How much longer until we're a cashless society...redesigned bills not accepted...

[ElscottHavoc]

Today, I walked into a fast food restaurant and was going to pay for dinner for our family. I'm not a huge fan of carrying a bunch of cash in my wallet (usually just swipe the card), but happened to have $100 bill in my wallet I had received from selling an item in the local classifieds. So instead of waiting to deposit the bill, I figured I'd just break it down. I know some restaurants aren't able to break a $100 bill all the time, so I was figuring it might be a problem, but when they refused to receive it, the reasoning was actually really surprising to me.

They said, they don't accept the new bill, and I learned that neither do many of the other businesses in town, because there's no way to verify the authenticity using those special markers. Heard a local bank had accepted $300 worth of fake, new bills over the past month. Apparently, the new, redesigned bill, which was supposed to make it nearly impossible to counterfeit is now being refused because retailers are unable to easily check if it is counterfeit - and at the same time, apparently more businesses that accept large bills have been accepting counterfeit bills since they can't easily mark them to test. At the same time, $300 worth of fake new bills over the course of one month seems really high given the difficulty to counterfeit these bills and the fact I only live in a town of 15,000 people. I mean, I completely understand that businesses are free to accept whatever forms of payment they wish, but it seems odd to me that as the difficulty to counterfeit the bill has increased the number of retailers accepting the bills continues to decrease. We might as well have just kept the old bills...

I think we'll be seeing a cashless society within the next 10 years (In hindsight, 10 years probably way too soon) - what do you think?

 

[4u 2 nv]

That is odd. I paid $1000 in cash at discount a few days ago with all new bills. They didn't even question it.

 

[RedRocketMike]

I can't see it going cashless anytime soon. Those business's are stupid, the new bill is the least likely to be duplicated. I guess they prefer the washed out $20's reshot as $100's which mark as real bills.

 

[crazyj0n]

I've never heard of the new 100 not being accepted that's interesting.
As long as banks still accept them it probably wont be that big of a deal though, anywhere there isn't electricity or internet you will need paper to facilitate trade.

 

[derklug]

I doubt cash will entirely go away in the next 10 years, but it is going to be phased out. Banks like being able to skim off 2% of everything spent, and the gov loves the ability to track your spending.

 

[ViperRed91GT]

Conversely, I'm surprised it's taken this long for vending machines/car washes to accept plastic.

 

[VegasMichael]

No time soon. Too many online security breaches with credit cards. I've already had two card accounts replaced by my issuer in the past year. A lot of people, including myself, still like the cash in many instances.

 

[FIVEHOE]

LOLWUT. Have they actually taken a look at the new hundo's? Those suckers must be god damn impossible to duplicate. All the colors/water marks on top of the band down the middle? Now I could understand if they had a sign stating that they do not accept 50/100's, as making change for multiple customers will quickly become an issue, but it sounds to me like you heard from someone inexperienced? I've never had a problem using the new hundreds around here. Most people take one look at them and go "yeah, thats definitely not fake"

edit: and also with all the cyber crime going on lately, I doubt we will ever see physical currency completely eliminated until we get very high grade encryption security for our digital finances.

 

[Zemedici]

I don't think it's so much society headed toward currency-less transactions, as much as the size of the town you live in. I live in a much bigger town and have never had that issue, in a small town word travels fast, and fear spreads easily, ya know?

And the new 100s are extremely difficult to counterfeit, so I believe the chances of your bank in your rather small town receiving 3 fakes in such a short time is slim to none, I wonder if the tellers even know how to spot a counterfeit...hahaha

 

[Kevins89notch]

I've put 99.9% of my purchases on plastic for 15 years now. Cash? LOL

 

[CobraBob]

LOLWUT. Have they actually taken a look at the new hundo's? Those suckers must be god damn impossible to duplicate. All the colors/water marks on top of the band down the middle? Now I could understand if they had a sign stating that they do not accept 50/100's, as making change for multiple customers will quickly become an issue, but it sounds to me like you heard from someone inexperienced? I've never had a problem using the new hundreds around here. Most people take one look at them and go "yeah, thats definitely not fake"

edit: and also with all the cyber crime going on lately, I doubt we will ever see physical currency completely eliminated until we get very high grade encryption security for our digital finances.

