The Amazing Race 34, Episode 9:
Malaga (Spain) - Ronda (Spain)
What to do where cash isn’t kingOne of the trends accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic has been the reduced acceptance of cash as a form of payment.
Earlier in this season of The Amazing Race, for example, Molly and Emily made a wrong turn into a parking garage and then couldn’t figure out how to get out without a credit or debit card to use at the unattended pay station at the exit. Eventually, they found another pay station elsewhere in the garage that took cash in Euro notes or coins. But not infrequently these days, there is no provision at all for cash-payment fallback.
Although COVID-19 is spread primarily by air, not by surface contact, fear of surface contagion has provided a rationale (or a pretext, for those businesses and public agencies that already had other reasons, as many did) to stop accepting cash. In other travel contexts, including at TSA checkpoints, the fallacy that “contactless is safer” is invoked even when the alternative to handing over a physical document is having to remove your face mask, which is clearly much more dangerous. Similarly, “For health reasons, we only accept contactless payments,” is an easier sell and seems less customer-unfriendly than, “Your bills and coins aren’t accepted here any more.”
More and more products, services, and points of payment are unavailable without a credit or debit card or some other form of plastic or virtual payment such as a smartphone payment account or a stored-value mass transit farecard.
You can’t always anticipate when and where cash won’t be accepted, and no single type of card or form of virtual payment is universally accepted. In some European countries, for example, payments that in the U.S. would be made by credit or debit card are instead made by transfers directly between bank accounts. If you don’t have an account with an IBAN (International Bank Account Number), which U.S. bank accounts don’t have, you’re out of luck. In China, many merchants and public and private services — from bikeshare rentals to the tiniest tea stalls — not only don’t accept cash but accept only AliPay or WeChat Pay (not Google Pay or Apple Pay), and/or are accessible only through smartphone apps that are available only for phones with Chinese SIM cards and phone numbers and have user interfaces only in Chinese. Sometimes you can cut a deal with a sympathetic bystander: you give them 10 Yuan (US$1.50) in cash, and they buy you a bowl of noodles from the street vendor using their smartphone. If you hold out cash, and a merchant turns it down, a local will often step in to help, even if you don’t speak the local language. But depending on the setting (what if you are alone at an unattended kiosk?) and the product or service, that isn’t always an option....
With cash, you can limit your exposure to pickpockets and snatch thieves, especially when you are making small purchases in crowded public places, by carrying only a small amount of local currency on your person or easily accessible — enough for a day or two or the largest impulse purchase you might want to make. You can keep most of your cash, as well as your credit cards, buried deep in your luggage, or locked up in your hotel, hostel, or apartment if that seems sufficiently secure.
Is there anything similar that you can do to limit the risk you are taking when you hold out a credit or debit card, or your phone, to pay your bus fare or make a small purchase in a crowded market?...
More:
https://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/002667.html
