That is a pretty fringe worry of tracking that places a major burden on the business. While I am no fan of the amount of tracking going on, I'd say this is pretty far down the list. You're still tracked when you pull out cash. Credit cards have quite a bit of protection on them.

Your cellphone is doing far, far more to profile you than any $5 spend at a local coffee shop would.

All a CC company would know is you like expensive lattes; your cellphone would know how long you stayed there, where you say in the joint, and how many memes you looked at before you left. And might overhear everything you say, including your order.

If you're using any sort of digital payment or points app on your phone it'll probably know your order, too.

Listen, most places should take cash, but this is silly.

You can buy a gift credit/debit card with cash and use that. Those normally work.

There are only 39.8 billion US banknotes in circulation, it can easily tracked in a Postgres database, banknote numbers when it exits the ATM, banknote numbers when they are redeemed by the baker, or by your drug dealer of choice, banknotes are only in circulation for one or two exchanges before coming back to a bank, it’s very possible that they are tracked to identify curious loops in circulation.

In fact, if they weren’t, that would be unprofessional from the FBI.

Is this where cryptocurrencies come in? The convenience of a cashless transaction without the tracking.