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D.C.'s ban on cashless businesses takes effect

260 points by saguntum 3y ago

spicybright 3y ago
Off topic but the writing style is so weird. It's sad they have to make articles a few paragraphs with a bolded titles to get people to read.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  Almost impossible to read actually. What even do some of the bolded parts have to do with the parts that follow them? 'Driving the news', 'Zoom in' and 'zoom out' seem just like spurious titles.
- howinteresting 3y ago
  That's Axios for you. I'm sure it appeals to some people.
- asgraham 3y ago
  For me it makes it harder to read. I think it's because my skimming muscles are so tuned to both bold and first-sentence text that when presented such a stark opportunity, I naturally try to jump from one bold title to the next. But the bolded "titles" contain no substantive information, so I have to fight that urge, which means I can't skim at all, even though my attention reeeeally wants to jump.
- metadat 3y ago
  Here's a slightly more intelligble article: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/new-laws-on-guns-cashless-businesses-take-effect-in-dc-area-on-oct-1/3433594/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/new-laws-on-guns-ca... At first I thought they were banning cash-only businesses, but it is in fact the opposite. Businesses must now accept cash in Washington D.C.
fragmede 3y ago
Interesting. I get why you'd want to ban cashless business, but many business in a nearby town with a high crime rate are going cashless because you can't rob a Square reader quite as easily as a cash register.
- qup 3y ago
  I know a business that went cash-only for the same reason in reverse: the thieves were doing it via chargebacks saying they never heard of the place. Couldn't win disputes even with video evidence. They put in an ATM, can't charge that back.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    You can accept debit cards and not accept credit cards. That is actually really common in Europe. Chargebacks for most CC providers are around $50-$100 now, so you can do it for small items, I wonder who uses cash to buy something that would make a chargeback worthwhile for a thieve? They would have to rotate cards around to get that. More likely, thieves were using stolen cards, and the chargebacks were probably legitimate (a thief trying to make money on a chargeback would be pretty dumb anyways, since it would be tracked back to their identity regardless, and the bank would shut them down quickly they made an unusual habit of it).
    - akira2501 3y ago
      Towing companies often only accept cash for certain types of jobs. They want zero opportunities for disputes or late stage regrets, particularly for towing off private property or illegally parked vehicles.
  - bagels 3y ago
    Unfortunately, the other thieves will rip a hole in the wall to steal the ATM.
    - sambazi 3y ago
      "not my problem" thou
dools 3y ago
Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.
- PumpkinSpice 3y ago
  In that position, the government would inevitably try to meddle. Look up Operation Choke Point back in the Obama years, when the government pressured banks to cut off a variety of "undesirable" businesses, such as payday lenders, gun dealers, and so on. Cash serves an important purpose. It is a safety valve in case of such extrajudicial overreach. Yeah, because it's private, it also enables some bad stuff (tax dodging, drug trade), but the same can be said about not requiring ID verification to use the internet.
  - dools 3y ago
    Operation Choke Point was run by the government within the framework of the existing banking sector. It was enacted by DoJ (one part of the government) then: "In August 2014, U.S. Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer introduced a bill that would limit law enforcement's ability to restrict access to the banking system as a response against Operation Choke Point.[12]" So it was stopped by Congress, another part of government. The existence or non-existence of cash wouldn't have made a difference to the ability of pay day lenders or firearms dealers to continue operating because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to get access to cash to conduct their business unless they had bank accounts! My point is that a government supplied electronic payment system would make no difference to the ability of a government to engage in anything more or less nefarious than they can already do, and the legislative process is capable of dealing with that (and if it's not, cash won't save you either).
    - PumpkinSpice 3y ago
      I'm having trouble parsing your argument, to be honest. In a cashless society, the government has a near-absolute power to shut down or penalize any economic activity it deems undesirable - whether that activity is criminal or not. In a society that permits cash, the government's reach is still long, but not nearly as complete. Unless you always expect governments to be perfectly benevolent and well-attuned to the needs of all social groups, it seems prudent to fight for cash to remain a valid payment choice.
farzinadil 3y ago
Ridiculous. Why not also then force cash only businesses into taking card and mobile payments also?
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  Probably because the state has limited ability to compel business relationships, thank God, and taking card effectively means enforcing a business relationship with a duopoly.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Is that really any different from Netflix being card only? Or worse being online-only so you need a relationship to an ISP?
    - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
      Personally I think Netflix should be compelled to offer a path to using cash as well.
      - em500 3y ago
        Many of the larger internet services, including Netflix, can already be funded with cash via gift cards sold in supermarkets.
        SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
        Makes sense. Although it should probably be more like other bills you can pay at say a post-office. But yeah, it's better than no solution.
      - Spivak 3y ago
        I'm not really sure how you could ever realize something like this without inventing prepaid cards which go through a card network anyway and are just ephemeral bank accounts backed by real banks. Any business that is large enough can get their gift cards in retail stores which would be fine. It would definitely create a moral hazard if Netflix had to provide a cash option like this because retail stores would suddenly have crazy amounts of leverage but w/e. But then naturally there would be market need for "accept cash payments for your online service" as a service for smaller businesses that can't just get partnerships with Target and Kroger and the entity providing that service would just be a bank issuing branded prepaid cards but using their own bespoke card network. Like you can't fight it, you always invent Visa. You could probably cut card networks out eventually with $as_of_yet_unlaunced_service backed by FedNow but that's not exactly cash and still requires a bank account.
