Payne introduced similar bills in 2019 and 2021. The legislation, which also won bipartisan support in the past, passed the House on two occasions. The revived House bill now also has two more co-sponsors.
Despite businesses leaning away from cash during the COVID-19 pandemic, cash still accounts for nearly 20% of all payments in the U.S., according to a 2021 report by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Payne worries that a cashless society will leave out unbanked and underbanked households in the U.S. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has estimated that 5.9 million U.S. households, or about 4.5% of households, were unbanked in 2021, meaning they didn’t have a bank or credit union checking or savings account.
