It’s discrediting valid concerns against card-payments. It’s invalidating how great cash is.
It’s when the worst person you know makes a good point.
And things now are so Culture-Wars-y, nobody makes solid analyses any more, that when the far-right say cards are bad, everybody jumps to thinking cards are good.
We have several stores that refuse to accept cash. A few weeks ago, we had a pretty harsh storm that knocked out power to major parts of the city for a little over a week. The area where these stores are was affected. All the stores next to them have always accepted cash. The surrounding stores continued to have business for that week, while those cash-deterrent stores had no business, and lost their edge (niche market, but they opened first in the area, so people knew them best). It’s been weeks, and those stores still have not picked up foot traffic to levels before the blackout, and one just had a liquidation sale and will likely close soon. Cash should always be an option. Otherwise, we give up our independence from the supporting systems (electricity, internet, payment processors, etc.). On a side note, cash is a lot more private than card.
I recently learned that all governments participating in the Euro guarantee that business have to accept cash. Refusing it is a violation of the accords.
I didn’t know that. That’s a cool tidbit!