[mech1234]

The vulnerable are often underbanked. They might not have a bank account, debit or credit card, or smartphone with Venmo/Cash app/(whatever app is popular today).

Cash is the easiest way to help vulnerable groups. If a homeless person wants to buy a cheeseburger, its better to accept the cash rather than have him fill out FORM NY-892-F INDIVIDUAL RETAIL ESTABLISHMENT CREDIT ACCOUNT CREATION FORM, proposing to send a monthly bill to his non-existent address, or non-existent email.

[Moowiguy]

The US has over 6 million unbanked which are not necessarily poor. Some choose to be unbanked. I'm developing an app and network to help with this problem, It allows businesses to become ATMs where you not only withdraw cash but some could accept to reload an E-wallet which in turn would allow you to buy things online without a bank account. (maybe later we would launch a physical card) - DO you think it will work ?

[dragonwriter]

> DO you think it will work ?

Nope. Businesses can and do already reload value cards (including prepaid debit cards) which allow (among other things) buying online without a bank account, and it hasn't solved the problem.

[admax88q]

Sure your one proposed hyperbolic alternative is significantly worse than cash. That doesn't mean that there doesn't exist an alternative that is better or not significantly worse than cash.

[abalos]

I'm not sure what I said conflicts with that.

If we made access to prepaid debit cards dead simple (i.e. going to a bank and getting a debit card for the equivalent amount of cash) easy for small amounts, then they would not only get access to the cashless shops in town but they'd also be better served online and could access cheaper goods through online retailers.

This gives the individual an easy way to get around it without penalizing small businesses. Larger businesses likely all take in cash without issue.

[pingyong]

Maybe there should always be a way to open a bank account, even without a home address? If you don't have a bank account, you get excluded from a lot of options that might solve your homelessness anyway. It seems to me that being able to open a bank account should be a fundamental right of some sort.

[Frost1x]

There are lots of catches like this that make life difficult to the poor and vulnerable in our modern society. Most of these catches are some status obtained and managed through privatized means with little-to-no oversight that are becoming more and more fundamental functions of daily life as they are abstract processes to follow leading to obtaining necessities: food, housing, healthcare, etc.

The vast majority are never exposed to these institutional barriers because they are financially above those barriers but for working poor, poverty stricken, etc. these are daily challenges to deal with with little or no recourse of action.

Take paying utilities as an example. For most it's as trivial as logging on your phone one time and setting up the account with auto recurring payments on a credit card--then setup auto payment of your credit card from a checking account where you have some portion of income automatically transferred to.

For others, they have to carefully pick and choose when and what to pay and make sure they can pay cash, check, etc. There's all the additional overhead too: traveling to a valid payment location or the post office for stamps to mail things in, cognative load/stress for keeping track of the schedule or putting it down on a calendar, etc. That's just paying utilities. Plenty of other processes have all sorts of other headaches.

In most locations in modern society, owning and maintaining a vehicle is a necessity when factoring all alternatives (aside from moving), yet vehicle ownership considered a privilege.

This list goes on and on. It's no wonder many Americans are not happy.