> Does it not count as a debt, that they have to accept cash ("legal tender for all debts public and private") for?
Let me tell you how that tends to go down in the real world. The HOA doesn't have a physical office or anything. It's some random address and random suite. Maybe it's a document processing company or some other third-party processor. There's some non-trivial chance that some $15/hr kid who may or may not have been raised right is opening the envelopes and feeding the contents into a scanner.
So I stuff my HOA dues in cash in an envelope and then go down to the post office to stand in line and get it delivered certified with a return receipt. I get the return receipt. Then the HOA puts a lien on my house. I say, "But I made the payment on time!" Then they say, "Naw-uh." Then I say, "Sure I did, I sent it in cash and I have a return receipt." They say, "We have no idea what you're talking about."
<sad trombone>
> Or there should be the option of opening another account, at a less tyrannical institution, to use for those payments.
How can I find out which ones let me use Zelle through their website? I don't trust anyone I can find at a branch or on the phone to give me the correct answer, because chances are they all personally use the phone app and really have no idea. I guess I can start opening up random accounts with random banks until I find one that works. For now.
I think we're missing the point entirely by talking about cash and hopping around banks and all that. The point many people are trying to make here is that life is already being made unreasonably difficult for those of us choosing to use Libre computing platforms, and there's a plausible reality in the future where choices go from inconvenient to scant to nonexistent.