Cashless?

In Evanston, IL, where I currently live, the city council members have been debating about whether to ban some businesses from being cashless. Some council members (mainly one council member) believe that businesses that don't accept cash discriminate against the unbanked. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, cash is legal tender and it should be accepted by all businesses, right? On the other hand, even the unbanked have access to electronic methods of payment via prepaid credit cards, etc. that can be purchased from a variety of places, including your local Walgreens. (There is a fee for these cards, but the point is that they're available for anyone to purchase and use.) You don't have to have a bank account in order to have a credit card that can be used at any business that doesn't accept cash. My father, who refuses to use a debit card and prefers to pay cash for just about everything, complained that the self-checkout registers at his local Walmart store don't accept cash. They used to, but now are for credit transactions only, so he's forced to go to a register with a live cashier in order to buy anything. My father is not unbanked, he's just old. He really should just get a debit card and call it a day, but he won't. So I guess he'll have to wait for a cashier to ring him up whenever he's at Walmart.