Washington

And for a very good reason, namely in the interests of "children, senior citizens, homeless people and residents who don’t trust banking institutions." To that, I'd add young mothers desperate to feed their infants (see story below).

My wife was in the USA (New York City) last April. I still had work here, so I sent her on ahead (our second grandson made his first appearance). The hotel we had reserved at first said her credit card was fine, but then there was a "glitch," and her card was suddenly refused, and something else had to be done. My daughter had two young kids to take care of, and couldn't come. Her husband was in and out of town, and had no time. My brother was home in Northern Virginia, and I didn't want to bother my New York office, who has their own work to do, to come help out one of the senior guys from Europe on what was not a work-related matter. Luckily, I had given her some cash to take with her, and the hotel agreed to accept $1000 as a security until I arrived in the USA with my US-based credit card. If that hadn't worked, and she had no cash, either I would have had to inconvenience someone who really didn't deserve the disruption, or my wife would have had to leave, and get emergency lodging with my sister, who lives way out in the boonies in New Jersey. We were able to fix the error with her credit card (someone at her bank had pressed a wrong key somewhere, it turned out), and all was right with the world. But without the cash, things would have gotten very inconvenient for her, and at least someone else.

Call us old-fashioned (or European, even if I'm not), but we HATE credit cards. The ease with which they are hacked, plus the need to keep track of their use, so we know what's coming at the end of the month, plus just the simple notion that we are leaving an electronic trail of our lives for anyone from the idly curious to a future KGB/Gestapo to follow and scrutinize.

One time, in Cape Cod, my wife was in a tiny grocery store, and their connection to electronic payments failed. They called out that they couldn't accept credit or debit cards until it was fixed, so cash only for the moment. A young mother with a baby, standing in line in front of my wife started to cry, because she was buying $5 worth of formula to feed her baby, and had nothing but a credit card. The cashier said she was sorry, but there was nothing she could do. My wife said, look, here's $5, go buy your formula. The young mother was very grateful, and wanted her address to pay her back. My wife said the only payment she wanted was for the young mother never to rely only on plastic ever again.