farzinadil 3y ago
I would rather Walmart and Home Depot be forced to accept mobile payments than this. (But I don't really support either case)
SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
Fantastic. Hope to see more of this over time.
aketchum 3y ago
I have no dog in this fight as I rarely deal with cash and do not run a retail business. However from a conceptual point of view I really have a viscerally negative reaction to not accepting cash. It is a societal acceptance of the rent seeking behavior of the credit processing networks. I already have to pay a sales tax to ${TAX_ENTITIES.length} different government entities, I don't love that I also have a 3% tax going to VISA/Mastercard/Amex/...
- Guvante 3y ago
  Visa gets 1% and the bank gets the rest actually. Which they use to fund cash back programs...
  - smohnot 3y ago
    Besides the point but visa actually gets about 0.14%
    - Guvante 3y ago
      I pulled up their financials previously and their gross margin was 1%. Net income is a weird number so I tend to ignore it for this kind of stuff. Certainly I could have missed the payback style stuff they do but I thought that was included in the number I checked.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    It'd be nice to see what an actually competitive payment processing market would look like. Merchants seem to have no power in this system and I don't see much effort between banks to compete for business, either. These offerings are stagnant and reflect an effort to keep profits artificially high rather than reduce costs and expand on volume.
    - Guvante 3y ago
      I think cash discounts and similar models can work to avoid paying the CC fee (now that vendors are allowed to do that)
wly_cdgr 3y ago
Good
kxrm 3y ago
I live in DC and support this law not just from an accessibility standpoint but also from a privacy standpoint. I am tired of every retail/restaurant establishment building a profile of me.
- Spivak 3y ago
  But like serious question, are you tired enough that you'll actually stop using payment cards? Is it worth the inconvenience and losing 2%ish off the top of everything you buy?
  - kxrm 3y ago
    I am pragmatic about it, in DC, you will be penalized for not using a credit card as most people do use them and therefore businesses have baked in the fees. However having the option not to is a very important privilege I feel we should protect. Believe it or not we do have cash first businesses and I make it a point to use cash with them as they will only charge a fee if you use a credit card.
  - charlie0 3y ago
    If there are any laws we need to pass is that credit card fees should be disclosed on all receipts and optional. Cash buyers should not get penalized for not using a credit card.
    - runnr_az 3y ago
      At least in PHX, I’ve been seeing a lot of businesses with a 2-3% surcharge for cards
      - amrocha 3y ago
        Huh, I thought that wasn't allowed by the card issuer rules. Isn't that why a lot of places don't take Amex? Because the fees are higher but they can't add a surcharge to cover it?
jumpkick 3y ago
Actually, paying with cash is a great way to avoid tipflation. Tip if you like, whatever amount you feel is an appropriate employment subsidy for the service rendered, but you won’t be awkwardly forced into it by an iPad.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
In my city, cash businesses are the first to be knocked over for drug money, so increasingly more and more businesses are forced to go cashless. By forcing all businesses to accept cash, this would re-spread the risk of armed robbery or burglary around.
- okokwhatever 3y ago
  Illegal stuff exists with and without legal pressure. I mean, if you're a bad guy believe me that a cashless society isn't going to stop you.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    I’m agreeing! This would just redistribute the risk around. Right now, everyone knows what businesses are still carrying cash, it isn’t very fair to those businesses. This is more of a fairness issue: those guys are going to rob whatever, but so many businesses going cashless concentrates their activities. If all businesses were cashless then they would find something else to grab. It wouldn’t be as easy or convenient as cash, they would need to use a fence, so maybe more shoplifting and smash and grabs.
pengaru 3y ago
Please do this state-wide in California. Or hell, nation-wide in US.
darig 3y ago
[dead]
komali2 3y ago
> As are parking facilities that did not accept cash payments prior to Dec. 1, 2020. The car is god, lol. I don't understand why they get an exemption.
rendaw 3y ago
In India, even rural farmers have easy cashless mobile payments. In D.C., the capital of the US, nobody has easy cashless mobile payments, and even card payments are too difficult, with the government finally giving up and enshrining cash.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I don't think that is accurate. India and China use cheap QR code transactions, but a lot of the overhead is taken in by VC money. So I think these companies are hoping to make money on these someday, just not right now. The USA has a pretty well developed system, and debit and credit cards have been pretty ubiquitous for a few decades now. The issue is that our system is expensive, and no one is subsidizing it for future gains (the gains are today). Debit cards are cheaper, but credit cards have done some marketing to get people to prefer them.
  - em500 3y ago
    Dunno about India, but in China the QR payments operated by Tencent and Alibaba are certainly not ran at loss.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      They currently are, especially after Xi put a damper on Jack Ma’s fintech plans.
- gs17 3y ago
  No, most businesses in DC accept cards, and I'd imagine the majority of those also accept mobile too.
- AllegedAlec 3y ago
  Good luck when a bank decides to freeze your account because you called a politician a fat pig.
  - okokwhatever 3y ago
blockwriter 3y ago
I'm opening a coffeeshop in Chicago and do not plan on accepting cash, just seems easier and safer to me.
- kovacs_x 3y ago
  .. and faster customer processing too!
- bilekas 3y ago
  > I'm opening a coffeeshop in Chicago and do not plan on accepting cash, just seems easier and safer to me. But why ? For things like a coffee that's maybe $2, why should I, as a customer, possibly incur a fee from my bank for a $2 coffee? You as a business can do what you like, maybe you could just limit the max bill denomination to 20 or something. I feel your limiting your customers options when not allowing cash. I know I personally would actively avoid a coffee shop like that.
