Can a business refuse hard cash? 💶💰

maestroamado

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117950410#Comment_117950410

Thankfully thats in the distant past... nothing dodgy happens in politics these days...

Creamy Goodness

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117950454#Comment_117950454

and from a business perspective they could say no cash/card, only turnips. they won't last long but there's nothing stopping them if they wanted to.

It really is no surprise that when I read the title I thought it was going to be a coffee shop involved. The amount of coffee shops in my county that open and close down every few months is laughable and the number of them that did not accept cash is quite noticeable. Coffee shop owners seem to think they are the next Starbucks or Costa but then they make such savvy business decisions like not accept cash. Such a brilliant business principle.

cbreeze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117949154#Comment_117949154

My local charity shop only takes cash!

mickdw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117950652#Comment_117950652

It's idiotic really. You start a walk in retail business and create a policy that turns away customers.

Sure, you can set up to encourage card payments but to turn good custom away is nuts really.

L1011

Cash handling is expensive. If you get very few cash transactions it is exceedingly expensive per transaction

Del2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117950652#Comment_117950652

Food business always opened and closed quickly when we only had cash. IIRC the failure rate for cafe, restaurant etc was around 60%.

enricoh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117951135#Comment_117951135

I wonder how many of these places that don't accept cash will survive. What percentage of people don't use card? You are basically alienating them and sending them to your competitors.

Fair enough if you are the only coffee shop in town but the amount of coffee shops, trailers etc in my home town after opening is rediculous. There will be a fair thinning out of them in the coming winter.

Caranica

Why has nobody mentioned that cash is filthy? The reason places stopped taking it was Covid and most places won't go back to taking it because it's so much easier not to. Nothing to do with trends, just basic practicalities.

Darc19

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117951151#Comment_117951151

It's not. It's 0.45% whether you lodge €100 or €10,000.

It might take a few minutes to drop into the bank and make the lodgement.

But ridiculous for any business to effectively refuse a particular cohort of customer.

L1011

Add the cost of buying coin and the cost of the time dealing with the bank - particularly as many branches are cashless. Time isn't free, and it's a lot more than your "few minutes" even for those located beside a branch still taking cash

If cash customers do not make up enough trade to cover the costs of handling them businesses simply won't.

Ginger83

Their decision to lose custom, just shop elsewhere

El Tarangu

I find it peculiar how some people in the thread seem to take a business's refusal to accept cash as some sort of grievous personal insult... Anyhow, as another poster pointed out, it's all going in one direction: the last time I was at my local pub at home, pre-Covid, no-one under 30 was paying with cash. The barman was already holding up the machine for you to tap your Revolut card on when you went up to pay - much quicker for the staff this way. As opposed to taking a banknote, going to the till, typing in the value of the banknote, counting the change, bringing it back over to you, etc.

SteM

A friend went into a place in kildare street last week and ordered a toasted croissant and a coffee. When he went to pay he was told card only, but he explained he had lost his card and was waiting on a replacement. They took the food and drink and threw it in the bin.

Such a waste.

Feisar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117952473#Comment_117952473

Agreed however having a till/float and managing same isn't free. Card charges are minuscule these days so if the odd customer cannot be catered for then so be it. I'm sure if people were walking away in their droves then hipster coffee shops specializing in Kopi Luwak would accept cash.

Creamy Goodness

Also have to add in the cost of having a safe to hold cash whilst waiting to bring to bank to lodge. Having cash on premises will affect insurance prices too.

im not advocating for cashless business I can just understand why some would choose not to

martingriff

I can understand it and I am not going to get in a huff if it is that way or all cash as I think either are likely to fleece or evade tax but in saying just been all one will stop a load of customers not just the older people but kids or teenagers with no card

Pawwed Rig

Place near me stopped taking cash as their staff were subjected to 2 robberies at knife point. No cash on premises = safer work place. Anyone with a bank account now has a debit card by default right? So I cannot see too many being indignant about it.

Cash is going away. Embrace the future

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117950067#Comment_117950067

But the restaurant would need to state their conditions for payment at the time the contract is formed - i.e. when you order the meal. They can't wait for part-performance of the contract - you've ordered, they've served, you've eaten - and then introduce a contract term that stipulates card payment only.

What happens if they have prominent signs up saying "Card only!" but you, being the inattentive type, fail to notice them and only discover when it comes to settling the bill, and you've only got cash on you?

You offer them the cash, obviously. They may accept it. If they do, they are not obliged to make change, so make sure you have the right cash on you.

If they don't accept it, you walk out without paying, leaving your name and address. They can sue you for the cost of the meal. They will win. That judgment creates a debt, and they cannot refuse cash in settlement of the debt (but, again, they can refuse to make change).

Caranica

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117953075#Comment_117953075

Revolut do a kids card now

Fishdoodle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117953144#Comment_117953144

The cafe …actually had a card transaction only notice …but didn’t notice it (hipster print on white background).

After the Hip Barista Girl refused the cash…I just did Apple Pay

I noticed…they did have a tip bowl , which was decently flush with gold coins So I thought …💭 I could break a fiver with that change …

I asked “Do you mind if I take some change…” And before I could finish my sentence she said “sure!”

