Cash News
There is a cost for virtually everything — including, it turns out, paying in cash.
That’s because of a trend in recent years in which some businesses will actually refuse to accept cash, or charge you a fee if you want to pay for something in cash.
It may seem unfair to be charged extra for paying in cash. And frankly, maybe it is. But for reasons ranging from consumer demand to technology making digital payments easier to handle, there are logical reasons businesses do it. If you’re not prepared for that, you’ll want to be.
Not every business is going cashless. In fact, in some parts of the country, businesses aren’t allowed to refuse cash payments. For instance, some of the states where it’s illegal to refuse cash include Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, and North Dakota.
Meanwhile, some cities have also taken it upon themselves to pass laws to keep cash as a valid form of payment. Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and San Francisco are some cities where it’s illegal for retailers to refuse cash.
Still, there are a lot of understandable reasons that some business owners reject cash payments.
Businesses pay credit card and debit card processing fees, also known as merchant fees or transaction fees, when customers swipe plastic. However, there are also expenses associated with handling cash.
A business that accepts cash from its customers actually spends quite a bit of money to manage that cash. There are labor costs, since somebody has to count the money in a cash register. That money then needs to be transported by somebody to the bank. If the register runs out of money to give out as change, employees need to spend some time to get more.
That time adds up. In fact, several years ago, a study by the IHL Group suggested that for every dollar a business earns in cash, 4.7% to 15% tends toward cash management.
We aren’t a cashless society yet, but it does seem to sometimes appear that way. Two years ago, the Pew Research Center produced a survey showing that in a typical week, 41% of Americans are paying for nothing in cash.
If there isn’t much of a demand that businesses accept cash, it’s easier for a business to decide that they want to follow their customer base’s lead and be cashless, too.
Arguably, there are other advantages to going cashless. If a business doesn’t have a cash register, the staff can’t be robbed at gunpoint. It also doesn’t have to worry about employees miscounting cash or impulsively helping themselves to some of that money.
It’s also often faster to accept credit card and debit card payments than to have staff accept cash and count out change. If lines move faster, businesses can theoretically make more money. Customers will also be happy they got in and out quickly.
That said, there are some good reasons for companies to keep cash as a way to get payment from customers.
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Going cashless alienates some customers. More people than ever may be going cashless, but that doesn’t mean everybody is. Many business owners likely recognize that they may unnecessarily tick people off or lose them as customers if they don’t offer cash as a way to pay for their products and services.
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Refusing cash punishes poor people. The FDIC estimates that about 4.5% of U.S. households are “unbanked,” meaning they have no checking or savings account at a bank or credit union and likely are only making payments with cash. Because unbanked people tend to have lower incomes, businesses that serve those households would do these consumers a disservice and potentially hurt their bottom line by going cashless.
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Cash doesn’t require processing fees. Yes, there are costs associated with accepting cash, but those expenses may be negligible compared to the merchant fees involved in accepting debit and credit cards, which are typically 1.5% to 3.5% per transaction.
Increasingly, these are some types of venues that may charge you more if you want to pay in cash.
We’re talking major-league baseball and professional football stadiums. If you have tens of thousands of people descending upon your stadium, with long lines of people, it’s faster and easier for the stadium to simply go digital, rather than waiting for somebody to fish out dollar bills and change from their pockets.
Think: amusement parks and zoos. Like stadiums, many entertainment venues want to keep those lines moving. Generally, if you want to pay in cash, you’ll be directed to a reverse ATM. In that case, you’ll put your cash into the ATM, pay a fee, and receive a prepaid plastic card with your cash on it that you can then use at the venue or anywhere else.
If writing checks or using mobile banking isn’t your thing, you could pay your electric or water bill with cash. In this case, your utility provider may require you to visit a convenience store or drug store, where you’ll make the cash payment. But there’s often a fee of several dollars to do that.
If you receive a parking ticket, that’s an unpleasant surprise. Here’s another: Similar to the way utilities work, if you want to pay cash, you’ll likely be sent to a third-party retailer where you’ll be able to make a cash payment for a fee.
Did you drive through a toll booth, and now you’ve got a notice in the mail that you need to fork over some money? As with the parking tickets, you can pay online or with a check. But if you want to pay with cash, you’ll likely be sent to a store that works with the government agency or private company that oversees the toll road, where you’ll make your cash payment, plus a fee.
Owe the Internal Revenue Service money? You can pay in cash with one of the IRS’s retail partners, which include Dollar General, Family Dollar, CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens, and 7-Eleven. You’ll be able to pay $500 at a time at a cost of $1.50 or $2.50 per payment, depending on where you go. There’s no daily limit to the number of cash payments you can make.
Read more: Can you pay taxes with a credit card, and how much will it cost?