Pew Research:
Americans are becoming less reliant on physical currency. Roughly three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) say they make no purchases using cash during a typical week, up slightly from 24% in 2015. And the share who say that all or almost all of their weekly purchases are made using cash has modestly decreased, from 24% in 2015 to 18% today, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
As more Americans are going cash-free, a growing share of the public is comfortable being without physical currency. Today, 53% of Americans say they try to make sure they always have cash on hand just in case they need it. That represents a 7-percentage-point decline from the 60% who reported this in 2015.
Even when I have money, I rarely, if ever, use cash to purchase things.
I pay cash at the barber shop because that’s all they take. Outside of that, I tap.
In ?? we have had contactless payment for about a decade and debit cards (vs credit) are very popular. That said the Bank of Canada reports about 1/2 of all purchases are still done with cash.
It’s interesting how different countries behave.
That much here? Interesting. I know I’m always surprised when people pay cash here because it happens so rarely.
We need to keep some cash handy in our house.
Our building’s washing machines only take coins.
The commuter bus I take into NYC doesn’t take anything but cash or prepaid passes.
My weekly theater workshop collects in cash for our rehearsal space.
I prefer to tip some food-delivery kids in cash in case their masters skim.
Panhandlers and buskers rarely use Square.
Sometimes I don’t need a record of a transaction. Sometimes I don’t have the opportunity for one. Cash is something I’d hate to give up entirely.
I remember reading about it a while back so I did a little searching before posting. In 2015 Bank of Canada reported 51% of all purchases were done with cash.
In a nutshell:
– Cash for small purchases
– Debit for medium
– Credit card for large
They didn’t define what constitutes a “large” purchase. Also, Canadians had an average of $46.50 in ? in their wallets.
I live in an earthquake zone, we keep cash in our emergency kit.
Yeah, we still remember the blackout after Superstorm Sandy. Cash came in handy.
How much and what’s your address?
$1 million dollars!
(What’s that? Really? OK.)
$1 billion dollars!
The address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Feel free to put on a balaclava to rob the place. Just go up to the gate and walk right in. No one will stop you.
cash = privacy
Agreed. If, as many would like, cash goes away then we lose a big element of privacy.
Not surprising, when I pay cash in a store usually the cashier is staring off somewhere thinking I’m going to be charging, then when they see it’s cash they usually look a little flummoxed trying to come up with the change due. I can’t imagine what they would do if the register didn’t actually compute how much change they need to get.