And so, I just took some change from their cash only tip bowl and the homeless guy got some coins in his cup 👍

Sleeper12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058210776/can-a-business-refuse-hard-cash

Had you sipped the coffee it would have become a debt. Like putting petrol in a car before paying, they must accept cash as a debt is owed. Paying before you fill the car or consume the coffee then there is no debt & they can refuse cash

Shelflife

I f business does a lot of small transactions like say a coffee shop it can be very expensive to use card only.

If 100 people buy a coffee @ say €2.50 that's 100 transactions at 5c-10c so on average it costs €7.50 to "lodge" €250.00 to your account.

In contrast it would cost about €1.50 to lodge the same amount in cash to your account.

I wouldn't like to see a cashless society, it gives way too much power to the banks. Id also be wary of downtime of either the banks servers or an internet provider which would lead to serious problems.

El Tarangu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117954648#Comment_117954648

You are not factoring in the cost of the owner having to stop serving coffee in order to go to the bank (hopefully not getting mugged along the way) to deposit the cash.

dulpit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117954723#Comment_117954723

Or the cost of maintaining a float and probably an on-premises safe.

Fishdoodle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117954648#Comment_117954648

Seems to be slowly in the making ...

the evolution of cashless:

credit card use used to require a roller over a sheet of carbon paper ... then that went and it became electronic

With a card you could withdraw from atm & pay at shop checkouts ... with overdraft / credit facility if you hadnt money in your acc - handy if you hadn't gotten paid yet. (also encouraged impulse buying & debt which had people use their c. card more)

Cashback became a possibility following purchase

Then ...you could simply tap to buy something under €30 .... then the spending limit for 'tap and pay' increased.

Apple Pay & Google Pay - I dont even know if there is a limit on how much you spend. ...almost everyone has a smart phone or will need one.

Smart watches - also enable cashless payment. -When its on your wrist why bother looking for your wallet.

Covid arrives and newspaper headlines state that money may be a vector for viral transmission .... the perfect storm.

With less hard cash being used banks say that people are using less of their atms and ATMs begin to disappear.

The road to cashless is more likely by design than by pure accident.

A few years down the line....

"And so it was that Cash was no longer king..."

Shelflife

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117954723#Comment_117954723

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117954748#Comment_117954748

Fair points, though the cost of holding a one till float of say €200 would be negligible.

I was simply pointing out how much more expensive cashless is for a business is than cash , when it really shouldnt be.

Sleeper12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117954723#Comment_117954723

Going to the bank once a week or so doesn't take up much time. At least in Dublin it doesn't. Maybe in the country you need to drive 50 miles to a branch or something?

Most small business go to a cash & carry/ wholesalers. This is a great way to get rid of cash without paying any bank fees at all. I no longer take cards BUT I don't pay a penny in bank fees for cash either. Cash is transaction free for me. Cards were costing me more than my van insurance, tax & DOE. It was a no brainer. I had to stop taking card payments

Spook_ie

Surely if you offer to pay in "legal tender" then if it is refused the debt is extinguished?

The ELTEG Euro Legal Tender Expert Group Reported

Looking for a common definition of legal tender of euro cash, the Group expressed unanimous support for a definition relying on three main criteria, seen as cumulative, in cases where a payment obligation exists: • Mandatory acceptance of euro cash,; a means of payment with legal tender status cannot be refused by the creditor of a payment obligation, unless the parties have agreed on other means of payment • Acceptance at full face value; the monetary value of a means of payment with legal tender status is equal to the amount indicated on the means of payment • Power to discharge from payment obligations; a debtor can discharge himself from a payment obligation by transferring a means of payment with legal tender status to the creditorEG ( Euro Legal Tender Expert Group ) have even produced a think paper about it, and it might be worth trawling some EU directives about legal tender.

AND

2.1.2. Acceptance/refusal of cash In several meetings, the Group has addressed the issue of refusal of cash payments. The majority felt that Business to Consumer (B to C) relationships had to be differentiated from Business to Business relationship (B to B) where the parties are deemed to have an equivalent negotiation power and where a customary default rule might be considered to exist. Indeed, in B to B relationships, there was broad agreement that contractual freedom in principle tends to  prevail i.e. that parties are free to agree on other means of payment. In B to C relationships, from the Commission services' and the ECB services' perspective, the very concept of legal tender means that if a customer insists on paying in cash when concluding a contract, i.e. the retailer and the consumer do not agree on any other means of payment, then cash should not be refused, unless the retailer can bring forward restrictively defined objective reasons to do so. In the absence of such objective reasons, the retailer’s refusal would be legally irrelevant. BE supported this point of view while considering that it was not only linked to the concept of legal tender but also to aspects of consumer's protection policy. According to the BE representative, this was the reason why the applicable rules may be different in the B to B relationships. Four ELTEG members (DE, FI, NL, IE) do not share this point of view. According to these members, the legal tender provisions refer to the fulfillment of an essential part of a contract already concluded and do not amount to an obligation to conclude a contract allowing for cash payments. 

https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/articles/euro/documents/elteg_en.pdf

L1011

Retail and restaurant sales do not create a debt to use that argument.

The actual Irish law does not support that quoted opinion, legal tender only exists for debt.

You cannot demand that someone takes cash and you also cannot demand that they give you change if they are willing to take cash.