Last week, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney signed into law a ban on stores that don't accept cash payments. City Council passed the bill over the objection of Amazon.com, which was planning to open an Amazon Go in the city, a cashier-less and cashless store, as part of a national expansion of the prepared-food and grocery store chain.
Those supporting the ban on cashless stores argue they discriminate against poor people who don't have checking or savings accounts, let alone credit cards, and are therefore considered "unbanked."
While it may be hard to imagine living without a bank account, according to a 2017 survey of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in about 6 percent of Philadelphia households, no member had a bank account.
The City Council and the mayor deserve credit for holding firm against Amazon (which probably was delicious after the city was passed over for a second headquarters).
Still, the ban on cashless stores doesn't really address solutions to the hardship of being unbanked--which is not the inability to buy a fancy salad at Amazon Go or Sweetgreen (another cashless store). Many of the unbanked can do that, if they wish. A Pew report from 2015 found that almost 1 in 4 unbanked people used prepaid reloadable debit cards that are not affiliated with a bank. As technology improves, there is reason to believe that more and more of the unbanked will be able to access these sorts of non-cash payment options.
But a plastic payment option doesn't equal a bank, and often charges monthly fees and fees for each transaction.
The city's ban on cashless stores gives the unbanked an advantage; even better would be an effort to make them banked.
Editorial on 03/05/2019