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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, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:04PM (9 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:04PM (#813194) Homepage Journal

    "Shops hate cash because it costs more to handle"

    People keep saying this, and there is a certain small truth to it. My wife ran a retail business for a long time, so I've seen this: you have to count the cash, you have to carry it to the bank to deposit, you have to get change from the bank to stock your till. Yes, it takes time.

    However, cards are at least as expensive. There's not only the fee on individual transactions. You also have to buy or rent the machines to accept and process the payments. You have to have the network to send payments to the payment processors; this network may have to be scanned and approved. You have to have the contracts with the payment providers; these in turn may place certain requirements on the business that have to be met.. All these costs are infrastructure, but they are substantial, especially for a small business. Somehow, the "cash is expensive" people never account for these costs...

    Finally, if the network connection goes down, or the payment providers has a problem, or you just have a power failure: you cannot do business. I've seen this happen, and (of course) it tends to happen at times of peak load.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
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  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:49PM (6 children)

    by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @01:49PM (#813240) Journal

    Finally, if the network connection goes down, or the payment providers has a problem, or you just have a power failure: you cannot do business.

    Of course you can continue to accept payment cards during a power or network outage if you thought ahead to buy a $20 credit card imprinter and carbon slips for use as a backup and train staff on their use. That's why the numbers on a credit card are embossed.

    • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:23PM (3 children)

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:23PM (#813261) Homepage Journal

      Great tweet, you brought back some wonderful memories with that one.

      Sometimes they still do the emboss -- so important for our blind folks, right? But more and more of the cards are totally flat. But we remember the Carbon Paper. And we loved the Carbon Paper -- made from beautiful Clean Coal. I haven't seen that one in years. Credit Card, in America, is now cyber all the way. 100%. But I'd love to visit your part of our amazing world, the part where Carbon Paper is powering the economy VERY STRONGLY. Like it used to here in America. When America was Great!!!

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:35PM (2 children)

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:35PM (#813270) Homepage Journal

        (cont) By the way, Carbon Paper. We hear all the time about, somebody's cyber got hacked. By Russia, China, Korea -- whoever. But before there were cyber hackers, there were Carbon Paper hackers. We didn't call them hackers. We called them Crooks. When we did the imprint, we would (many times) throw away the Carbon Paper. Well, that paper would have all the numbers from the Credit Card. Not so easy to read because it was white numbers with black around them. And the numbers were very long. Tough to read. But, not too tough for these guys. They would pick those special papers out of the trash. Read the numbers. And do Fake transactions with those numbers. Not great. But, still much better than cyber. Which has complicated lives VERY GREATLY!!!

        • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:24PM (1 child)

          by captain normal (2205) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:24PM (#813368)

          You sure seem to know a lot about scamming card numbers off the old fashioned imprinters. Where did you learn that?

          --
          When life isn't going right, go left.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:26PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:26PM (#813500)
            Common knowledge of that time.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:25PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12 2019, @02:25PM (#813265)

      They aren't anymore.

      • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:17PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @05:17PM (#813365) Journal

        (checks wallet)
        A credit card from Synchrony isn't embossed, but credit and debit cards from Chase are.

  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:40PM (1 child)

    by isostatic (365) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @10:40PM (#813504) Journal

    The point is it's not you or I that make that decision. It's the shop keeper. If a shopkeeper decides handling cash is too much hastle, why should the government use it's power to force him to?

    Sure in some nazi world where the government controls everything then they can, but in the land of the free the person deciding not to take cash should rule

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:16PM (#813949)

      You are free to get a job so you don't have to handle cash and if you're lucky the hours are better.