  - aembleton 3y ago
    If you're using a bank that charges you for making a $2 card transaction, then perhaps you should change bank. I feel that bank is limiting their customers options when doing that.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
      Yeah if your bank is charging you $2 for a transaction what your coffee shop accepts as payment is the least of your worries.
  - bestest 3y ago
    customers paying with a card charged by the bank? it does not happen in Europe. is this a US thing?
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    Lots of cafes etc here in London don't accept cash. Cash payment just slows everyone down when it's busy. It's orders of magnitude more faffing around especially when somebody decides to pay with a bunch of schrapnel and count it out coin by coin.
jiqiren 3y ago
Article didn't state if it was legal or not - but maybe the solution is to charge a $5 fee for using cash. Also... Yes, cash is expensive to handle. Theft, keeping change, a register, maybe a safe, transport to bank, fees from banks etc
lacker 3y ago
I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the government doing things is bad, but Wells Fargo, Citibank, etc are so heavily regulated, they are essentially a wing of the government now anyway. Maybe in exchange for being "too big to fail" they could be required to provide all American citizens with a standard, transferrable, no-fee debit accounts.
- Maxion 3y ago
  Big problem is AML and KYC related legislation - this is expensive to do for people who are statistical outliers. I.e. people with low income. So it'd have to be government subsidised banking.
  - augustl 3y ago
    I would love to see analysis on the trade offs with KYC and AML. How much does it actually help in fighting crime? Vs. all of the lost opportunities due to all of the red tape and regulatory blockers for legitimate business models.
    - Maxion 3y ago
      Very very hard to get a number on this. From experience I can say that it reduces crime, but it does create massive issues too. Problems are current regulations aren't risk based, which results unproportional compliance costs.
  - piaste 3y ago
    Perhaps the free government accounts could be exempted from that red tape, and be capped to a maximum turnover amount such that it isn't attractive to money launderers. Once your turnover exceeds that cap, you have to "upgrade" to a regular account with all the KYC stuff.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Almost every comment is about politics, choice, privacy, rights, markets and percentages. There's a completely different take; Civic resilience From an operational and strategic security POV, cash is a vastly superior technology. It doesn't need electricity, a network of cables, satellites and routers. Therefore cash in circulation acts as a buffer that provides economic stability and continuity of operations. Also, take a look at a modern European bank note, like we have in the UK. It's a sophisticated technology. It's not like we still have Roman coins that any blacksmith can forge. There are many good, but more subtle reasons for preserving the use of cash, and regulating business practices if necessary to do so.
- barrkel 3y ago
  Cash improves operational security? Pull the other one.
- Guthur 3y ago
  If the scenario plays out as you describe the fiat currency won't be worth the fancy material it's printed on.
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    I haven't outlined any scenarios, but maybe you're considering a total Internet shutdown. No such drama is needed to make the case. Deloitte calculate the per day impact of a temporary shutdown would be on average $23.6 million per 10 million population. Not that bad actually. But that figure seems based on the immediate hourly estimate from places like The Uptime Institute and LSE. Other estimates puts it at between $11Bn per day for the whole USA [0] and only $10Bn for the whole year [1]. In reality the impact quickly compounds, making day 2 (24-48 hours) significant worse, and so on [2]. I am quite sure the aggregate downtime of AWS, Azure, Google and other cloud services in the past year has exceeded 24 hours per capita civilian use. Being able to take cash, as a "flywheel", makes or breaks businesses in those times. [0] https://bnn.network/finance-nav/unraveling-the-impact-of-global-internet-outages-a-digital-age-dilemma/ https://bnn.network/finance-nav/unraveling-the-impact-of-glo... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/internet-shutdowns-cost-global-economy-10b-so-far-in-2022-vpn-report-says/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/internet-shutdow... [2] According to studies I got masters students at York Business School to undertake. edit: formatting
seanhunter 3y ago
US seems determined to cement its status as the luddite nation of consumer payments.
yakkityyak 3y ago
Everywhere should accept cash, and every place should also (try) to support tap to pay. I’ll gladly pay an extra 5% for a donut if it means I don’t have go to an ATM, withdraw the minimum, and forget the change in my car anyway.
lazrgatr 3y ago
Argentina has effectively a cash-only economy. Queues in excess of an hour at the supermarket are fairly common partly because of the overheads in having everyone pay with cash (needing to empty the tills, validate large notes, taking time to get correct change out and/or giving change). Let's not be so quick to say that card payments are all bad.
- bilekas 3y ago
  > Let's not be so quick to say that card payments are all bad. The argument is more centered around business who flat out refuse to accept cash. Which is on the face just ridiculous.
- mariojv 3y ago
  Is this a product of it being cash-based or a product of the high inflation that Argentina sees? I imagine it would be quite chaotic with prices fluctuating so rapidly.
  - kobalsky 3y ago
    a little bit of this, that and tax evasion. people don't want the government seeing what they spend their money on, or if it was saved. almost everyone does this to some extent due to the insanely high tax load and double economy that exists in every facet of our lives. for example, when someone is buying real state, big part of the negotiations are how much is the declared price of this transaction (how much our "IRS" sees), because clean money and undeclared money have different costs. So when our "IRS" comes asking "where did you get the money from?" you say "from all these cash extractions of course, I saved most of that, I ate rice only", you can't say that if you spend your money with a credit card, they don't need an investigation to see your spending habits, in fact a change in spending habits will trigger an investigation. I'd like to clarify that I don't have experience with anything of this, a friend told me about it.
