In what cases can a business refuse to take cash?
The Federal Reserve website notes that creditors must accept cash for debts on services already rendered, but that businesses may refuse cash for services not yet rendered unless prohibited by local law. The Treasury website includes examples of businesses limiting what cash they will accept:  For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or   dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas   stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually   notes above $20) as a matter of policy. You have to take legal tender to settle a debt. If your business model doesn't involve the customer incurring a debt that is then settled, you don't have to take cash. For example, in a restaurant where you pay after eating, you can insist on paying cash, because you're settling a debt. But in McDonald's they can refuse your cash at the counter, because you've not received your food yet and so no debt has been incurred. "They don't have to take cash if they reasonably told you in advance they don't take cash, because they made fair effort to prevent you from incurring a debt.  They don't have to take cash if the transaction hasn't yet happened (not a debt) or if it can be easily undone at no cost to either party - such as a newspaper subscription they can just stop delivering.  Both of these reasons are limited by the rules against discrimination, see below.  They don't have to take cash if it's impracticable. For instance a transit bus when fares first went to $1.00, it took years to fund new fareboxes able to take paper money.  You don't have to take a mortgage payment in pennies.  Liquor stores don't have to take $100 bills. (it requires them to keep too much change in the till, which makes them a robbery target).  Trouble arises when it appears there's an ulterior motive for the rule.   Suppose a Landlord Jim requires rent to be paid with EFT.  Rent-controlled Marcie tells the judge ""It's a scheme to oust me, he knows I'm unbanked"".  Jim counters ""No. I got mugged last month because criminals know when I collect cash rents.""  It will turn on whether Jim can show good-faith effort to work with his unbanked tenants to find other ways to pay. If Jim does a particularly bad job of this, he could find himself paying Marcie's legal bills! Even worse if the ulterior motive is discrimination. Chet the plumber hates Muslims. Alice the feed supplier hates the Amish.  So they decide to take credit cards only, knowing those people's religions don't allow them.  Their goose is cooked once they can't show any other reasonable reason to refuse cash." "Apartment complexes have had a long history of not accepting cash for payment of rent. This eliminates the problem of robbery and strongly reduces the risks of embezzlement.   THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE  Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution states:   No State shall ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts Previous editions of banknotes stated that the notes were redeemable in gold or in lawful money. The Mint Act of 1792 set gold and silver as legal currency (and that one did not have to accept ""base metal coins"" for more than $10 which is why coin rolls only go up to $10). The Coinage Act of 1873 dropped silver and made gold the legal standard for currency. In 1933, the ""redeemable in gold"" was changed by federal statute and the legend you mention was added. Prior to 1933, someone could demand that you pay them in gold and not with a bank note. Legislation in 1933 ended that. This clause in the Constitution leads some political groups to wish to return to a gold standard. I recommend reading the book Greenback as it describes how our currency got the way it did and why that clause appears on currency." "A business can refuse cash (paper currency) payment pretty much in all cases provided it's a reasonable policy and/or notified during/in advance of contracting. Details in this link. ""all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services."" Even if the payment is being made to settle a debt or other obligation, the creditor may refuse payment if their rationale is reasonable (as determined by the courts)."
First of all, don't be rude-I'm trying to help here.   Second, picture this scenario-  a company manages an offshore oil rig.  The employees by law have to be paid in a certain period of time.  To send paper checks to the employees who work on the oil rig would cost thousands of dollars and the employees can't cash them anyways. Thus the company requires it's employees to have direct deposit.  One of the employees can't or won't get a bank account (yes there are people like this).  How do you pay him?  A prepaid debit card solves this problem. A) Wrong subreddit. There's probably a legal advice Canada one you should check out.   B) You're a cashier. No one cares about your involvement in taxing products/customers. Unless you're directly pocketing money the most you could be is out of a job.   C) If you're part of a chain store there is a REALLY good chance they have their inventory/sales numbers looked at regularly by extremely qualified people.   Conclusion: Customer was being a dick for no reason. "I looked this up on Wikipedia, and was hoping the answer would be ""no - stores cannot refuse legal tender"", but unfortunately, it's not the case!  If the retailer wants to go to the lengths of refusing certain denominations to protect themselves from counterfeit currency, they are fully within their rights to do so. The ""Legal Tender"" page on Wikipedia says this about Canadian bills: [...] Retailers in Canada may refuse bank notes without breaking the law. According to legal guidelines, the method of payment has to be mutually agreed upon by the parties involved with the transactions. For example, convenience stores may refuse $100 bank notes if they feel that would put them at risk of being counterfeit victims [...] What is interesting about what I found out, is that legal tender cannot be refused if it is in repayment of an existing debt (i.e. not a store transaction for which there existed no previous debt).  So you could offload your $100 bills when repaying your Sears credit card account (or pay in pennies if you wanted to!) and they couldn't refuse you!" This really should be a comment, but I can't yet. The question desperately needs a location tag. In at least some countries(New Zealand), the default action on all insufficient funds transactions is to refuse the transaction. Credit cards are the only common exception. Every bank operating in NZ that I know of acts this way. Sometimes there is a fee for bouncing a transaction, sometimes not, that depends on the bank. Any other option must be explicitly arranged in writing with the bank. Personally, coming from a country where declining transactions is the default, I'd be shocked and angry to be stuck with an automatic transfer from another account. Angry enough to change banks if they won't immediately cease and desist. Once, back when I had a bank account, I tried to pay a large emergency dental bill with my debit card. It rejected it as it turned out the bill was less than a dollar over what I had in the account. I thought there was enough money so I tried again, 3 times. They charged me an overdraft for each attempt even though the debit never went through. This was without overdraft protection, as overdraft protection would have allowed the debit and charged me one overdraft. I don't know the details but federal regulations have changed how they do this.  