A lot of them have wiggled around this problem by offering “atms” at the cash register. You pay with a debit card, but it’s not a normal transaction, it’s an ATM withdrawal! I don’t understand how the money is vended to the business, but it keeps it out of the store
Yes this seems to be increasingly common, at least on the west coast. The suboptimal part is that the buyer typically gets hit with an out-of-network ATM fee for doing this, so the consumer is paying $2-5 for processing per transaction.
That’s pretty small potatoes though compared to going to a bank yourself and making a transaction for cash you don’t normally have around. Maybe there’s an ATM down the block but that’s not the case for many people.
And those ATMs around the block from a dispensary (or even in the same buildimg) would still charge a fee for withdrawal anyway (as they are always a third-party ATM and not a bank one, so you get that big message on the screen about an extra fee for withdrawal).
Use a credit union or bank that doesn’t charge ATM fees; that’s what I do. Any CU-related ATM withdrawal is always free and I get 10 ATM withdrawals a month with fees reversed.
Yes, even exorbitant ones like on a cruise ship or casino. Free checks, too. And mutual funds with lower fees than Vanguard. But virtually no physical branches (most locations are brokerage offices only) so not ideal for depositing cash or getting a cashier's check... use something else for that.
The Neo-Bank I use in Germany (N26) works similarly. 3 or 5 fee-eaten withdrawals per month, but the always free option is supermarket registers. There’s a large network of supermarkets that are connected to the network, and I can generate a code on my phone, scan it, and it registers the negative value (e.g. -50 €), which I then get handed. Deposits work the same way (scan code, generate positive amount that you then pay), but at least for free accounts deposits incur a fee.