In certain urban neighborhoods, the hip ones where stores boast Uber pick-up stations and iPad cash-registers, holding a $20 bill feels as useless as a fistful of Monopoly money.

Two weeks ago, I walked into a bar in Midtown Atlanta. I sat down, and ordered an Old Fashioned. Everything went swimmingly until I tried to pay in cash. The bartender turned me away, saying they only took debit and credit. I didn’t have my card on me. “No worries,” I thought. I walked across the street to a taco-and-tequila joint with plans to get a drink there, but outside the front door, I was met by a sign reading: cashless restaurant (credit/debit only). My thirsty misadventure reflects a growing irony in today’s digital economy. Financial technology⁠—debit cards, credit cards, Apple Pay, mobile payments, and so on⁠—were supposed to expand who could shop and broaden how we pay. Yet, some retailers' switching entirely to electronic payments has constricted shopping accessibility like a digital python. With millions of Americans unbanked and underbanked, the advent of cashless commerce and its support from big brands like Amazon has meant communities traditionally marginalized by banks can’t shop in an increasing number of retailers.

To stave off this trend, last week, New York City council became the third major city, behind Philadelphia and San Francisco, to pass a measure banning cashless restaurants. More than an effort to increase convenience, council member Ritchie Torres, the bill’s lead sponsor, says the measure addresses racial equity. “I see a cashless business model is an expression of institutionalized racism insofar as it disproportionately excludes people of color,” says Torres. “People of color tend to have less access to credit and debit and therefore would have a diminished ability to purchase goods and services in an increasingly cashless marketplace.”

Historically, banks have avoided minority communities across the country. Despite being home to Wall Street, Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, New York City still fails to provide black and Latino communities with adequate banking services. According to a 2016 Urban Affairs Review study on New York, for every single bank located in the city’s majority white census tracts, black tracts had only 0.18 banks and Latinos tracts held 0.35 banks. Beyond avoiding minority neighborhoods, banks employ a set of tools that shun people of color, including strict identification requirements that rival discriminatory voter ID laws and hefty overdraft fees that function like a regressive tax. For folks living with this neglect and disdain, often, the only option remains to turn to check cashers and rely on cash transactions.

This monetary inequality is the context within which New York City’s new cashless business models work. Yes, cashlessness offers a quick and convenient alternative for entrepreneurs looking to avoid the hassle of moving counting, securing, and transporting large sums of money. No, upscale cocktail bars didn’t create the foundational inequality in banking. But when businesses don't account the long-existing inequities, they contribute to what to scholars call laissez-faire racism—a type of discrimination that “relies on the market and informal racial bias to recreate, and in some instances sharply worsen, structured racial inequality.” So, when restaurants fail to adopt inclusive payment options, they compound the infrastructure of decades of exclusionary financial racism, like racial discrimination in mortgage lending (otherwise known as redlining) and other discriminatory bank practices. Moreover, as the popularity of cashless business models grow, the risk increases that essential retailers like pharmacies, supermarkets, bookstores, and electronics suppliers can become reach for marginalized populations.

“My concern,” says Torres “is that a cashless business model, however well-intentioned, could have a discriminatory effect on the underbanked and unbanked, on immigrants who have no documentation, on homeless people who have no permanent address, and on communities of color that live in poverty.”