form of payment to buy things is a de facto requirement to share records of their purchases with third-party companies."

Comments

Good.

[Rick Schumann]

Glad to see there's still a little sanity left in the world.

Re:Good.

[TheGratefulNet]

agreed!

the move to eliminate anonymous and track-less payment is fucking evil. we need to push back against this.

I don't trust my phone at all; and anything that allows non-phone options in the Real World is a good thing.

the millennials can just learn to carry cash. they will thank us old guys, too, WHEN they find out that blindly trusting 'the cloud' is stupid beyond compare.

Cash still a good thing

[lgw]

Supporters of the new law argue that "not accepting cash hurts poorer residents who may not be able to afford or qualify for a credit card or who want to avoid fees that come with changing cash into a prepaid debit card," reports Ars. "Additionally, privacy advocates say that being forced to use a digital form of payment to buy things is a de facto requirement to share records of their purchases with third-party companies."

I think that's a good point. While I have some sympathy for Amazon Go trying to do something revolutionary, their stores are effectively closed to people who can't get a credit card. Their model is fundamentally incompatible with paying cash. Doesn't bother me, but I have all the choices of places to shop.

From the privacy perspective, you're boned regardless if you shop at Amazon Go, since lack of privacy is how their system works. That's fine as long as the other option remains.

Re:Cash still a good thing

[Rick Schumann]

To reinforce what you're saying with a supplementary perspective: there is a growing divide between "The Rich" and "The Poor", and the middle-class keeps shrinking, forcing people who were once middle-class into the ranks of "The Working Poor". It's not all that bad yet but it keeps getting incrementally worse every year for one reason or another. Something like retailers going 'cashless' will just accelerate the process. Some will say "you can get a prepaid debit card without a bank account" but all of those cards have fees attached to them, some exorbitant, and when every penny counts you can't afford to have some parasite company siphoning off your money because you needed groceries.

Re:Cash still a good thing

[markdavis]

>"there is a growing divide between "The Rich" and "The Poor", and the middle-class keeps shrinking, forcing people who were once middle-class into the ranks of "The Working Poor""

That is not what is actually happening in the USA or the world. In both, the "poor class" keeps shrinking while both the middle andupper class have been increasing. In the world it is far more prevalent, but I will stick to the USA

http://www.aei.org/publication...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

So you have to get the whole picture. ALL people are doing better. So although there is a greater divide on the extremes, far fewer people are actually negatively affected by it.

There isn't a fixed pie. The pie has been growing. More people are eating more pie than ever before.

Re: Cash still a good thing

[jythie]

Bank accounts are one of those catch 22 type things, once you are in the system you are in, but if you are outside of it, things can be difficult. Banks can also be surprisingly selective about who they allow to open accounts and redlining has been a historical problem. People with similar incomes often find themselves being marked as a risk or not depending on where they live.

Change is obsolete

[Ichijo]

Cashless companies argue that cash slows down transactions when change needs to be counted

Then bundle taxes into store prices and make sure those prices end in whole dollars and not a penny less.

Morons.

Re:Change is obsolete

[DogDude]

If a cashier has trouble counting change, that person needs to find a different job.

-retailer for 17 years

Re:Change is obsolete

[Whorhay]

The speed of the transaction, in my experience as someone that worked as a cashier, is usually killed by the customer not being ready to pay. As a cashier I could usually take the money, press all the necessary buttons on the register, and return the change faster than most customers could get the money out of their wallet/purse. Card transactions were slower than cash most of the time and it still seems that way, especially with the newer chipped cards. Paying with a Check was of course always the absolute slowest way to go about business.

I think the biggest boons to businesses in not accepting cash is reducing the chances of a robbery, cutting back on employee theft of cash, and cutting out conning the cashier by claiming incorrect change. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people claim they paid with a twenty instead of a ten.

Re:Change is obsolete

[Solandri]

The guy in charge of collecting cash and distributing change throughout the day for the booths at a festival was a friend of mine. During pre-festival prep, I noticed him working on the price display boards. He was setting the prices to all end in 99 cents. I pulled him aside and asked him, "Do you *really* want to run around all day collecting and distributing pennies?" The light bulb went off in his head and he changed them all to end in 95 cents. After the first day, he changed the prices again, so they all ended in multiples of 25 cents, with most of them ending in round dollars.

Lesson: Make sure the guy setting the prices is also the one who has to deal with the hassle of dealing with change.

Re:is an crime to just leave cash at an cashless p

[NerdENerd]

A restaurant told a group of us the other day that they had a one bill per table policy and didn't want to split the bill. We all said we don't want to cover the whole bill. Split the bill or we walk, they split the bill. A restaurant cannot force you to cover someone else's order, they also can't say you have a debt with them and are going to refuse your legal tender.

Re:Many of us don't use cash or credit

[markdavis]

>Many of us don't use cash or credit.

That is true. But the ONLY option that really protects privacy is cash.

>"A debit card, spending your money which is stored in your local credit union or bank, is absolutely an option."

Card payments of any type leave a trail AND force you to disclose your identity to not only the retailer but also a third party (both of which prevent privacy).

I will also point out that some people who have bad credit, cannot even open a bank account to get a debit card. And now they are cracking down on anonymous debit card sales, closing that avenue too. So it really can still be both a privacy and a poor issue when you are faced with a cashless business.

Re:But how will rich people be able to ban poors?

[dryeo]

And how are the banks supposed to make record profits every quarter with laws like that? Luckily in America, banks have the freedom to finance politicians who pass business friendly laws. Being a free country, the poor also have the right to pay off politicians so it's fair.