When a cashless restaurant or bar lets you consume first and pay your tab after consumption, there are many things that can go wrong:
- customer is only willing to pay cash and was unaware of your cash-hostile policy (e.g. they don’t want records made of their alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana consumption)
- customer is only able to pay cash (e.g. they have no bank account due to countless reasons) and was unaware of your cash-hostile policy
- customer intended to pay by card but their card is spontaneously unexpectedly dysfunctional for countless reasons
In some cases the customer may not have a functional bank account in the foreseeable future. Banks are skiddish, scared shitless of regulators but not in the slightest scared of customers they refuse, so they will discriminate against prospective clients in various situations. I’ve been shown the door a few times when trying to open an acct. Banks are also becoming increasingly enshitified (e.g. shut down their website and force customers to use a closed-source app distributed exclusively via a surveillance advertiser who will gladly sell to debtors where you bank). People should have a right to be unbanked by choice, if the banks do not make that choice for them by refusal of service.
So, new rules--
If you choose to charge customers after they consume your product/service and you insist on cashless payment, you give up some collection rights if something goes wrong:
- You cannot charge interest or penalties while you wait indefinitely for payment.
- You cannot report debtors as bad debtors and harm their credit worthiness profile.
- You cannot file court actions against your debtors.
- You cannot contact them to nag them to pay electronically.
- If Visa or Mastercard gives you $/€ 10k as an incentive to refuse cash for 1 year, you must pay debts of customers who failed to pay electronically using that money (and in effect cancel their debt).
You can:
- Find a 3rd party who is willing to proxy the payment (cash → proxy → bank → creditor) with no cost to the cash payer, and no obligation on the payer to produce docs or share info.
- Contact your debtor to arrange to receive a direct cash payment, minus their delivery/transportation costs.