elforce002 3y ago
These are good news. I used credit cards a lot but to pay for haircuts, etc... I use cash. We need more options, not less.
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
What I particularly like about this is how it goes directly against the conspiracy theories.
- kozzz 3y ago
  Well, not exactly. Mandatory cash payments imply more oppportunities for robbers, thus increasing crime and chaos, which is presumably what “they” want
causi 3y ago
Not taking cash means people without bank accounts cannot transact with you. At present that's six percent of Americans. Millions of (mostly marginalized) people who, in a world where every business made the decision to not take cash, wouldn't be able to buy food or other essentials. It would be like every store converting to drive-through only and telling everyone without a car they're free to starve to death in the street.
sbuttgereit 3y ago
OK... naturally this is a political discussion; but I find the politics of this interesting and maybe even amusing. I don't live in DC and at don't really have a horse in this race but I sense a contradiction. I think many would consider Washington D.C. to be governed solidly by American progressives. While the rationale for this law fits solidly within their views on egalitarianism, I wonder why no one is discussing another proclaimed progressive area of concern environmental impact and climate? I have to think in this case cash must be significantly environmentally more impactful than the electronic payments. Cash requires a surprising amount of raw materials to produce, not all of which I expect to be environmentally friendly. Cash requires specialized transport, not just of the actual cash to and fro, but also of those raw materials. Sure electronic payments require power to operate, but I assure you hard cash is just as counted electronically as electronic payments. Disposal of used cash I expect to have its own unique environmental impacts. In essence making each unit of currency physically real rather than electronic would seem to have unaccounted for negative externalities, something my more progressive friends go on and on about when convenient, which I don't even see getting lip service in relation to this law. Or maybe in the eyes of the progressive establishment enacting these laws climate just isn't nearly so important as equity/social justice? Again, not my fight, and I think the vast majority of "negative externality" arguments are made for rhetorical points rather than referring to some well considered analysis not to be ignored... but I would be curious to understand how progressives decide which priorities are of greater urgency than environment and climate given how those issues are typically couched.
- constantly 3y ago
  What about electronic negative environmental externalities? It requires a while network of internet (backbones, cables, satellites, telecoms) and constant electricity generation to feed it, creation of credit cards, etc. This all seems to have a significantly greater effect than the creation of a new physical bill that lasts 6-10 years.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    The communications equipment is obviously already there, and not going anywhere due to the utility of the internet. The externality of using the communication equipment for payments is negligible.
someonehere 3y ago
Ah yes. SF attempted to float this idea but critics argued it disenfranchises those that don’t have access to payment cards or access to technology that can provide terminal payments. I tend to agree that physical cash should always be a viable option. Using a card or phone to pay at a terminal is a choice. If you say, “but cash should be removed for <reason X>”, look at the Square outage a few weeks ago. About a day and a half of no ability to use mobile ordering or paying for goods and services. What happened? DNS issues. If DNS issues can cripple an economy and business livelihoods then there should be a backup.
mariojv 3y ago
I agree with most commenters here that cash is useful and that cashless is a step in the wrong direction. I did want to point out, though, that this differs a lot from what at least some commenters on other forums are saying about the ban. All the top voted comments on Reddit about this are against it: https://www.reddit.com/r/washdc/comments/16wacjy/dcs_ban_on_cashless_businesses_to_take_effect/ https://www.reddit.com/r/washdc/comments/16wacjy/dcs_ban_on_... I find the difference in opinion between the HN crowd and Reddit kind of interesting. Part of it is probably because that is a local to DC subreddit, but I also believe they're not really considering the privacy / civic resilience angle. From my perspective, having lived through a near total power outage in Texas for a week in February 2021, having some cash, food, and drinking water on hand is just basic common sense these days. Some local grocers were letting people take groceries without paying, anecdotally, but I don't think that was everywhere or even corporate policy. You also don't want to rely on that to feed your family or pay for basic goods in an emergency. At one point, even the cell network was starting to go down in my area because the generators powering the cell towers were running out of fuel.
- benja810 3y ago
  FYI, I used to live in DC (and frequent the Reddit community) and I've never heard of the community you linked. Apparently it's a split from the original with only 8k subscribers: > Created 2021, free of over-moderation The more popular community, and the one I'm familiar with, has 332k subscribers. It can be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/ I'd bet there's quite a bit of overlap between the group of users who felt they were over moderated on the original DC community and those that disapprove of these types of regulations.
wait_a_minute 3y ago
Great news. This should be rolled out everywhere.
mikerg87 3y ago
Can someone explain how this is possible? Doesn’t US currency have the phrase “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private” which I understood this to mean it should be accepted for settlement of financial transactions.
- acdha 3y ago
  See https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm for the federal position - state law varies. The reasoning I’ve heard behind this basically comes back to whether you have a choice: if my coffee shop says “no cash”, you can walk away just as you could if the sign says “formal dress required” or “no cell phones in use” – weird, perhaps, but it’s private property and both parties have the ability to walk away if they can’t agree on terms. Debts are different because they happen at a time remove, and the economy works a lot better if you don’t have something like a loan requiring repayment in notes from a particular bank which failed or, worse, was bought by your lender and is now playing games.

