Cashless retail businesses are now banned in NYC | Hacker News Reader

Cashless retail businesses are now banned in NYC

nypost.com

30 pointsaaronharnly15 comments

I find retailers that don't accept cash to be very, very annoying. Since I am very hesitant to use a card at a store for a whole bunch of reasons, a store that won't take cash is a store that is effectively off-limits to me.

I find retailers that don't accept cash to be very, very annoying.

I reserve the class of "very, very annoying" for business that do truly annoying things. Like harass their employees, create nuisances for their neighbors. Or which support the current executive administration. That sort of thing.

"Smug and dystopian" seems to be a better description of the the new breed of cashless retailers.

Fortunately now - a very short-lived breed.

> Like harass their employees, create nuisances for their neighbors.

I don't call business that behave that way "annoying". I call them "abusive".

Thank god. Cashless businesses are horribly annoying, despite me using cards for 90% of my purchases. It's that 10% where I don't want a record of where I was or what I bought that's important.

It's fairly common for businesses to "not accept $100 bills" etc. Could a business only accept say the $2 bill?

For lots of things like this, it's tempting to try to be clever but it honestly never works out (try to pay a parking ticket with pennies, see what happens).

If you had to argue it to a judge, what's your business case for only accepting $2 bills? The $100 exclusion makes sense because of high fraud and counterfeit rates, and an increased burden on stocking cash to make change.

Ok, but isn't the whole point of these cashless businesses that handling cash is expensive?

It requires larger, more complex registers. It requires training and auditing for employees. It increases the chance of employee theft and fraud. It requires paid time for someone to drive to a bank to deposit. It requires better external security, and increases your loss in the case of robbery.

Basically - there are businesses who are clearly able to cut operating costs and keep sales by eliminating cash transactions.

I'm not entirely sure we should stop them from doing so.

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So let me pose a different question - Can I simply refuse to make change? There are clear and obvious costs associated with that. Why is that different than choosing not to break 100s?

Can I choose to only accept $20s? There are also clear costs with having to handle multiple denominations, not even getting into the actual worthlessness of dealing with pennies/nickels, just from a training and error standpoint.

Can I choose to only accept 20s and also not make change? Where are you drawing the line here?

There are plenty of things business could do to cut costs, but wouldn't be in the public interest. Not comply with sanitation requirements? Not bother to have fire suppression? No customer washrooms?

But NYC is allowed to put bylaws in place that may harm businesses, but are for the greater good. This is one of them -- for the reasons mentioned in the article, and the privacy implications -- and I fully support it. That's just my opinion though.

My original point is that trying to be clever with "$2 bills only... see we still accept cash" isn't going to work out.

And for the record... I've paid with $100s plenty of times at places with "no $100 bills" signs. It's more of a suggestion, and they rarely enforce it unless you look super shady.

> Not comply with sanitation requirements? Not bother to have fire suppression? No customer washrooms?

I'm laughing. These are all things companies DO in order to cut costs. The most obvious and legal being the washrooms.

I'll admit, most of my points are playing devil's advocate - This regulation has basically zero impact on me, and I don't strongly favor either side.

I don't really want to lose the option to pay in cash (as a customer it can be convenient), but I also don't really buy the arguments being made here for privacy/inequity.

It's entirely possible to buy a preloaded card in the US without an ID (somewhat ironically - this requires using cash in a store and it's not possible to reload afterwards due to KYC, so it's hardly perfect).

It's also arguably not that different to plan out going to the bank to get cash vs planning out buying a prepaid before hitting the stores. And the prepaids make money from the store, not by charging the customer, so it's not any additional financial burden.

Basically - I see these movements as politicians virtue signaling in cities with large wealth disparities.

> I'm laughing. These are all things companies DO in order to cut costs. The most obvious and legal being the washrooms.

In most places the requirement to have washrooms depends on the kind of business, how much seating you have, etc. So e.g. it might be legal to have no washroom if you have no seating, but if you have seating for ten people then you must have a washroom.

They should take the penny out of circulation. Nickel too while they are at it.

The much better reaction to this problem would be to set up a postal banking, or a similarly accessible public system.

But perhaps this was necessary in here and now. The perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good.

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