Serious question about the homeless and digital-only payments

I saw a guy in Denver last month try to buy a bus ticket but the driver said cash wasn't accepted anymore. He had exactly $3.75 in coins and couldn't use a card or phone. Should we slow down going cashless until everyone has equal access to digital payments?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopherh791mo ago

Should we slow down going cashless" - yeah, that bus driver probably wasn't thinking about the guy with his pockets full of quarters. But honestly, how far back do we push the clock on this stuff?

kimfisher1mo ago

The local food truck near me lost half their lunch sales when their card reader went down last week. We're one power outage away from realizing how fragile this whole system is.

nguyen.angela1mo agoTop Commenter

Had a buddy who runs a small coffee cart down by the waterfront. Last month his square reader just died halfway through the morning rush. He ended up giving away like 40 cups of coffee because people only had cards and he felt bad turning them away. The whole time he's there with a tip jar full of coins and nobody's got any cash on them. He told me he lost almost 200 bucks that day just because of a glitchy machine. It's wild how fast we all just assumed everyone would always have a working card reader in their pocket.