260 points by saguntum 3y ago

Off topic but the writing style is so weird. It's sad they have to make articles a few paragraphs with a bolded titles to get people to read.

15457345234 3y ago
Almost impossible to read actually. What even do some of the bolded parts have to do with the parts that follow them? 'Driving the news', 'Zoom in' and 'zoom out' seem just like spurious titles.
howinteresting 3y ago
That's Axios for you. I'm sure it appeals to some people.
asgraham 3y ago
For me it makes it harder to read. I think it's because my skimming muscles are so tuned to both bold and first-sentence text that when presented such a stark opportunity, I naturally try to jump from one bold title to the next. But the bolded "titles" contain no substantive information, so I have to fight that urge, which means I can't skim at all, even though my attention reeeeally wants to jump.
metadat 3y ago
Here's a slightly more intelligble article: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/new-laws-on-guns-cashless-businesses-take-effect-in-dc-area-on-oct-1/3433594/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/new-laws-on-guns-ca... At first I thought they were banning cash-only businesses, but it is in fact the opposite. Businesses must now accept cash in Washington D.C.

fragmede 3y ago

Interesting. I get why you'd want to ban cashless business, but many business in a nearby town with a high crime rate are going cashless because you can't rob a Square reader quite as easily as a cash register.

qup 3y ago
I know a business that went cash-only for the same reason in reverse: the thieves were doing it via chargebacks saying they never heard of the place. Couldn't win disputes even with video evidence. They put in an ATM, can't charge that back.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  You can accept debit cards and not accept credit cards. That is actually really common in Europe. Chargebacks for most CC providers are around $50-$100 now, so you can do it for small items, I wonder who uses cash to buy something that would make a chargeback worthwhile for a thieve? They would have to rotate cards around to get that. More likely, thieves were using stolen cards, and the chargebacks were probably legitimate (a thief trying to make money on a chargeback would be pretty dumb anyways, since it would be tracked back to their identity regardless, and the bank would shut them down quickly they made an unusual habit of it).
  - akira2501 3y ago
    Towing companies often only accept cash for certain types of jobs. They want zero opportunities for disputes or late stage regrets, particularly for towing off private property or illegally parked vehicles.
- bagels 3y ago
  Unfortunately, the other thieves will rip a hole in the wall to steal the ATM.
  - sambazi 3y ago
    "not my problem" thou

dools 3y ago

Instead of banning cashless businesses because it's discriminatory to the unbanked perhaps they should focus on reducing discrimination in the banking sector and providing a publicly run electronic payment system.

PumpkinSpice 3y ago
In that position, the government would inevitably try to meddle. Look up Operation Choke Point back in the Obama years, when the government pressured banks to cut off a variety of "undesirable" businesses, such as payday lenders, gun dealers, and so on. Cash serves an important purpose. It is a safety valve in case of such extrajudicial overreach. Yeah, because it's private, it also enables some bad stuff (tax dodging, drug trade), but the same can be said about not requiring ID verification to use the internet.
- dools 3y ago
  Operation Choke Point was run by the government within the framework of the existing banking sector. It was enacted by DoJ (one part of the government) then: "In August 2014, U.S. Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer introduced a bill that would limit law enforcement's ability to restrict access to the banking system as a response against Operation Choke Point.[12]" So it was stopped by Congress, another part of government. The existence or non-existence of cash wouldn't have made a difference to the ability of pay day lenders or firearms dealers to continue operating because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to get access to cash to conduct their business unless they had bank accounts! My point is that a government supplied electronic payment system would make no difference to the ability of a government to engage in anything more or less nefarious than they can already do, and the legislative process is capable of dealing with that (and if it's not, cash won't save you either).
  - PumpkinSpice 3y ago
    I'm having trouble parsing your argument, to be honest. In a cashless society, the government has a near-absolute power to shut down or penalize any economic activity it deems undesirable - whether that activity is criminal or not. In a society that permits cash, the government's reach is still long, but not nearly as complete. Unless you always expect governments to be perfectly benevolent and well-attuned to the needs of all social groups, it seems prudent to fight for cash to remain a valid payment choice.

farzinadil 3y ago

Ridiculous. Why not also then force cash only businesses into taking card and mobile payments also?

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
Probably because the state has limited ability to compel business relationships, thank God, and taking card effectively means enforcing a business relationship with a duopoly.
- Spivak 3y ago
  Is that really any different from Netflix being card only? Or worse being online-only so you need a relationship to an ISP?
  - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
    Personally I think Netflix should be compelled to offer a path to using cash as well.
    - em500 3y ago
      Many of the larger internet services, including Netflix, can already be funded with cash via gift cards sold in supermarkets.
      - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
        Makes sense. Although it should probably be more like other bills you can pay at say a post-office. But yeah, it's better than no solution.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      I'm not really sure how you could ever realize something like this without inventing prepaid cards which go through a card network anyway and are just ephemeral bank accounts backed by real banks. Any business that is large enough can get their gift cards in retail stores which would be fine. It would definitely create a moral hazard if Netflix had to provide a cash option like this because retail stores would suddenly have crazy amounts of leverage but w/e. But then naturally there would be market need for "accept cash payments for your online service" as a service for smaller businesses that can't just get partnerships with Target and Kroger and the entity providing that service would just be a bank issuing branded prepaid cards but using their own bespoke card network. Like you can't fight it, you always invent Visa. You could probably cut card networks out eventually with $as_of_yet_unlaunced_service backed by FedNow but that's not exactly cash and still requires a bank account.

farzinadil 3y ago

I would rather Walmart and Home Depot be forced to accept mobile payments than this. (But I don't really support either case)

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago

Fantastic. Hope to see more of this over time.

aketchum 3y ago

I have no dog in this fight as I rarely deal with cash and do not run a retail business. However from a conceptual point of view I really have a viscerally negative reaction to not accepting cash. It is a societal acceptance of the rent seeking behavior of the credit processing networks. I already have to pay a sales tax to ${TAX_ENTITIES.length} different government entities, I don't love that I also have a 3% tax going to VISA/Mastercard/Amex/...

