you can certainly have systems where cash is legal tender but some businesses will not accept it.
Not by normal laws, legal tender means you have to accept it. It’s not just that it’s not illegal to use. Credit cards for instance are NOT legal tender, meaning a business does not have to accept them, but you can use them almost everywhere.
Traditionally legal tender means that a person / entity has to accept it for the payment of a debt - i.e. they can’t refuse cash and say you didn’t pay them because you didn’t use some other method.
However, in many retail scenarios there is no debt - there is an exchange of payment for goods, and so the traditional common law legal tender rules do not prevent retailers from refusing that exchange (i.e. customer doesn’t get the goods, retailer doesn’t get the money, the transaction just never happens) on the grounds of payment methods.
Some places have additional laws on top of legal tender that might require retailers to accept cash.
Yes, I think that’s just a matter of time, what government can refuse the ability to follow all money transactions?
Of course we have privacy regulation, and especially regarding banks for some reason. But it only takes a court order to get it anyway.
It will soon be very difficult to have illegal money, without a digital footprint.
Cash is still king for me for whatever reason.
Cash is just inconvenient IMO, before mobile pay we used it privately with friends and trading 2nd hand. But it’s been years since I’ve used cash at all, although I still carry around the equivalent of $100. Just in case of being stranded somewhere, and there are disruptions of digital payments.
My friend I’ve been to countries where businesses don’t accept cash and the currency is still considered legal tender.
Like, I’ve (literally) turned up at coffee shops, tried to pay in cash, only to be told “we don’t accept cash, only credit card or digital payment.” (the latter in my experience is often via QR codes and the system sucks because 10 second transactions become 25 second transactions)
The legal frameworks in such jurisdictions may be very different than Denmark’s.
Edit: Beyond which, does Amazon accept cash? eBay? I’ve never heard of them doing so and don’t recall ever seeing the option.
Not by normal laws, legal tender means you have to accept it. It’s not just that it’s not illegal to use. Credit cards for instance are NOT legal tender, meaning a business does not have to accept them, but you can use them almost everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender
Traditionally legal tender means that a person / entity has to accept it for the payment of a debt - i.e. they can’t refuse cash and say you didn’t pay them because you didn’t use some other method.
However, in many retail scenarios there is no debt - there is an exchange of payment for goods, and so the traditional common law legal tender rules do not prevent retailers from refusing that exchange (i.e. customer doesn’t get the goods, retailer doesn’t get the money, the transaction just never happens) on the grounds of payment methods.
Some places have additional laws on top of legal tender that might require retailers to accept cash.
And just in case you think I’m BS’ing here is an actual government policy explicitly stating that stores can refuse cash payments
https://www.mas.gov.sg/contact-us/faqs/currency-faqs
Eh OK so Singapore have rules that are different. But as I clearly linked, that is not the “normal” definition.
I do agree it’s “not normal,” especially in the West. It does seem to be significantly more common across Asia.
And I suspect it’ll become more common across the West.
And I hate it. Cash is still king for me for whatever reason.
Yes, I think that’s just a matter of time, what government can refuse the ability to follow all money transactions?
Of course we have privacy regulation, and especially regarding banks for some reason. But it only takes a court order to get it anyway.
It will soon be very difficult to have illegal money, without a digital footprint.
Cash is just inconvenient IMO, before mobile pay we used it privately with friends and trading 2nd hand. But it’s been years since I’ve used cash at all, although I still carry around the equivalent of $100. Just in case of being stranded somewhere, and there are disruptions of digital payments.
My friend I’ve been to countries where businesses don’t accept cash and the currency is still considered legal tender.
Like, I’ve (literally) turned up at coffee shops, tried to pay in cash, only to be told “we don’t accept cash, only credit card or digital payment.” (the latter in my experience is often via QR codes and the system sucks because 10 second transactions become 25 second transactions)
The legal frameworks in such jurisdictions may be very different than Denmark’s.
Edit: Beyond which, does Amazon accept cash? eBay? I’ve never heard of them doing so and don’t recall ever seeing the option.
OK then per the user isomorph post I responded to, we have better options to minimize digital footprint than such countries.