Cashless

I read an article today on NY Magazine's site about restaurants that don't accept cash. These businesses are card-only. I recently went to a restaurant that also only accepted credit and debit cards: Dos Toros! (Tasty tacos folks! If you're in downtown Chicago and you like hearty tacos, check them out!) I'm not someone who likes the idea of a restaurant or any business refusing to accept cash. As someone who's old enough to remember when debit cards didn't exist and credit cards were used for large purchases like appliances and furniture, I still feel weird about using a card for a purchase that's under $20. I really don't like to use a card for lunch. I do it on occasion (and at Dos Toros!), but I feel that small purchases (like a burger and fries, a sandwich, or a latte) should be paid for with cash. Not a card. Not Apple Pay. Cash. How can businesses legally refuse to accept legal tender? Apparently they can, but I don't get it. The NY Magazine article touched on the fact that some people don't have debit and/or credit cards or Apple Pay because, for whatever reason, they're unbanked. Yes, now you can go and buy yourself a pre-paid credit card at Walgreens or CVS, but those cards usually come with a fee. The card costs money. I recently purchased a $25 Visa gift card for someone and ended up paying nearly $30 for it. So imagine someone who lives primarily on cash and probably doesn't have much of it on hand to pony up an additional fee just to get a pre-paid credit card. The article made a point that many of the places seem to be putting forth the idea that not everyone should have access to their goods. Cashless places aren't for the unbanked. They're for people who have credit and debit cards and Apple Pay.

Call me old-fashioned (I don't care), but I like paying cash for some things and now, with all of the skimming devices, I'm back to paying cash primarily for gas. Forget that pay at the pump stuff. I got skimmed at a gas station in Michigan a few years ago and someone made a replica of my credit card. If I had just paid cash for gas during my Thanksgiving trip that year, this wouldn't have happened. I'll be heading back to Michigan for the holidays and, once again, I'll be paying cash for gas. (Yes, I could still get ripped off in some other way, but it won't be for gas!)