No Cash Accepted

 Maybe you have seen the signs that are appearing at stores near you?  “No cash accepted”  Of course this is one of many signs that we are in the very last days.  One day soon anyone who wants to buy or sell anything will have to show some sort of mark on their hand or forehead.  We are the first generation to have this technology in place to fulfill this 2000 year old prophecy.  Of course you will have to have some type of bank account in order to access these digital dollars, and lots of folks don’t have bank accounts…yet.

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As it happens, a lot of people are still “unbanked”: roughly 6 million in the U.S., the latest data shows, which is about the population of Wisconsin. And outside of the U.S., more than a billion people don’t have a bank account.

I am a business school professor who researches society’s transition from cash to electronic payments. I recently visited Seattle and was amazed by the mixed signals I saw in many storefronts. Numerous shops had one sign proudly proclaiming how welcoming and inclusive they were — next to another sign saying “No cash accepted.” This tells people without bank accounts that they aren’t welcome.

Why not have a bank account?

Why would someone want to avoid using banks? Every two years, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation surveys households about their connections to the banking system and asks people without bank accounts why they don’t have one. People can respond with multiple answers. In 2021, the top reason — with over 40% of respondents choosing it — was that they didn’t have enough money to meet the minimum balance.

This is consistent with data showing that poorer households are less likely to have bank accounts. About one-quarter of those earning less than $15,000 a year are unbanked, the FDIC found. Among those earning more than $75,000 a year, almost every person surveyed had some type of bank account.

The second- and third-most common answers show that some people are skeptical of banks. Roughly one-third of survey respondents agreed that “Avoiding a bank gives more privacy,” while another one-third said they simply “don’t trust banks.”

Rounding out the top five reasons were costs of dealing with a bank. More than one-quarter of respondents felt bank account fees were too high, and about the same proportion felt fees were too unpredictable.

https://studyfinds.org/no-cash-accepted-signs-bad-news/