城市和州正在對無現金商店說不

城市和州正在對無現金商店說不

After almost 10 minutes of standing in line at a coffee shop, Ritchie Torres realized he only had cash in his pocket — a form of payment no longer accepted by this store.

在一家咖啡店里排了近10分鐘的隊后，里奇·托雷斯意識到他口袋里只有現金——這家咖啡店不再接受這種付款方式。

"It was a humiliating experience," he said. "I remember wondering aloud, how could a business refuse to accept cash, which is legal tender?"

“這是一次恥辱的經歷，”他說。“我記得我曾大聲問自己，一個企業(yè)怎么能拒絕接受現金呢?現金是法定貨幣。”

Torres is a City Council member in New York. He says his constituents, especially seniors, have also complained about a spurt of cashless stores. So Torres led the charge on a bill to ban businesses from rejecting cash, which New York's city leaders passed almost unanimously last month.

托雷斯是紐約市議會議員。他說，他的選民，尤其是老年人，也抱怨無現金商店的激增。因此，托雷斯領導了一項禁止企業(yè)拒收現金的法案，上個月，紐約市領導人幾乎一致通過了這項法案。

A similar ban is slated for a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 13. In the past year, Philadelphia, San Francisco and the state of New Jersey have also banned cashless stores — a rare case of governments fighting a tech trend before it spreads far. Massachusetts has required establishments to accept cash since 1978.

類似的禁令將于2月13日在華盛頓特區(qū)舉行聽證會。在過去的一年里，費城、舊金山和新澤西州也禁止了無現金商店——這是政府在科技潮流蔓延之前就與之抗爭的罕見案例。自1978年以來，馬薩諸塞州一直要求企業(yè)接受現金。

"A cashless economy is not an inclusive economy," said Tazra Mitchell, policy director at the research and advocacy group DC Fiscal Policy Institute.

“無現金經濟不是包容性經濟，”研究和倡導組織華盛頓特區(qū)財政政策研究所的政策主任塔茲拉·米切爾說。

Excluding people from paying with cash means "essentially discriminating against people who are low-income, people who are homeless, also undocumented," she said.

不讓人們用現金支付意味著“本質上歧視低收入者、無家可歸者和無證移民，”她說。

Getting a credit or debit card often requires a form of ID, a utility or another bill, money to deposit and a financial history. Mitchell said that in Washington, D.C., nearly a third of residents rely on cash every day because they don't have a card or even a bank account.

獲得信用卡或借記卡通常需要身份證、公用事業(yè)或其他賬單、存款和財務記錄。米切爾說，在華盛頓特區(qū)，近三分之一的居民每天依靠現金，因為他們沒有信用卡，甚至沒有銀行賬戶。

In fact, as cities have cracked down on the cashless economy and spurred new conversations about whom it leaves out, some of the biggest names that tried going cashless — Amazon's automated convenience store Go and salad chain Sweetgreen — have reversed their policies in favor of accepting cash.

事實上，隨著城市對無現金經濟的打擊，引發(fā)了人們對無現金經濟的新討論，一些嘗試無現金的大公司——亞馬遜的自動便利店Go和沙拉連鎖店Sweetgreen——已經改變了他們的政策，轉而接受現金。

"Going cashless had ... positive results, but it also had the unintended consequence of excluding those who prefer to pay or can only pay with cash," Sweetgreen officials wrote in a post.

“無現金化……有積極的結果，但它也有意想不到的后果，將那些更喜歡或只能用現金支付的人排除在外，”Sweetgreen的官員在一篇帖子中寫道。

These reversals show that the market is working to respond to its communities, said National Retail Federation General Counsel Stephanie Martz. She said new laws are "a solution in search of a problem" as the number of businesses to go cashless is very small — in part because each card transaction comes with a fee the business has to pay.

全美零售聯合會總法律顧問馬茨說，這些逆轉表明市場正在努力對社區(qū)做出反應。她說，新的法律是“尋找問題的解決方案”，因為無現金業(yè)務的數量非常少，部分原因是每筆信用卡交易都需要支付一定的費用。

Credit card companies, which get a cut every time a card is swiped, have rewarded the cashless trend. For example, in 2018. Visa paid $10.000 each to 50 businesses that stopped accepting cash.

每次刷卡都會有提成的信用卡公司，對無現金的趨勢給予了回報。例如，在2018年，Visa向50家停止接受現金的企業(yè)支付了每家1萬美元。

And indeed, cash is becoming less popular among U.S. shoppers. The Federal Reserve found in 2018 that cash had stopped being the No. 1 payment choice — overtaken by debit cards.

事實上，現金在美國消費者中越來越不受歡迎。美聯儲在2018年發(fā)現，現金不再是第一支付選擇——被借記卡取代。

But cash is still the most common way people pay amounts under $10 or $25 — especially among those older than 55 and younger than 25. And some people prefer cash for privacy reasons — to protect their purchase history from being tracked by advertisers or banks.

但現金仍然是人們支付10美元或25美元以下金額的最常見方式，尤其是在55歲以上和25歲以下的人群中。有些人出于隱私原因更喜歡現金，以保護他們的購買記錄不被廣告商或銀行跟蹤。

Cash also might carry potential psychological and financial benefits for consumers.

現金也可能為消費者帶來潛在的心理和經濟利益。