This I agree with. Credit card fraud is on the increase. And there is nothing on the horizon to deter that. So until the security problems are resolved, cash won't disappear. My wife just got a new Citi card a week ago and she already got hit with a $650 charge and a $50 charge at the online Apple store. Fortunately Apple saw something wasn't right and cancelled the orders. So now she has to have another account number change, meaning she has to contact a lot of companies to change the number. She's had this happen 4-5 times this year.

 

[Mr. Mach-ete]

Cash is still king.

 

[Weather Man]

At the rate the Russians, North Koreans and Chinese are hacking our systems, cash will make a comeback.

 

[Deceptive]

There has been some form of solid monetary means for hundreds of years. It will take terrorists creating a weapon (biological) that can be delivered on money. It would have to be extremely destructive in nature, essentially cripple the world. Even then, we would be stubborn to give it up. Cash Rules Everything Around Me

 

[oldmodman]

Luckily no problem passing one for me.

I went to Del Taco to get my free Thanksgiving Turkey Taco and got some other stuff as well.

They took one of the new 100's without even blinking.

Outcall hookers are OK with them too.

 

[SonicDTR]

I ate at a hometown diner a while back, went to pay at the register and they didnt take plastic. No signs on the door or anything. Luckily a buddy covered my tab. Hell, even my lawnmower guys and the food trucks at work all take plastic.

A local coffee shop actually switched from the typical card swipers to an Ipad with the "Square" swipey app.

 

[Kevins89notch]

Cash is still king.

No it's not. It has no benefits. I pay no interest with my credit cards and get tons of free perks.

Hell, I sold a $575 cell phone via craigslist just a couple of hours ago. We met inside a McDonalds as it's well lit, safe, etc. How did he pay? He pulled out his cell phone(actually his wife's since his was stolen), logged into paypal and gifted me the money.

I ate at a hometown diner a while back, went to pay at the register and they didnt take plastic. No signs on the door or anything. Luckily a buddy covered my tab. Hell, even my lawnmower guys and the food trucks at work all take plastic.

I keep about $150 in the center of my credit card wallet. Last time I used it was girl scout cookies back whenever that was. You always want to have backup funds, just in case. I also keep some cash in the car incase my wallet was stolen/lost.

 

[FIVEHOE]

No it's not. It has no benefits. I pay no interest with my credit cards and get tons of free perks.

Hell, I sold a $575 cell phone via craigslist just a couple of hours ago. We met inside a McDonalds as it's well lit, safe, etc. How did he pay? He pulled out his cell phone(actually his wife's since his was stolen), logged into paypal and gifted me the money.



I keep about $150 in the center of my credit card wallet. Last time I used it was girl scout cookies back whenever that was. You always want to have backup funds, just in case. I also keep some cash in the car incase my wallet was stolen/lost.

as someone who only uses plastic to pay for things, imagine how annoying it would be if you had to freeze your account and order new cards because one of the places you constantly use the card on recently got hacked (target, Jimmy Johns, HomeDepot).

cash is essentially king because it cannot be linked to you. People cannot hack personal information from businesses via cash transactions. The only way cash will disappear is if our government decides it is more cost effective to stop printing currency and transfer to digital (this would require HUGE amounts of money spent on cyber security). It would not surprise me if the government stopped making pennies, nickels, and dimes. I'm not even sure if they are cost effective to make into currency at this point.

But until we can stop hackers (I doubt this will happen anytime soon, if ever), then converting everything digitally just doesn't make sense.

 

[VenomousDSG]

Never in my life have i heard of a business not excepting cash because it was too new... I'd either tell them they can accept it, or I'm walking out.

Businesses who cause problems like that with customers usually don't last very long.

 

[Kevins89notch]

as someone who only uses plastic to pay for things, imagine how annoying it would be if you had to freeze your account and order new cards because one of the places you constantly use the card on recently got hacked (target, Jimmy Johns, HomeDepot).

Been there, done that.

I personally find it stupid to use a debit card.

I have been "compromised" before. What happened? I received a call at 2pm on a friday asking if I just spent $700 about 8 hours from my house. "No." They cancelled the card, shipped a new one over night, and I had it by 11am. The "annoying" part was changing a couple details at ebay, paypal and amazon. Oh how rough, 5 minutes of work and a 2 minute phone call for the benefit of free flights, special offers, extra insurance on purchases, etc, ETC.

My current debit card(I only have it because it offers feeless ATM withdraws worldwide) is both chip and pin, thus it can't be hacked like a overwhelming majority of standard American cards.