2.) I'm sympathetic to places being able to opt out of dealing with cash if they so choose but
3.) I don't really care for a trend that makes it increasingly difficult to conduct transactions anonymously (as well as making it more difficult for some people to participate)
There are certainly card systems that can be replenished with cash but you don't see them widely in the US--presumably because credit cards are so popular.
I agree, and I’m also still not sure how I feel about moving the entirety of our consumer economy into the domain of just a few major card processors. While I personally haven’t regularly used cash in years, there’s something comforting in it being an option, even if I don’t use it – and yet, of course, by everyone doing the same, that’s how cash gets phased out.
Are you talking about prepaid debit cards? Those have lots of fees and such; as someone who used to rely on them, they’re helpful if you absolutely need it but not easy or painless.
Banks don’t like establishing branches in low income areas, and low income people don’t usually have a means of transportation or time to get to a bank.
No, I'm talking about something like Pasmo cards, which are widely used in Japan for all sorts of things not limited to transit. https://www.pasmo.co.jp/en/buy/
Pasmo and Octopus(Hong Kong)-type systems only gained massive adoption because they were a valid form of payment on widely used transit networks. The US doesn't have very many of those.
Most US transit agencies these days want to get out of the payments business (Pasmo and Octopus have to be managed as debit card systems and transit agencies can't afford the overhead), so they're adopting London's second-generation system, where you can pay with contactless bank cards. So we might just skip that intermediate phase entirely.
1.) I rarely use cash and
2.) I'm sympathetic to places being able to opt out of dealing with cash if they so choose but
3.) I don't really care for a trend that makes it increasingly difficult to conduct transactions anonymously (as well as making it more difficult for some people to participate)
There are certainly card systems that can be replenished with cash but you don't see them widely in the US--presumably because credit cards are so popular.