Credit cards were going to kill it first. Then mobile payments. Then crypto.
Cash, the predictions went, would be a distant memory in a fully digital society. No more would we need to interact with filthy paper and metal currency, coated in the DNA and viruses of all who’d exchanged it for goods before us.
But this week, San Francisco Uber riders found a strange new payment option in their app. The ride-share company has been testing cash payments since May in some U.S. cities and this week expanded the program to San Francisco. The decision by what had been a fully digital platform to go old-school makes clear that, as the data has been saying for a few years, a fully cash-free economy is not on the horizon. The fact is, some of us can’t — or won’t — give up on physical money.
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Cash use has been on the decline in the U.S. since the 1970s, according to the Federal Reserve History project. By the time credit cards were ubiquitous in 1996, The New York Times was quoting a futurist who predicted that “by 2025, cash may be popular only with ‘thieves, tax dodgers and paranoiacs.’”
When the pandemic hit in 2020, it ushered in a period of rapid digitization across society, and the trend away from cash accelerated — no one wanted to touch it with their freshly sanitized fingers. But that decline has plateaued. Fewer people use cash than they did in the 1950s, but the ones who do seem stubbornly loyal to paper money. Cash accounted for approximately 14% of all transactions in the U.S. in 2024, according to the 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice from the Federal Reserve. The Atlanta Federal Reserve in 2024 found that 4 in 5 Americans used cash at least once a month, and 80% kept some cash in their pockets.
Cash use differs widely by demographic. Those aged 55 and up are more likely to use it, as the Diary of Consumer Choice report notes, and so are people from low-income households. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has found that minority groups are more likely to use cash, as are men in general. For this reason, academics and elected officials have long warned that a cash-free society would be a disadvantage to particular groups, cutting them off from essential parts of the economy.
Profession matters, too. Servers, bartenders, exotic dancers — anyone who gets tipped in cash is more likely to use it, especially when there are fewer banks at which to make a deposit. (Children, too, use cash, since it remains the preferred payment method of the Tooth Fairy and grandparents everywhere.)
With the exception of the kids, it’s these folks Uber is targeting with its cash pilot program, which is now available in small and large cities like San Francisco, Dallas, Orlando, Cincinnati, Colorado Springs, and dozens of others.
“The truth is, not everyone has access to a bank account or credit card — and some riders simply prefer paying with cash. That’s why we’re introducing a cash payment option,” a spokesperson for Uber told The Standard, emphasizing that the change is about accessibility.
This is a pretty huge departure for the San Francisco-based company that launched in 2010 on the convenience of not having to worry about cash or tips — differentiating itself from taxis. Now, verified users can choose to pay in cash. If a driver doesn’t have change on hand, riders will receive Uber credit instead.
The Standard took it for a spin Friday. We booked an UberX ride in central San Francisco, specifying cash payment. “Cash is better,” said Henry, who has been an Uber driver for a year. “It’s money in your hand.” Our ride was the first he’d driven for cash, and he said it wasn’t clear to him how exactly it worked — he had just tapped the app to accept the ride and was surprised to see cash specified. Henry noted that drivers likely wouldn’t be able to change bills of large denomination.
By the end of the ride, Henry was less enthusiastic. We gave him a $20 bill for our $13 fare. He didn’t have change, so Uber gave us a $7 credit for future rides. But then it wouldn’t let us leave a tip; fortunately, we had $3 in singles to hand over.
To Henry, this seemed like a hassle. At the beginning of the ride, he was all for cash, but by the end of his first cash ride, he didn’t plan to do it again for small fares.
Smoothing the friction of 18th century technologies with 21st century ones was Uber’s differentiating promise. Now its competitor Waymo makes that promise even better by removing the additional friction of a human driver altogether — and it appears to be working.
So maybe it’s just natural for Uber to regress to a new (old) way of differentiating itself in a crowded market. After all, one thing those robots can’t do is make change. Then again, Henry the Uber driver couldn’t either.