A time when cash is no longer used                                                 

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In the early 1950s, I forecasted that sometime in the future, using cash to buy items in the stores would no longer be used. When I told my friends about my prognoses, they laughed at me.

In that era, credit cards were then in use so it followed in my mind that such cards would replace cash.

In the Economic Action Plan in 2012, the Canadian Government announced it would phase out the penny from Canada's coinage system. I haven’t seen any pennies since then being used as payment. I remember in the 1940s when a penny could get you a handful of candies. Those days are long gone. Cash payments or transactions only will need to be rounded, either up or down, to the nearest five-cent increment.

 A former Bank of Canada economist says that the nickel is also becoming obsolete and should be next in line for retirement. Then the dime and 25 cent coin will no longer be used.

The fifty cent coins haven’t been used in years. The one dollar coins ( loonies ) and the two dollar coins ( tones ) are still in use. I expect that they will always be used because they will have to be used in coin-operated food and drink machines.  

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The one dollar coin has the picture of a loon engraved on the coin in which the bird is a kind of water fowl. Hence, it is called a Loonie.  By the way, that was not the first choice for the engraved one dollar coin. The mint had another engraved coin that was stolen so the one with the loon was used instead. Because the two dollar coin is equivalent to two loonies it is called a tooonie.  

I think there will also be five dollars coins created for machines that have goodies in them that we will want,

There are no paper one dollar bills or two-dollar bills in Canada anymore.  I think the five dollars bills will be around for quite a while.  There are no one thousand dollar bills anymore and haven’t been for many years unless they are used only in banks for bank transactions.  

Norway has jumped onboard the cashless society agenda with DNB, the country’s largest bank, calling for a total end to coins and paper money. The story only sounds shocking to people who haven’t heard the similar stories from other countries like Sweden, Denmark, India and Israel and any of the dozens of other countries whose bankers are in favor bringing about a cashless society. The day of armed robbers in banks will certainly come to an end, Instead of robberies, there will be bank thefts brought about by thieves’ hacking into the bank’s computer systems.    Argentina has been tipped for some time as a country that is likely to go cashless sooner than later.

In Australia, the Westpac banking group issued a “Cash Free Report” touting the highly self-serving finding that “Over half (53 per cent) of payments currently made in Australia are cashless” (using Westpac online banking services like their card-less ATMs, no doubt). The report goes on to predict that Australia will be cash free by 2022. Meanwhile, the government is readying a cashless welfare system that will allow the government to control what the money is spent on. That is because the serial numbers can be traved. What could  possibly do wrong?  

Eliminating cash is a huge problem for the roughly 10 million U.S. households that have no banking accounts. These “unbanked” families have no direct access to financial services like credit and debit cards. For them, it is will be a hardship not to use cash.

There is a way to solve this problem. Those customers who use their credit and debit cards should get a reduction on the cost of the items they purchase as an incentive to use their cards.  Meanwhile the stores should accept cash for those persons who don’t have any of those cards.

As to the question of the legality of refusing cash, it appears that no-cash policies are perfectly legal in the United States.

Places That Don’t Accept Cash:

Airlines: Certain flights on United Airlines, American Airlines and others covered in this Los Angeles Times article, which also addresses the legal question as well.

Certain Hotels

Many Rental Car Counters

Certain Restaurants: At least one restaurant in the West Village neighborhood of New York City, according to a September Wall Street Journal law blog post, which also addresses the legal question as well as why a business would want to go cashless. The reasons: “Convenience and security.”

Certain Stores: There have been a number of reports of Apple stores initially refusing to take cash for iPads

I believe that as time moves on, paying for purchases and services with cash will be something of the past with the exception of using coin machines that provides drinks and food.