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> Why would a restaurant prefer anything over cash?

Because there is a dramatic reduction in costs from going completely cashless. You don't have to pay for security for cash-on-hand. You don't have to pay for an armored car to transport cash to a bank. If you don't want to pay for an armored car, you don't have to pay (and trust) an employee to do it for you, else paying with your time by doing it yourself. You can serve more customers in less time because you no longer have to make change with each transaction, and you no longer have the cognitive load of ensuring that the bank gives you enough change and in the correct amount on each bank trip so that you can make change for your customers. Because you don't need to trust your employees with cash anymore, you have reduced the risk associated with the hiring of an individual employee, which makes it easier to hire ex-convicts - and in many areas, that (unfortunately) makes it dramatically easier to hire people, period.

Sure, these costs are balanced out by the formal costs associated with card processing fees and no longer being able to partially hide income from the taxman. But the flip side is the improvement in trust between management and labor, which overall ought to make cashless businesses better workplaces.

Every now and then this will backfire on the business. For instance, what happens if the system goes down?

I was recently in a cashless place that suddenly lost internet access as the cashier(?) was ringing up my food. With no way to charge me I was given my lunch for free and everyone in the line behind me was forced to wait.

The mastercard network was down recently (maestro cards also operate on it), which did really bad things to basically everything that accepted only plastic. Of course you know in the abstract that this full plastic stuff is a bad idea (it's so obvious), but it's very sobering still to see this in practice.

In my experience, a good rule of thumb is that anything the wait staff argues for only has one actual reason - more money for them. Anything else is a smokescreen.

> I have to stop, wait, find my wallet, make sure it has a card with a balance on it, make the card isn't damaged (demagnetized, scuffed chip contacts, curled up in the heat of the clothes drier), know what that balance is, and if I don't have this singleton plastic token that I cannot easily replace or trade, I can't go to certain places?

This is a gross exaggeration.

> I have to stop, wait, find my wallet

Because you just cram bills in your pocket. No. You'll have to get your wallet regardless. And your wallet hold more than just your credit cards, it holds your license and any other bits you'll need when out and about. Don't act like the wallet exists solely to facilitate credit cards.

> make sure it has a card with a balance on it

This is entirely a different problem. And one that is on you. This is something I don't think about. If you are juggling that many cards, especially ones where you've reached the limit or don't have funds in the account to cover an expense you plan on, that just sounds like poor money management. Your option in a cash-based society would be simple starvation.

> make the card isn't damaged (demagnetized, scuffed chip contacts, curled up in the heat of the clothes drier)

Are you that careless? Also, cash can be damaged by washing machines and such as well. I've never really had to worry about whether or not my card is damaged.

> know what that balance is

Probably the only salient point in that entire block of nonsense. You'd need to kind of remember your balance if you use it daily. But then again, when I was poor, that number was always in my head. And it's not like it would be much different than a checkbook if you wanted to keep track.

> and if I don't have this singleton plastic token that I cannot easily replace or trade, I can't go to certain places?

And? There are all sorts of tokens that restrict your ability to go places that you aren't complaining about.

> food service normally loves cash, because they can report it differently. Tips are quasi-off-the-books

Aka, fraud.

You don't need your liscense (or other id), if you're not driving. (Often, it's a good idea to have, but it's not required for citizens in the US).

Another thing is I can give $20 to a reasonably responsible child and ask them to fetch me a burrito. It's not a good idea to do that with a credit or debit card; I would have authorized them, but if challenged they may not be able to complete the transaction and may have trouble bringing my card back.

The world is bigger than the US, and in a lot of places in the world it is indeed mandatory to carry some form of ID.

You're giving good-faith rebuttals to arguments that weren't offered in good faith. Nobody actually has trouble leaving the house with their wallet. That's not a real problem that intellectually average people actually have.

I don't own a wallet. I keep my license and debit card in my vehicle, and my one credit card in my desk at home.

I pay cash for everything but gas, except online purchases. I've been operating this way for most of life.

Treating people as if they're degenerates or below intellectually average for not using plastic (or staying away from Facebook) is uncalled for.

>Treating people as if they're degenerates or below intellectually average for not using plastic

I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing not to use plastic and I didn't say there was.

But if you had a wallet, would you consider it a herculean task to "take it with you"?

That's who he's "treating... as if they're degenerates or below intellectually average", people who think "bringing a wallet" is this massive undertaking that requires a paragraph to describe.

In Denmark and Sweden it is simple: you are likely to have your phone with you, and thats enough. MobilePay and Swish respectively are wildly popular solutions.

mobilepay is pretty ridiculous for a foreigner to use actually. You are required to have both a danish bank account and danish telephone number in order to use it. For this reason alone, it can never take off entirely. Until there comes a way that one can use their home account in a foreign country (with fees) like a card, then it will never reach the same levels of adoption.

In the US this isn't reliable. I just got a new phone and learned the hard way it doesn't support NFC, and even if it did a lot of merchants disabled their NFC readers waiting for more merchant-friendly rails to reach the market.

Swish is (sadly) popular for p2p payments and "lemonade stand"-size "businesses", but good luck paying with it in a traditional store.

That is a non-cash solution which is insubstantially different from a plastic card.