Guvante 3y ago
Visa gets 1% and the bank gets the rest actually. Which they use to fund cash back programs...
- smohnot 3y ago
  Besides the point but visa actually gets about 0.14%
  - Guvante 3y ago
    I pulled up their financials previously and their gross margin was 1%. Net income is a weird number so I tend to ignore it for this kind of stuff. Certainly I could have missed the payback style stuff they do but I thought that was included in the number I checked.
- akira2501 3y ago
  It'd be nice to see what an actually competitive payment processing market would look like. Merchants seem to have no power in this system and I don't see much effort between banks to compete for business, either. These offerings are stagnant and reflect an effort to keep profits artificially high rather than reduce costs and expand on volume.
  - Guvante 3y ago
    I think cash discounts and similar models can work to avoid paying the CC fee (now that vendors are allowed to do that)

wly_cdgr 3y ago

Good

kxrm 3y ago

I live in DC and support this law not just from an accessibility standpoint but also from a privacy standpoint. I am tired of every retail/restaurant establishment building a profile of me.

Spivak 3y ago
But like serious question, are you tired enough that you'll actually stop using payment cards? Is it worth the inconvenience and losing 2%ish off the top of everything you buy?
- kxrm 3y ago
  I am pragmatic about it, in DC, you will be penalized for not using a credit card as most people do use them and therefore businesses have baked in the fees. However having the option not to is a very important privilege I feel we should protect. Believe it or not we do have cash first businesses and I make it a point to use cash with them as they will only charge a fee if you use a credit card.
- charlie0 3y ago
  If there are any laws we need to pass is that credit card fees should be disclosed on all receipts and optional. Cash buyers should not get penalized for not using a credit card.
  - runnr_az 3y ago
    At least in PHX, I’ve been seeing a lot of businesses with a 2-3% surcharge for cards
    - amrocha 3y ago
      Huh, I thought that wasn't allowed by the card issuer rules. Isn't that why a lot of places don't take Amex? Because the fees are higher but they can't add a surcharge to cover it?

jumpkick 3y ago

Actually, paying with cash is a great way to avoid tipflation. Tip if you like, whatever amount you feel is an appropriate employment subsidy for the service rendered, but you won’t be awkwardly forced into it by an iPad.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

In my city, cash businesses are the first to be knocked over for drug money, so increasingly more and more businesses are forced to go cashless. By forcing all businesses to accept cash, this would re-spread the risk of armed robbery or burglary around.

okokwhatever 3y ago
Illegal stuff exists with and without legal pressure. I mean, if you're a bad guy believe me that a cashless society isn't going to stop you.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I’m agreeing! This would just redistribute the risk around. Right now, everyone knows what businesses are still carrying cash, it isn’t very fair to those businesses. This is more of a fairness issue: those guys are going to rob whatever, but so many businesses going cashless concentrates their activities. If all businesses were cashless then they would find something else to grab. It wouldn’t be as easy or convenient as cash, they would need to use a fence, so maybe more shoplifting and smash and grabs.

pengaru 3y ago

Please do this state-wide in California. Or hell, nation-wide in US.

darig 3y ago

[dead]

komali2 3y ago

> As are parking facilities that did not accept cash payments prior to Dec. 1, 2020. The car is god, lol. I don't understand why they get an exemption.

rendaw 3y ago

In India, even rural farmers have easy cashless mobile payments. In D.C., the capital of the US, nobody has easy cashless mobile payments, and even card payments are too difficult, with the government finally giving up and enshrining cash.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
I don't think that is accurate. India and China use cheap QR code transactions, but a lot of the overhead is taken in by VC money. So I think these companies are hoping to make money on these someday, just not right now. The USA has a pretty well developed system, and debit and credit cards have been pretty ubiquitous for a few decades now. The issue is that our system is expensive, and no one is subsidizing it for future gains (the gains are today). Debit cards are cheaper, but credit cards have done some marketing to get people to prefer them.
- em500 3y ago
  Dunno about India, but in China the QR payments operated by Tencent and Alibaba are certainly not ran at loss.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    They currently are, especially after Xi put a damper on Jack Ma’s fintech plans.
gs17 3y ago
No, most businesses in DC accept cards, and I'd imagine the majority of those also accept mobile too.
AllegedAlec 3y ago
Good luck when a bank decides to freeze your account because you called a politician a fat pig.
- okokwhatever 3y ago

blockwriter 3y ago

I'm opening a coffeeshop in Chicago and do not plan on accepting cash, just seems easier and safer to me.

