Cities are making it illegal, as they should. It's not always meant in bad faith, but it's also a form of gentrification that hurts the poor and unbanked by removing yet another service from them.

https://www.nssh.com/2020/04/philadelphias-ban-on-cashless-s...

I personally never use anything but cards since I have many of the high reward credit cards. But I've also had family members with tax liens or other problems that didn't allow them to get a bank account, that relied on family to pay bills, order things online for them, etc.

I go to a bar that is cashless and still see people have to leave because they only had cash (or didn't want to use their card).

To play devil's advocate, credit cards are another way to get tracked, a great way for a duopoly of companies to skim 1-3% off the economy, a way to be analyzed by the merchant, a way to get more explicitly prompted to pay a 20% tip, and more hassle than handing a $5 for a $4.73 coffee and walking off.

"Imagine these magical tokens with monetary value that I could instantly transfer to a merchant without waiting for my bill to come back!"

Going cashless only benefits the owner for not having to deal with counting cash, with potential worker theft, and (slim concern) robbery - things that, depending on the area and the market, are theoretical.

At the same time, I think it's neat that street performers and buskers have QR codes to Venmo. I think everyone should accept everything.

If a place doesn't accept cash, I leave. Cash is one of our last remaining bastions of freedom. I would gladly pay by card, if those cards were anonymous, refillable with cash. But these do not exist anymore, even for small amounts. They insist they must know your every last $0.50 transaction.

I prefer paying cash. It is also elitist to not accept cash because it means I need a credit card or an expensive phone, neither of which I have on me while jogging.

I also don't jog, but you get the point. At my gym I had a keychain bar code that worked great. Now I need my phone, phone charged, brightness up, their stupid app, signed in, open it up, click check-in. It turned a 2 second 1 gram device in to this whole thing. Why?? What a waste of technology and time.

> I can’t remember the last time I paid or even saw someone pay cash for anything

For as long as not everyone has access to a bank account or credit card I'll be concerned about fueling divisions in society.

I'm not from the US, unlike the origins of this discussion, but also hear this statement and have no reason to doubt it is true. But if you step out of the wealthy areas or even just look a little closer then the users of cash are visible.

Remember: this is HN, where the bubble effect is strong. On Hacker News, everybody "knows" that Google Search is useless these days and that Amazon results are all counterfeit junk, even though in the real world I have never heard anyone bring this up and these services are still incredibly popular. It's the same thing with cash: I don't think I've seen anyone pay with cash in years. Even the old people at the grocery store use chip-and-PIN cards.

From what I've observed, a tiny fraction have left because of the no-cash policy, probably under 1%. We were expecting 5% to 10% in the first weeks, since customers that walked in for the very first time wouldn't have known of the policy.

From the ones that left, most said they didn't have a card on them at the time and they'd return another time, but we did get a couple of people that did leave because they didn't agree to the policy.

I sometimes did the opposite, when living in Germany. I'm not gonna bother hunting for ATM (and usually pay commission with that) just to have a privilege of spending money at your business.