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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Largely it seems people miss the point in these topics.

It probably shouldn't be legal to decline legal tender because it is absolutely not legal to accept any other form of payment than pound sterling.

That is largely for tax reasons, if I pay you in pokemon cards, what's the VAT on that and how do I give it to HRMC? Not possible. People like to argue that private businesses can do whatever they like but that's simply untrue.

They can decline cash, but they must take payment in pounds and pence somehow.

I understand why they wouldn't want to deal with cash as it makes transactions faster and you don't have to deal with taking your cash to the bank (or an expensive courier) but, as the article mentions, it affects the poorest and least technically literate in society disproportionately.

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I don’t think what you’re saying is true. Everything I’m finding online says British shops are free to accept foreign currency (I would imagine lots of shops near the Irish border accept euros for example).

And a lot of shops in London accept Euros and Dollars.

You can accept anything you like, however if you are running a shop then good luck working it out with HMRC if you take Pokémon cards as payment.

>it affects the poorest and least technically literate in society disproportionately.

Why does it affect the poorest disproportionately?

There are several possible reasons:

1. People who are "less well off" (i.e. poor) often can't get a credit card, because they've failed to pay off their balance on credit cards in the past, and their credit is shot.

2. Paying for things in cash is an effective budgeting technique. When you run out of your "spending money" (i.e. money not set aside for bills and necessities), then you can't spend any more, because you literally have no more money in your wallet.

3. Many poor people don't have bank accounts (possibly to avoid overdraft fees, and possibly because they don't trust banks), so they cash all their checks and pay for everything in cash.

4. In general, they tend to use check cashing places instead, feeling that the benefit of having a bank account isn't worth the hassle when they make so little money. & Even honest one-off jobs may pay in cash.

The situation is going to be different for different people, but it's often some combination of the above.

UK banks are legally obliged to provide free basic banking facilities. Said facilities come with payment card, no overdraft and no fees for bounced payments etc.

An estimated 9 million people (of 70million) in the UK use this type of account.

This mitigates 1, 2, 3, 4.

The poorest tend to be less banked.

This is nonsense, you can accept payment in dollars, euros, non-legal tender sterling coins or notes, payment-in-kind or anything else you want.

They just need to value it in sterling for tax purposes.

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