Critics say stores that don't accept cash will further marginalize America's homeless and working poor.
Rebecca Esparza works with homeless people and, having once lived in a shelter herself, knows what it’s like to navigate the U.S. economy if you don’t have much money. For most of her clients, cash is king because they lack access to the financial tools many Americans take for granted — checking accounts, debit cards, payment apps.
Proponents of cashless stores tout various benefits. Electronic payments save employees the time it takes to collect, store and transport cash. Theft is less likely. Customers typically move faster through checkout lines because they don’t need to count out their cash or wait for change. “A trillion-dollar behemoth like Amazon has the ability to spread widely throughout the country,” said Torres, the New York City Council member. “So a trend that might start at the margin can proliferate overnight.”, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s latest available national survey. And 18.7% fell into the broad “underbanked” category, meaning they had a bank account but used at least one alternative service such as money orders, check cashing or payday loans.
Another barrier to opening a bank account: lack of steady income. Some receive cash only from panhandling and don’t have enough money to put in a bank account anyway. Plus, many banks require secondary proofs of identity, such as a utility bill — which homeless people don’t have. “The U.S. is just weird historically, in that we have a lot of competition and banks don’t give accounts to a lot of low-income people,” said Mehrsa Baradaran, author of “How the Other Half Banks.” “We also have a lot of areas in the country where banks aren’t locating any more. We have a more stratified society, poverty is more pronounced here than in other places. There are some poorer countries that are mobile; we just have not built that infrastructure.
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