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posted by takyon on Tuesday March 12 2019, @07:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the cashless-grab dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Sorry Amazon: Philadelphia bans cashless stores

This week, Philadelphia's mayor signed a bill that would ban cashless retail stores, according to The Morning Call. The move makes Philadelphia the first major city to require that brick-and-mortar retail stores accept cash. Besides Philadelphia, Massachusetts has required that retailers accept cash since 1978, according to CBS.

The law takes effect July 1, and it will not apply to stores like Costco that require a membership, nor will it apply to parking garages or lots, or to hotels or rental car companies that require a credit or debit card as security for future charges, according to theĀ Wall Street Journal. Retailers caught refusing cash can be fined up to $2,000.

Amazon, whose new Amazon Go stores are cashless and queue-less, reportedly pushed back against the new law, asking for an exemption. According to theĀ WSJ, Philadelphia lawmakers said that Amazon could work around the law under the exemption for stores that require a membership to shop there, but Amazon told the city that a Prime membership is not required to shop at Amazon Go stores, so its options are limited.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:48AM (1 child)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:48AM (#813163)

    In the US that's a popular model for small businesses too. It's partly for tax purposes but maybe mostly or even entirely because most electronic banking systems charge transaction fees. It's not a big deal when you're selling expensive items, because then you can pad the price of the transaction fee into the retail pricing. But if, for example, you're selling inexpensive food then adding the price of credit card transaction fees into your pricing might be enough to send customers to the competition and keeping it out of your pricing might cut your margins enough to put you out of business.

    But either way the win for me here is that I prefer to withdraw cash and then buy everything that way, so that one less company tracks everything I buy and how much I spend at each retail location and sells it. I live close to Philadelphia, and I'm glad the city did this.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:59PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:59PM (#813217)

    It's also legal in (most?) of PA for small businesses to reject card payments for small amounts of money, as such transactions can actually end up costing the merchant more than they make on the sale. They're also allowed to have different card/cash prices, for certain things, at least gas (and many gas stations still have signs with separate cash and credit pricing) and though I don't see that being leveraged as much to encourage cash these days I don't think its off the books.