Under Pressure, Amazon Plans To Accept Cash at Cashierless 'Go' Stores (cnn.com)

Bowing to growing pressure from opponents who say that cashless stores leave out low-income Americans, Amazon plans to take cash at its 10 cashierless "Go" stores. From a report: Amazon Go stores, located in San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, use AI and cameras to check out customers. Amazon reportedly is considering opening up to to 3,000 by 2021. "We are working to accept cash," a spokesperson for Amazon said Wednesday. "Paying cash at Amazon Go will work as you would expect: you'll check out, pay with cash, and then get your change." Amazon did not say when Go stores will begin accepting cash. Amazon also said its bookstores will start taking cash, but did not share any details.

Steve Kessel, Amazon's senior vice president of physical stores, told employees last month that Go stores would add "additional payment mechanisms," CNBC reported earlier on Wednesday. Kessel was responding to a question about how Amazon plans to address "discrimination and elitism" at cashierless stores, according to the report. Further reading: As More Retailers Ban Paper Money, It's Making Things Awkward For Customers Without Plastic.

Comments

Prevasive tracking

[sinij]

This is not about low-income, rather about keeping alternative to payment processors widely accepted and available.

Just consider the power VISA would have if there was no ready alternatives to paying with VISA. Without alternatives they would have an effective power to implement VAT-like tax on everyone worldwide. At least for now, ability to pay with cash keep them in check - if they get too greedy merchants would stop accepting plastic.

Re:Prevasive tracking

[PrimaryConsult]

Japan did it right. For various reasons they were very, very slow to accept credit cards. It is not uncommon for people to spend the equivalent of several thousand USD in cash for large purchases. When convenience was desired for small purchases, prepaid cards came into the picture that had nothing to do with credit cards and could be refilled for cash at kiosks located in department stores, train stations, hotels, etc. They can be anonymous or registered with a protected balance, are tied to rewards programs, etc. The end result was the big credit card companies had to beg merchants to accept their cards, and you're still much more likely to find EDY or a transit pass accepted at a merchant or vending machine than you will a credit card.

The "low-income" excuse

[geekmux]

When a 16-year old with no more than a side gig cutting laws can obtain a free checking and savings account, to include the debit/credit card, can someone please explain this "low-income" excuse?

Perhaps instead of "low-income" you call it what it is; Citizens wanting to hide their legal status by being paid under every proverbial table.

Yeah, I like semi-anonymous transactions and privacy too, but they're not doing this for "high-privacy" Americans...

Re:The "low-income" excuse

[b0s0z0ku]

Well, if it has the side effect of preserving privacy, that's a benefit. Besides, a lot of tax money is being wasted on military murder sprees and mass incarceration. Who gives a fuck if DC gets a few shekels less?

Re:The "low-income" excuse

[geekmux]

Do you understand why "if you have nothing to hide..." argument is flawed? Well, your "Paid under every proverbial table." is exactly the same.

Do you understand that citizens living in a country illegally fail to meet the criteria of "nothing to hide"?

No, not "exactly" the same. At all. There's a reason we're talking about a small fraction of society here.

Re:How does cashless exclude low income?

[Obfuscant]

You don't have to have much money to have a bank account....

If you don't have much money and you have a bank account, pretty soon you will have no money.

I got a "free" $400 offer from a local bank. Deposit X dollars and we'll give you $400 for opening the account. Great deal. Until you find out there's a fee every month that you don't do a certain number of POS transactions with their card. (Hmmm. Not processing transactions costs money that justifies a fee? No, not giving them consumer demographics they can sell costs them money.) There's a fee if you want a paper statement. After just a few months (like 6) without the appropriate number of transactions, your account is deemed "inactive" and ... you pay a fee for that. And after a few more, your account is dormant and can be turned over to the state.

I needed an international money transfer, and did it through them. There was a $27 fee for that which nobody bothered to tell me about (I had to ask them multiple times for the secret codes so the other bank could send the money, so it's not like they didn't have a chance to tell me), and was not mentioned even on their international money transfer web information pages.

Banks are a rip-off. Poor people and banks have no common ground.

