Some people attending this year’s Greater Cleveland Film Festival may have winced a little when they found out they couldn’t pay with cash for their popcorn and Milk Duds. For the first time in the event’s 47-year history, the festival was cash-free.
More and more businesses are going cashless in Northeast Ohio and across the globe. They’re driven in part by concerns over germs, something the Coronavirus pandemic intensified, but also attracted by the speed of transactions, consumer convenience and theft and loss prevention issues.
In and around Cleveland, at Progressive Field, the Garden Café at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Angie’s Soul Café in Midtown, the Nervous Dog Coffee Bar at La Place in Beachwood and the Green Goat Café in Downtown, cash is not accepted.
These businesses are not alone. And they’re getting rewarded. Lower insurance rates are sometimes available for businesses who choose not to handle cash; and banks can offer more attractive processing packages (contracts to administer funds) for businesses that don’t use cash.
A 2021 study by international consulting firm PwC forecasted the volume of cashless payments worldwide will increase to almost 1.9 trillion transactions by 2025, representing an 80% increase from 2020. The pandemic is only partly to blame or credit depending on your point of view.
Concern over contact with COVID-19 prompted the Garden Café at the Cleveland Botanical Garden to go cashless when Marigold Catering took over the contract in November 2020, according to a spokesperson for Marigold. But the pandemic didn’t drive the trend for every business.
Flying the Cashless Skies with United
United Airlines has outsourced the cash side of its business everywhere it flies. Need to buy a ticket on the run at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport or Akron/Canton? Or even just upgrade a seat, pay for baggage or pre-order a snack? That will require plastic. United Airlines has quietly stopped accepting cash at most airports.
For those flush with unspendable cash, there is a solution: The reverse ATM in the ticket lobby.
According to United Airlines Spokesperson Erin Jankowski, Hopkins has several “Ready Station” cash-to-card ATMs in the lobby, where customers can turn cash into plastic for a fee. She added that the airline has gone cashless as part of its efforts to create a faster and more efficient customer experience.
A July 2022 Gallup poll reports factors driving a decline in cash usage may include a larger number of merchants accepting electronic payment, an increase in self-checkout registers in grocery and larger retail stores and mobile pay options that allow people to pay for purchases using their smartphones.
A wallet full of cash and no place to spend it
As more small and large businesses convert their point-of-purchase systems to receive non-cash transactions — many unbanked and underbanked community members feel discriminated against.
According to the Gallup report, “Lower-income Americans more commonly use cash for purchases than do middle-and-upper-income Americans. Twenty-two percent of lower-income adults -- those living in households with annual incomes less than $40,000 -- use cash for all or most of their purchases. That compares with 14% of those whose annual household income is between $40,000 and $99,999 and 5% of those whose income is $100,000 or more.”
Gallup goes on to note, “Seventy-three percent of upper-income Americans use cash for only a few or none of their purchases, compared with 49% of lower-income Americans.”
At Angie’s Soul Café in Cleveland’s Midtown neighborhood, Manager Kevin Tipper said the business has been cashless since it moved to its current location at East 79th St. and Carnegie Ave. in January 2020 because of safety concerns. Tipper said, “A lot of the local businesses have had issues dealing with cash. It’s more of a liability in terms of having cash on the property, so coming in the door, we just felt that we would start off going cashless.”
Tipper said Angies still has customers who question the policy, but he believes it’s the wave of the future and it’s not that hard to adjust. Customers who might want to make an anonymous purchase or find it easier to keep track of their budget with cash might disagree.
Currently, according to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, it is legal to ban cash at your establishment if your state hasn’t outlawed the practice. Laws are in flux. Some states, including New Jersey and Colorado, and cities, like San Francisco and Washington D.C., have enacted laws requiring businesses with a storefront to take cash for transactions less than $2,000.
Could such a law be enacted in Ohio? Last year, State Sen. Louis Blessing III, a Republican representing parts of Hamilton County, introduced legislation requiring businesses to accept cash. The bill never made it out of committee.
