I saw a few places stop accepting cash during covid days but most have started accepting it again. The one place that I frequent that still doesn’t is the haircut store in my town. There are not a lot of options so it’s card or go somewhere that charges almost double.

What's weird to me is that you guys frame it as a bad thing. For me as a European it's the opposite, I'm in trouble if someone doesn't take card. Nobody carries cash any more.

I think pretty much all stores still accept cash, but most people here just never withdraw any. It's pretty much just old people and people buing illegal stuff

What you deem illegal may not be the next day. Being able to do illegal things is actually healthy for a society. Otherwise we already have the technology to stop all crimes world wide. We could force every person to wear a body cam at all times and failure to do so results in life in prison. Done crime solved. But that would not be good no one wants that. But if we did stop every crime imagine how the world would be. Imagine 60 years ago we could stop all crime. Any homosexual would be found and persecuted. Anyone who became a whistleblower would be found a jailed. There are just so many reasons why being able to break the law is fundamental for a society to progress and thrive.

So this is why cash IS a good thing. Sex workers want to do their thing and Johns want to not be instantly called out for using sex workers. The people who long ago realized magic mushrooms work to cure depression want to be be able to get it without being jailed. Now, here in Canada, sex work is protected and magic mushrooms will not get you thrown in jail.

So even though you may deem things illegal, I ask you think of a greater good that cash allows as everything being digital reveals a lot of information that not all people are comfortable their government knowing. Be it homosexuals, depressed people trying illicit treatments, or extremely lonely discarded individuals reaching out to sex workers verses suicide.

Lastly according to a quick google search and a few spots I looked at, most only showing 2022 as latest information, most point of sale transactions in Europe are made with cash not card [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/786680/share-of-cash-tra...

Just for the record I don't condemn victimless crimes. I'm fine with willing sex workers and I'm fine with drugs. As far as I'm concerned, alcohol is worse than most illegal drugs, and most of the harm from most illegal drugs comes from their illegal status not the drugs themselves. If it was up to me I'd legalize everything. You want to buy heroin just take a mandatory safety class explaining safe use, then go buy it at the pharmacy. People can get it either way, might as well get clean and taxed stuff. I realize that's probably not entirely realistic but that's my opinion anyway. Especially for lighter stuff, heroin and meth might be the exceptions but again, anyone can buy it whenever so honestly I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do it at a pharmacy.

And in northern Europe, pretty much nobody uses cash. In the rest of Europe, at least the places I've been, pretty much every store accepts card and often other digital payment methods.

I don't doubt your statistics, just stating my experience. I just think it's strange that people prefer cash for legitimate purchases. I definitely want cash to stay around, but these days we can use crypto for illegal stuff anyway do it's not really a big deal.

Cash is superior to crypto for anonymity and most people have it, know how to use it and accept it. Bitcoin and the majority of other coins will leave a permanent trail which can be easily associated to the person due to KYC policies and onchain analysis firms. Sure there are privacy coins like Monero but they aren't trivial to acquire without KYC and to find someone that accepts it. So I'm happy that people still use cash despite not doing anything illegal (or immoral) and mostly making payments with card and instant payments.

Was this refusal of a normal cash transaction, or something silly (unreasonably large transaction/transaction all in one cent coins/transaction which would raise money laundering alarms etc)? Like, if you try to pay 10,000 dollars in cash, or, say, buy a stack of prepaid debit cards with cash, most places are going to be sceptical of that.

a small shopping trip with ordinary items totaling less than thirty dollars, actually. Many places of various kinds in California are not accepting cash today - San Francisco passed local law to require accepting cash as one result.