Not having cash actually is a feature for some establishments. There's a bar in Berkeley that doesn't allow you to pay with cash, so they had no need for registers. We assumed the purpose was to prevent any incentive to rob the place (even by employees).

It's probably not just being robbed but all the controls and general headaches associated with cash (transferring cash to and from the bank) that have to be in place if you use cash at all. Not just for securing against robbery but for accounting controls, auditors, etc.

It's not that common today (and there are legal issues in some states), but I can easily see an establishment that gets to the 90% (or whatever) credit card/smartphone payment range deciding to just dump cash entirely.

> "Doesn't allow you to pay with cash"

How? Once they've poured your drink and ask for money, they can't refuse your cash payment[0] (that's what "legal tender" means). I suppose they could forbid you from ordering another at that point, or ban you....

[0] ETA: or rather, they can refuse it, but only if they forgive the debt. If you try to pay a debt in legal cash, they can't tell you "no you need to pay us some other way".

(IANAL)

All debts public and private refers to debts by a creditor. A drink you haven't paid for isn't a debt. It's just an account payable. They don't have to take your cash.

>debts by a creditor

It's clearly not all debts. I actually can't think of any debts this applies to. Your student loan, credit card, auto loan, home loan, water bill, power bill, heck even rent if you're in a modern corporately owned complex... would never under any circumstances accept cash payment. It would be stunning if one even provided an address that isn't a PO box, let alone an address where you could get in the front door if you showed up in person, assuming you were willing to travel a few thousand miles.

At most there might be something like a retail bank branch where you could deposit cash and then request an electronic transmission of the same amount of money.

Pretty sure they can:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm

Or, just exercise their right to not serve you? If you order something and then are unable to pay in the manner they request, they can just throw the drink away and move on. This would also happen if your card was declined.

I used to think that but after some more reading I realized it’s fundamentally not true.

YANAL, as you said, and this is a common misconception about what “legal tender” is.

It’s also a feature to help keep out people with worse credit, who are likelier to cause problems, such as in hotels.

This is quite rare compared to cash only establishments, I've yet to run into any bar like that in Seattle.

I'd be more curious about TCO including a Verifone terminal and the fees associated with that. Still hard to imagine it climbing up to $999, although there are probably some annual fees that Square instead built into transaction fees and the hardware price.