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Comment by codyb | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure card only is illegal in NYC for precisely this reason. I come across them occasionally and I think the pandemic made it a bit more common place but it's technically against the law here to not accept cash.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/cashless-stores-restaurants-banned...

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Wow, I had no idea!

I work with a lot of unbanked individuals in low-income areas of NYC, so I am familiar with some of their struggles. I can't say I agree with this law, though. There was a store near me robbed at gunpoint not too long ago, and I felt so bad for the worker who had to go through that, not to mention how scary it is to feel like armed robbers are casing my neighborhood. So I feel glad for people like the coffee lady I mentioned, who have chosen to avoid that risk entirely.

I understand the good intentions behind the law, but I think there are other ways to help unbanked individuals that would still allow business owners to chose how they accept payment.

I've seen posts on Reddit[1] that say that cashless establishments in NYC will just give you your food for free if you try to pay with cash. Never tried it though.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/vcebns/im_an_ex_employ...

I dunno about US law but in the UK the law of legal tender requires you to accept payment of a debt in (exact) cash and if you've already eaten the food then a debt would certainly exist.

This would not apply in a shop of course as they could just refuse to sell you the goods.

It's the same in the United States. You have to accept cash to settle a debt but if you haven't received anything, the concept of "legal tender" doesn't really exist yet. That's why laws that require accepting cash are generally done at a municipality level.

There is no federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law that says otherwise.

I know that. However you must accept cash to settle a debt. It's literally printed on every bill.

To be fair, writing on currency doesn't necessarily have to be legally binding. The bills also say "in god we trust", and yet I'm free to not trust in god and there are no legal consequences.

Eh, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" doesn't leave a lot of room for nuance.

My point is that the writing on the bill isn't what actually makes the law enforceable. If Congress passed a law that required the mints to print the words "this is a flamingo" on every dollar bill, it wouldn't make it true. The fact that cash is required to be accepted is because of the law passed, not because the magic words on the bill say so.

The writing on currency doesn't have to be. In this case it is. Or rather, the federal laws that back up that particular writing are.

In the US at least.

You're missing the point. Under US federal law, if I owe you a $100 debt and I hand you $100 in cash paper money then I have settled the debt. You cannot then sue me, demanding to be paid via Visa or PayPal or whatever. But this applies to debts only, not purchases.

I think you're missing my point! I'm not saying that the law doesn't actually require this; I'm just saying that there's nothing in general saying that something printed on every bill has to be true. In this case, it happens to be, but saying that it's printed on the bill isn't what proves it.

Nonsense. What's printed on the bill absolutely proves it. What kind of fantasy world are you living in?

Why couldn't someone use a prepaid card instead of cash?

For one thing, they cost extra to buy and use, sometimes more than the person may have in cash to begin with.

Requiring card only payments if you pay after you eating sounds like a recipe for confusing customers. The only places I've seen doing card only are coffee shops and quick serve restaurants where you pay before you get your food.

Posts in that same thread also suggest that they won't.

In my country, the state-owned bank (normal bank that happens to be owned by the state, not the central bank) came out with an automatic, free checking account so that everyone can use cards. It's not perfect because it has some less than ideal fees, but it helps getting over this problem.

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