kovacs_x 3y ago
.. and faster customer processing too!
bilekas 3y ago
> I'm opening a coffeeshop in Chicago and do not plan on accepting cash, just seems easier and safer to me. But why ? For things like a coffee that's maybe $2, why should I, as a customer, possibly incur a fee from my bank for a $2 coffee? You as a business can do what you like, maybe you could just limit the max bill denomination to 20 or something. I feel your limiting your customers options when not allowing cash. I know I personally would actively avoid a coffee shop like that.
- aembleton 3y ago
  If you're using a bank that charges you for making a $2 card transaction, then perhaps you should change bank. I feel that bank is limiting their customers options when doing that.
  - seanhunter 3y ago
    Yeah if your bank is charging you $2 for a transaction what your coffee shop accepts as payment is the least of your worries.
- bestest 3y ago
  customers paying with a card charged by the bank? it does not happen in Europe. is this a US thing?
- seanhunter 3y ago
  Lots of cafes etc here in London don't accept cash. Cash payment just slows everyone down when it's busy. It's orders of magnitude more faffing around especially when somebody decides to pay with a bunch of schrapnel and count it out coin by coin.

jiqiren 3y ago

Article didn't state if it was legal or not - but maybe the solution is to charge a $5 fee for using cash. Also... Yes, cash is expensive to handle. Theft, keeping change, a register, maybe a safe, transport to bank, fees from banks etc

lacker 3y ago

I've noticed recently more of the food truck or farmers' market type businesses aren't officially cashless, which is illegal in California AFAIU. They just don't have change for a $20. It's a real problem that some people cannot afford the fees on a bank account, but I would prefer that we find some way to provide everyone with minimum banking services. Like a no-fee government-provided debit card. I know, the government doing things is bad, but Wells Fargo, Citibank, etc are so heavily regulated, they are essentially a wing of the government now anyway. Maybe in exchange for being "too big to fail" they could be required to provide all American citizens with a standard, transferrable, no-fee debit accounts.

Maxion 3y ago
Big problem is AML and KYC related legislation - this is expensive to do for people who are statistical outliers. I.e. people with low income. So it'd have to be government subsidised banking.
- augustl 3y ago
  I would love to see analysis on the trade offs with KYC and AML. How much does it actually help in fighting crime? Vs. all of the lost opportunities due to all of the red tape and regulatory blockers for legitimate business models.
  - Maxion 3y ago
    Very very hard to get a number on this. From experience I can say that it reduces crime, but it does create massive issues too. Problems are current regulations aren't risk based, which results unproportional compliance costs.
- piaste 3y ago
  Perhaps the free government accounts could be exempted from that red tape, and be capped to a maximum turnover amount such that it isn't attractive to money launderers. Once your turnover exceeds that cap, you have to "upgrade" to a regular account with all the KYC stuff.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Almost every comment is about politics, choice, privacy, rights, markets and percentages. There's a completely different take; Civic resilience From an operational and strategic security POV, cash is a vastly superior technology. It doesn't need electricity, a network of cables, satellites and routers. Therefore cash in circulation acts as a buffer that provides economic stability and continuity of operations. Also, take a look at a modern European bank note, like we have in the UK. It's a sophisticated technology. It's not like we still have Roman coins that any blacksmith can forge. There are many good, but more subtle reasons for preserving the use of cash, and regulating business practices if necessary to do so.

barrkel 3y ago
Cash improves operational security? Pull the other one.
Guthur 3y ago
If the scenario plays out as you describe the fiat currency won't be worth the fancy material it's printed on.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  I haven't outlined any scenarios, but maybe you're considering a total Internet shutdown. No such drama is needed to make the case. Deloitte calculate the per day impact of a temporary shutdown would be on average $23.6 million per 10 million population. Not that bad actually. But that figure seems based on the immediate hourly estimate from places like The Uptime Institute and LSE. Other estimates puts it at between $11Bn per day for the whole USA [0] and only $10Bn for the whole year [1]. In reality the impact quickly compounds, making day 2 (24-48 hours) significant worse, and so on [2]. I am quite sure the aggregate downtime of AWS, Azure, Google and other cloud services in the past year has exceeded 24 hours per capita civilian use. Being able to take cash, as a "flywheel", makes or breaks businesses in those times. [0] https://bnn.network/finance-nav/unraveling-the-impact-of-global-internet-outages-a-digital-age-dilemma/ https://bnn.network/finance-nav/unraveling-the-impact-of-glo... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/internet-shutdowns-cost-global-economy-10b-so-far-in-2022-vpn-report-says/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/internet-shutdow... [2] According to studies I got masters students at York Business School to undertake. edit: formatting

seanhunter 3y ago

US seems determined to cement its status as the luddite nation of consumer payments.

yakkityyak 3y ago

Everywhere should accept cash, and every place should also (try) to support tap to pay. I’ll gladly pay an extra 5% for a donut if it means I don’t have go to an ATM, withdraw the minimum, and forget the change in my car anyway.

lazrgatr 3y ago

Argentina has effectively a cash-only economy. Queues in excess of an hour at the supermarket are fairly common partly because of the overheads in having everyone pay with cash (needing to empty the tills, validate large notes, taking time to get correct change out and/or giving change). Let's not be so quick to say that card payments are all bad.

bilekas 3y ago
> Let's not be so quick to say that card payments are all bad. The argument is more centered around business who flat out refuse to accept cash. Which is on the face just ridiculous.
mariojv 3y ago
Is this a product of it being cash-based or a product of the high inflation that Argentina sees? I imagine it would be quite chaotic with prices fluctuating so rapidly.
- kobalsky 3y ago
  a little bit of this, that and tax evasion. people don't want the government seeing what they spend their money on, or if it was saved. almost everyone does this to some extent due to the insanely high tax load and double economy that exists in every facet of our lives. for example, when someone is buying real state, big part of the negotiations are how much is the declared price of this transaction (how much our "IRS" sees), because clean money and undeclared money have different costs. So when our "IRS" comes asking "where did you get the money from?" you say "from all these cash extractions of course, I saved most of that, I ate rice only", you can't say that if you spend your money with a credit card, they don't need an investigation to see your spending habits, in fact a change in spending habits will trigger an investigation. I'd like to clarify that I don't have experience with anything of this, a friend told me about it.

elforce002 3y ago

These are good news. I used credit cards a lot but to pay for haircuts, etc... I use cash. We need more options, not less.

