Three Los Angeles City Council members held a press conference April 30 urging the city to ban cashless businesses, which they argue exclude seniors, low-income residents and minorities.
“The simple fact is that cashless businesses create an economy that is not inclusive and accessible to some of our most vulnerable populations,” Councilwoman Heather Hutt said during the press conference, which took place outside of City Hall.
In a statement, Hutt pointed to “low-income communities of color, young people who do not meet the age qualifications for credit or debit cards and seniors who have not transitioned” to digital banking as those impacted.
Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, who along with Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Katy Yaraslovsky seconded the motion when Hutt introduced it last year, also raised concerns about people who might need to use cash for privacy and security purposes.
“Not only does it leave out people who are unbanked, a population that is disproportionately people of color, immigrants and elders, but it also excludes people who cannot use a credit card or debit card for a number of reasons,” Ms. Hernandez said at the event.
“That includes victims of sexual assault, people fleeing domestic violence, and others whose personal safety can be at risk when their purchases and locations are traceable through the digital banking system,” she said.
Such anxieties—over digital surveillance, the elimination of cash, exclusionary or punitive banking practices, and privacy and security issues that arise with the loss of anonymity—are not new.
Hernandez and Soto-Martinez are staunch progressives who won their respective elections with backing from the Democratic Socialists of America. Their full-throated support for preserving cash as a means of economic exchange, while delivered in the vernacular of social justice, dovetails with an already well-articulated opposition to digital currencies and cashless economies on the grounds they will enable exclusionary, punitive and authoritarian practices.
Debanking scandals involving prominent public officials, businesses, religious organizations and ordinary citizens in the U.K., the U.S. and Canada over the past two years have drawn scrutiny of routine practices that amount to sanctioned illegal blacklisting, sometimes based on political affiliation. Critics of digital currencies argue consolidated authority and surveillance of citizens’ transactions would invite financial tyranny.