In July 2017, Visa announced it would pay restaurant owners $10,000 to go cashless, and that it had other such campaigns as well. Now many more restaurants are making the switch from cash to plastic. The global movement to strip cash out of society is driven by Technocrats who know that Technocracy cannot thrive without data from every purchase. ⁃ TN Editor
If you’re craving the Serrano Grilled Shrimp Bowl at the Tender Greens salad chain, don’t bother bringing cash. Tender Greens, with 28 restaurants on the East and West coasts, is one of a growing number of eateries that are either shunning cash and only accepting credit and debit cards and contactless payment systems, like Apple Pay, or experimenting with the strategy. While no one has kept a running count of restaurants adopting the cashless policy, interest is clearly rising. A 2016 Federal Reserve study found the number of non-cash payments — including credit and debit cards — totaled 144 billion in 2015, having grown 5.3% annually between 2012 and 2015.