This is complete and utter bullshit. Whatever your personal experience, I have ridden taxis hundreds of times over the course of 2 decades and not once has a cab demanded I pay cash. I exclusively used credit cards and have been since roughly 2009

I was in NYC last month and paid fine with card, and the driver clearly saw cash in my wallet?

I dont know how true it is now but I can tell you once upon a time they preferred cash and yes their machine frequently seemed to be broken or had some issue. My experiences were a long time ago before the rise of Uber and Lyft

I take cabs in NYC often and that never happens.