Carded

When it's time to head out into the world, everyone has a set of stuff that goes under the heading of "everyday carry." While the term is usually associated with tactical gear from multi-tools to pocket knives, EDC simply means that detritus you shlep with you, the stuff that you need on a daily basis as you make the rounds. In my case it's all kept in a small basket in my closet. Into my back pocket goes my wallet, with a few payment cards and essential ID's, though much of that (like almost everything else these days) can be handled by my smartphone. Into my right pocket goes a few keys and the fob for my car, as well as a little box with some medication and a small cloth to clean my glasses. And into my left pocket goes a money clip with a few bills in it.

While all the other stuff gets used on a regular basis, the money clip and its contents are turning into a totem of world gone by. While I haven't marked the bills, I could swear that I've been carrying some of the same ones for months. It's not that I haven't bought anything: quite the contrary. On a typical day I get gas and groceries, or take the train and get some lunch, or pick up a replacement lightbulb and have a doctor's appointment. But at each of those stops the transaction is done with a card. Even buying a box of mints for $1.19 is done with a swipe, though I can't fathom how anyone in the financial ecosystem makes money on a transaction that small.

They do it because most businesses are looking for ways to streamline operations and cut costs and loss, and cash does none of that. Doing business with bills and coins creates numerous inefficiencies for commerce, from the time it takes on both sides of a transaction to proffer them for a purchase, to the need for employees to reconcile the till, to taking the day's haul to the bank and depositing it. Yes, there is a cost to processing a card transaction, one which nets Visa and Mastercard and Amex millions of dollars a year. But someone way smarter than me has done the math, and has determined that even with the vig those companies charge it's still cheaper to process a transaction electronically as opposed to physically settling the score. 

In fact, some places have gone so cashless that cash isn't permitted at all. That's the case at vacation spots such as Six Flags and Kings Dominion, at national parks like Death Valley and Crater Lake, and at ballparks from Buffalo to Charlotte. Go to a game at Commerica Park in Detroit, and if all you have is cash and you want a beer, you have to first stop at a Cash2Card kiosk. You feed your bills into it, and it issues a temporary Visa card for you to use. Call it an Anti-ATM. 

Even those cards are starting to get supplanted. Whether your religion is Apple or Android, you have an electronic wallet on your phone, wherein you just wave it for payment. It all magically routes itself around and through, settling up your account without you having to do anything. Pretty soon we'll just implant a chip into our hands that connects to the phone in our pocket or bag, and high five our way through the checkout line.

In spite of all that there are a number of states that are considering legislation to, well, keep cash legal. Florida, Oklahoma and Vermont are just three that have bills under consideration that require merchants to accept bills. They argue that cashless rules discriminate against those who don't use banks, including young people, certain religious communities and those with low incomes. The evidence they cite is the most basic and obvious: it says right on every single dollar bill "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." Whatever your politics, that is as originalist as it gets.

On my usual rounds just two places insist that you tender bills, that the cost of a card transaction eats too deeply into their profits. One is the barbershop, the other the buck-a-slice pizza place. So if you see me checking if I indeed have what I need in my left pocket, it's a good bet I'm either hungry or shaggy. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has had the same twenty-dollar bill in his pocket for 6 months. His column appears weekly via email and online on Blogspot and Substack as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.