I can

[rsilvergun]

it's fine for the 16 year old with no credit. Give that kid a few years. The car his mom & dad helped him buy will break down and his two $8/hr jobs won't be enough to get it fixed. He won't know how to fix it himself because we pay for schools with property taxes and Auto Shop was one of the first things cut when the property values in his neighborhood collapsed and his school district lost all it's funding. Kid now has a high interest loan over his head and very little money. So his credit's shot. One of these days he overdraws his account and the bank uses that opportunity to close it out and send him packing since he's all cost and no profit. The divorce he has in his 20s (along with child support) means no bank will touch him. Doesn't help that the mom cleaned out his account right before the divorce

Once the world kicks down you it doesn't stop. Unless some outside force steps in you're pretty much done with. As for the illegals, they've got their own little world that still takes cash that they keep to. Everyone knows they're there but turns a blind eye because the local businesses want to hire them and the locals themselves want their lawns maintained and their houses renovated on the cheap. This has nothing to do with illegal immigration. We could stop that any time we want with stricter employer guidelines and by ending the drug war so the refugees would stop streaming in. But if we did that the right wing in America would lose yet another boogeyman to scare us with.

Re:I can

[thegarbz]

Cool story, but why would that situation mean he can't get a savings account with a debit/credit card?

Do Americans actually charge for these? Do for some reason you need to have a good credit rating to pay with debit over VISA?

If so the problem here isn't credit, the people or the cashless concept.

Re:Low-income Americans are holding us back.

[b0s0z0ku]

Low-income Americans and illegal immigrants keep the good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash economy rolling along. We should bow down, kiss their feet, and thank them for preserving payment options that are private and not subject to bankster tracking.

Re:How does cashless exclude low income?

[b0s0z0ku]

It's easier to pay cash -- I know exactly how much I paid, and they can't enter an incorrect "tip" amount later. Plus cash is good, cash is private, we should all be doing our part to keep the cash economy humming along. It's our duty to freedom from tracking and bank/government control. I carry and pay cash as a (small) revolutionary act.

Cash is king

[cordovaCon83]

legal tender
noun
Denomination of a country's currency that, by law, must be accepted as a medium for commercial exchange and payment for a money debt.

Sounds to me like Amazon is making the right move. I don't see much room for interpretation for the definition of 'legal tender' here.

Re:How does cashless exclude low income?

[jwhyche]

To the mod that labeled this as flamebait. There is nothing flamebait about this post. It is a simple statement of a story that I saw decades ago. In the figure you need to make sure you mod correctly for Slashdot moding system to work.

Unsolvable Problems

[Howitzer86]

Yeah, there's a reason everything seems to be an endless battle - even when one party has total control and a concrete agenda, they blow it. An American politician can do too much and cause a disaster or do too little and say, "We'll get it right next time if you vote for me," thus it pays for them to be as ineffective as possible.

We will never solve any issue that we care about. Instead, our politicians will continue to fight a forever-war over meaningless bandaids and half-measures while promising it will solve everything and/or destroy us all.

Re:How does cashless exclude low income?

[jwhyche]

One of the reasons I believe it is safe to call bullshit on this particular conspiracy theory. So what if they can tell that I walked past a scanner and have $200 in cash in my pocket. Unless.... they take my picture at the time, compare it to a database with facial recognition software, and then log it. I should run that by the tin foil hat group for shits and giggles.

Not exactly

[rsilvergun]

the problem isn't them blowing it, the problem is that a right wing, pro corporate and anti-worker regime has been in charge since Reagan. It's not about too much or too little, they've always done a lot, it's just mostly been bad. Tax cuts for the rich, attacks on Unions, deregulation (especially of banks who gamble with trillions knowing full well their losses will be covered by you and me) trickle down economics, austerity for the working class and opulence for the rich and endless war to support the military industrial complex.

We've been trying right wing politics for decades, whichever party was in charge. Folks have been trying to replace "The Establishment" without being able to understand who the establishment is.

Go look up opensecrets.org. That's a good place to start. Watch Secular Talk and Shaun. Read A People's History of the United States. Listen to what Bernie Sanders says about healthcare and what Liz Warren says about the banks. Do these things and it'll start to make sense. The problem is a wealthy elite who's greed and power hunger knows no bounds. You can't just look at parties or politician or who makes you feel good about yourself. What matters is policy and who does and doesn't take corporate PAC money. Oh, and watch out for guys like Beto O'Rouke, who seems to have gotten his money from the wealthy and hide that fact by having them bundle small donations.