To me overdraft protection rejects any debit that attempts to overdraft my account and doesn't charge me with an overdraft that didn't actually occur as a result of the charge being rejected, but that's not how it works. Many small businesses are still cash and check.  For example my landlord does not take credit card or online transfer.   My choices are cash and check, and I prefer checks for the paper trail. "Square charges a 2.75% fee (which the merchant pays), so you would be losing money if you only got a 1.5% cashback bonus. I would guess that the real reason Square prohibits you from getting cash is because of Visa/MC, state and federal regulations.  Visa/MC probably prohibit it for regular merchants due primarily to laws that are designed to prevent money-laundering. Certain merchants (like casinos) are allowed to give you cash advances against a credit card, but regular merchants are not allowed to do this. It is much more difficult to get Visa/MC to approve merchants to handle cash advances and they are subject to many additional regulations.  Services like Western Union will let you send cash with a regular credit card, but they are classified as ""money transmitters"" and must comply with additional state and federal regulations. If Square were to allow cash advances, this would likely subject them to a bunch of additional regulations.  It would cost them more to comply with these regulations and is outside their business model, so they simply prohibit it." "This is fairly simple, actually.  You should insist on payment for the rent payment you never received and stop accepting cash payments. If you want to be nice, and believe the story, allow the tenant additional time or payment in installments for the missing $750, but this is a textbook example of why it's a bad idea to transact with cash.  Insist on cash equivalents that are traceable and verifiable - check, money order or cashier's check, made out to you or your company name. Also, for what it's worth, you are not out $750, unless you choose to be.  Your tenant is.  ""I put cash in your mailbox"" is not proof of payment, and doesn't fly as payment anywhere.  If it did, I'd never pay any of my bills." "Banks are businesses, and as such should have the right to refuse service, so they should probably be able to choose one customer over another at will.   [I say ""should"" because business owners protecting themselves against litigation related to discrimination could restrict their freedom as business owners.] However, banks are businesses and if the customers are identical, both will be approved (or not) according to credit records.  Does not make sense to approve one person with a given credit record and refuse someone with a similar record.  Unless they barely qualify.  Since no two credit histories are identical, there are surely edge cases. Finally, if a customer is a long term customer with large deposits and/or significant amounts of business with the bank, the bankers will likely be inclined to do more business." Generally, credit card networks (as opposed to debit/ATM cards that may or may not have Visa/MC logos) have a rule that a merchant must accept any credit card with their logo. Visa rules for merchants in the US say it explicitly: Accept all types of valid Visa cards. Although Visa card acceptance   rules may vary based on country specific requirements or local   regulations, to offer the broadest possible range of payment options   to cardholder customers, most merchants choose to accept all   categories of Visa debit, credit, and prepaid cards.* Unfortunately the Visa site for China is in Chinese, so I can't find similar reference there. You can complain against a merchant who you think had violated Visa rules here. That said, its not a law, its a contract between the merchant processor and the Visa International organization, and merchants are known to break these rules here and there (most commonly - refusing to accept foreign cards, including in the US). Also, local laws may affect these contracts (for example, in the US it is legal to set minimum amount requirements when accepting credit cards). This only affects credit card processing, and merchants that don't accept credit cards may still accept debit cards since those work in different networks, under a different set of rules. Those who accept credit cards, are also required to accept debit cards (at least if used as credit). "The store owners don't know what your intentions are.  All they know is they gave you good cash for a bad check.   Part of this is that you're paying for the bad acts of others in the past, and these people aren't in the business of trying to understand your intentions.  If you show good faith by going in and paying whatever you can, it will go a long way toward getting them to work with you on the balance. I don't know if they'd have much of a criminal case if the check you gave them was clearly marked as ""void"" and you've shown a willingness to resolve the situation.  Of course you can't blame them for not wanting to accept another check from you.  Good old hard cash, even if it isn't the full amount, will be a better sign of your intent to repay the debt." "Can an employer force a person to take a stock?   From what I understand an employer can only offer stock options, doesn't that mean that the employee has to exercise that option in order for the stock to be valid?  Would it be legal to fire me for refusing a bonus?  Furthermore would owning stock necessarily make you an ""owner"" for the purposes of said law?" This happened to me in the mid 90's. I wanted to withdraw enough cash from my account to buy a new car and they nearly panicked. I took a bank draft instead.  I discovered afterward that they can require up to a week's notice for any withdrawl. Credit Cards when I can.  The reason if there is fraud or disputed charges (like I very much disagree with the cell phone charge) a debit card is already gone and I have to get the money back, versus a credit card where I haven't paid anybody anything. In my experience, this choice is entirely up to the bank itself. There was a time when, given my mothers ATM card I could go to the bank and pull money for her, but the bank has since changed their rules and now they only will allow people listed on the account to access it, card or no card.  If the bank is aware of who you are and knows that your friend is not you, they may be skeptical of allowing your friend to withdraw any money, or they might not care, it's at their discretion.  If they do not know who either of you are, if your friend has the card and information needed, that will likely be sufficient, unless they ask for identification.