I Can see not accepting credit cards but not cash.

And for a very good reason, namely in the interests of "children, senior citizens, homeless people and residents who don’t trust banking institutions." To that, I'd add young mothers desperate to feed their infants (see story below).

My wife was in the USA (New York City) last April. I still had work here, so I sent her on ahead (our second grandson made his first appearance). The hotel we had reserved at first said her credit card was fine, but then there was a "glitch," and her card was suddenly refused, and something else had to be done. My daughter had two young kids to take care of, and couldn't come. Her husband was in and out of town, and had no time. My brother was home in Northern Virginia, and I didn't want to bother my New York office, who has their own work to do, to come help out one of the senior guys from Europe on what was not a work-related matter. Luckily, I had given her some cash to take with her, and the hotel agreed to accept $1000 as a security until I arrived in the USA with my US-based credit card. If that hadn't worked, and she had no cash, either I would have had to inconvenience someone who really didn't deserve the disruption, or my wife would have had to leave, and get emergency lodging with my sister, who lives way out in the boonies in New Jersey. We were able to fix the error with her credit card (someone at her bank had pressed a wrong key somewhere, it turned out), and all was right with the world. But without the cash, things would have gotten very inconvenient for her, and at least someone else.

Call us old-fashioned (or European, even if I'm not), but we HATE credit cards. The ease with which they are hacked, plus the need to keep track of their use, so we know what's coming at the end of the month, plus just the simple notion that we are leaving an electronic trail of our lives for anyone from the idly curious to a future KGB/Gestapo to follow and scrutinize.

One time, in Cape Cod, my wife was in a tiny grocery store, and their connection to electronic payments failed. They called out that they couldn't accept credit or debit cards until it was fixed, so cash only for the moment. A young mother with a baby, standing in line in front of my wife started to cry, because she was buying $5 worth of formula to feed her baby, and had nothing but a credit card. The cashier said she was sorry, but there was nothing she could do. My wife said, look, here's $5, go buy your formula. The young mother was very grateful, and wanted her address to pay her back. My wife said the only payment she wanted was for the young mother never to rely only on plastic ever again.

or have the institution call your bank overseas and get worked out?

Isn't it amazing how we can be made hostages to our cards? I too, always make sure that I have cash available and nearby (because if you need cash, and go to get it out of the machine, that machine may be out too).

You never know what may happen. I know that during my life, there's been 5-10 times where cards I used couldn't be accepted due to the fact that communications links at the business couldn't be used for some reason (a digger cut the lines, or some disruption in the Internet, so forth, ad nauseam excuses).

And kudos to your wife in supporting that young mother.

Her instincts always kick in when such situations arise. It's not in her DNA to stand by and do nothing when some young mother is in tears in a grocery shop, even if she privately rolls her eyes at people who think that cashless is the only way to do things.

As for the hotel, she doesn't have a second card as backup. She hates having to have the one, although she realizes that these days, it's better to have one that you don't like than none just to prove a point. But she knew that if it had been absolutely necessary, either our daughter or my sister would have found a way to put whatever they were doing on hold and go help her. If neither were available, a call to Dallas form me would quickly have our New York office scrambling to help her out. But I hate pulling rank like that. It neither their job nor their fault if my wife is in need of help and happens to be in town. "In case of emergency only" is our motto, and she solved it without hitting the panic button.

better place, wouldn't it?

Take care!

Maybe even better. I'm sure there are those who think she had no business "getting involved." Although, you don't find many of those types in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

with all transactions, this is a shame that this use of cards, cash, tokens, etc. is still up in the air. For example, witness the hardships experienced by some who, for some reason or other, don't have or use a card. They have their own reasons which I'll respect, after all, this is a 'free country'.

There should not be any restrictions on what Americans should use in payments, cash, credit, debit, tokens, etc. Legal tender is legal tender no matter where one goes (in theory). Businesses that take only one form of payment are simply (IMHO) hurting themselves. After all, don't their customers drive what the business should accept and do?

However, there are still those in the 'real world' that do not rely on communications links to verify credit or debit card balances before a transaction is approved. The biggest reason I hear is that they don't want to pay the fee(s) associated w/ verifying balances and/or such, before approving such transactions. I even know of some businesses that will wait until the end of the day before they run their transactions electronically to get accepted. Of course, if a transaction is denied during this process, then they are out of luck unless they happen to know the customer already (which in some places I know happens, and it usually works out okay, the business knows the customer already).