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When The Cash Register Doesn't Take Cash

posted by FatPhil on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:43AM   
from the just-the-tip dept.

Justin Case brings us this story from NPR's Morning Edition:

Bluestone, which now has 20 stores in the U.S., went cashless last October.

A big reason: Nearly 90 percent of customers [...] never paid in cash.

Another reason: The lines move faster when employees don't have to make change.

"We see a lot of guests that pay for a meal with a credit card, but will always leave a cash tip. And I think people like doing that. People like palming a bartender a $20 or palming their server a $10. Palming the bus boy a couple bucks," said Fileccia.

There are also people, he said, who want to keep their meal off the books — if they're having an affair, for example.

No, businesses are not required to accept cash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender

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Original Submission

• Kind of important part of the article omitted (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:42PM

  by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:42PM (#620078)

  Shaving that kind of time doesn't make Bluestone more money. In fact, it's more expensive to be cash-free because of the additional debit and credit card fees tacked on to each transaction.

  Debit cards charge a flat fee of about a quarter per transaction, while credit cards range between 2 and 5 percent per transaction.

  "We didn't make the decision for economic reasons, because if it was purely for economic reasons we'd try to reduce all of our [operating expenses], which means we'd try to take cash for everything. We wanted to make sure the experience was better," said Stone.

  I was trying to figure out whether the summary really was saying that they want people to stop tipping. But apparently this isn't the first four lines of the article verbatim, lol.

  --
  "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"

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