Washington

with all transactions, this is a shame that this use of cards, cash, tokens, etc. is still up in the air. For example, witness the hardships experienced by some who, for some reason or other, don't have or use a card. They have their own reasons which I'll respect, after all, this is a 'free country'.

There should not be any restrictions on what Americans should use in payments, cash, credit, debit, tokens, etc. Legal tender is legal tender no matter where one goes (in theory). Businesses that take only one form of payment are simply (IMHO) hurting themselves. After all, don't their customers drive what the business should accept and do?

However, there are still those in the 'real world' that do not rely on communications links to verify credit or debit card balances before a transaction is approved. The biggest reason I hear is that they don't want to pay the fee(s) associated w/ verifying balances and/or such, before approving such transactions. I even know of some businesses that will wait until the end of the day before they run their transactions electronically to get accepted. Of course, if a transaction is denied during this process, then they are out of luck unless they happen to know the customer already (which in some places I know happens, and it usually works out okay, the business knows the customer already).