TheCapeGreek 3y ago

What I particularly like about this is how it goes directly against the conspiracy theories.

kozzz 3y ago
Well, not exactly. Mandatory cash payments imply more oppportunities for robbers, thus increasing crime and chaos, which is presumably what “they” want

causi 3y ago

Not taking cash means people without bank accounts cannot transact with you. At present that's six percent of Americans. Millions of (mostly marginalized) people who, in a world where every business made the decision to not take cash, wouldn't be able to buy food or other essentials. It would be like every store converting to drive-through only and telling everyone without a car they're free to starve to death in the street.

sbuttgereit 3y ago

OK... naturally this is a political discussion; but I find the politics of this interesting and maybe even amusing. I don't live in DC and at don't really have a horse in this race but I sense a contradiction. I think many would consider Washington D.C. to be governed solidly by American progressives. While the rationale for this law fits solidly within their views on egalitarianism, I wonder why no one is discussing another proclaimed progressive area of concern environmental impact and climate? I have to think in this case cash must be significantly environmentally more impactful than the electronic payments. Cash requires a surprising amount of raw materials to produce, not all of which I expect to be environmentally friendly. Cash requires specialized transport, not just of the actual cash to and fro, but also of those raw materials. Sure electronic payments require power to operate, but I assure you hard cash is just as counted electronically as electronic payments. Disposal of used cash I expect to have its own unique environmental impacts. In essence making each unit of currency physically real rather than electronic would seem to have unaccounted for negative externalities, something my more progressive friends go on and on about when convenient, which I don't even see getting lip service in relation to this law. Or maybe in the eyes of the progressive establishment enacting these laws climate just isn't nearly so important as equity/social justice? Again, not my fight, and I think the vast majority of "negative externality" arguments are made for rhetorical points rather than referring to some well considered analysis not to be ignored... but I would be curious to understand how progressives decide which priorities are of greater urgency than environment and climate given how those issues are typically couched.

constantly 3y ago
What about electronic negative environmental externalities? It requires a while network of internet (backbones, cables, satellites, telecoms) and constant electricity generation to feed it, creation of credit cards, etc. This all seems to have a significantly greater effect than the creation of a new physical bill that lasts 6-10 years.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  The communications equipment is obviously already there, and not going anywhere due to the utility of the internet. The externality of using the communication equipment for payments is negligible.

someonehere 3y ago

Ah yes. SF attempted to float this idea but critics argued it disenfranchises those that don’t have access to payment cards or access to technology that can provide terminal payments. I tend to agree that physical cash should always be a viable option. Using a card or phone to pay at a terminal is a choice. If you say, “but cash should be removed for <reason X>”, look at the Square outage a few weeks ago. About a day and a half of no ability to use mobile ordering or paying for goods and services. What happened? DNS issues. If DNS issues can cripple an economy and business livelihoods then there should be a backup.

mariojv 3y ago

I agree with most commenters here that cash is useful and that cashless is a step in the wrong direction. I did want to point out, though, that this differs a lot from what at least some commenters on other forums are saying about the ban. All the top voted comments on Reddit about this are against it: https://www.reddit.com/r/washdc/comments/16wacjy/dcs_ban_on_cashless_businesses_to_take_effect/ https://www.reddit.com/r/washdc/comments/16wacjy/dcs_ban_on_... I find the difference in opinion between the HN crowd and Reddit kind of interesting. Part of it is probably because that is a local to DC subreddit, but I also believe they're not really considering the privacy / civic resilience angle. From my perspective, having lived through a near total power outage in Texas for a week in February 2021, having some cash, food, and drinking water on hand is just basic common sense these days. Some local grocers were letting people take groceries without paying, anecdotally, but I don't think that was everywhere or even corporate policy. You also don't want to rely on that to feed your family or pay for basic goods in an emergency. At one point, even the cell network was starting to go down in my area because the generators powering the cell towers were running out of fuel.

benja810 3y ago
FYI, I used to live in DC (and frequent the Reddit community) and I've never heard of the community you linked. Apparently it's a split from the original with only 8k subscribers: > Created 2021, free of over-moderation The more popular community, and the one I'm familiar with, has 332k subscribers. It can be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/ I'd bet there's quite a bit of overlap between the group of users who felt they were over moderated on the original DC community and those that disapprove of these types of regulations.

wait_a_minute 3y ago

Great news. This should be rolled out everywhere.

mikerg87 3y ago

Can someone explain how this is possible? Doesn’t US currency have the phrase “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private” which I understood this to mean it should be accepted for settlement of financial transactions.

acdha 3y ago
See https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm for the federal position - state law varies. The reasoning I’ve heard behind this basically comes back to whether you have a choice: if my coffee shop says “no cash”, you can walk away just as you could if the sign says “formal dress required” or “no cell phones in use” – weird, perhaps, but it’s private property and both parties have the ability to walk away if they can’t agree on terms. Debts are different because they happen at a time remove, and the economy works a lot better if you don’t have something like a loan requiring repayment in notes from a particular bank which failed or, worse, was bought by your lender and is now playing games.