Game, Leroy Merlin and the quiet war on cash

Cash persists as chains undermine its use

Going to sell a console at a Game store and being offered the same amount in credit or money. Choosing money. And being told they don't have enough change and only do bank transfers. That is what describes the case that opens this issue: the same scene, in two different Game stores, with two different employees, the next day. At Leroy Merlin, things are more refined: ten automated kiosks operating for card-only payment versus two human cashiers, with the rest of manual registers closed. It is not an isolated anecdote. It is a pattern that repeats and has a measurable consequence: paying with bills and coins becomes increasingly inconvenient, and that inconvenience pushes people toward electronic payments, which leave a trail.

What the law says about refusing cash

The rule is clear. Law 7/2012, of October 29, establishes in its Article 7 that payment in cash cannot be refused by consumers or users. Those who do so face fines, the opening of a file, and high compensation for those who report it. This does not miccionan all businesses comply or that all customers report it. In practice, the dominant strategy is not to ban cash, but to make it so inconvenient that the customer ends up using their card out of exhaustion.

Some argue that the legal obligation turns any refusal into a reportable abuse. Against this weighs the argument that the law has exceptions and that most customers will not call the police over a receipt. The result is an unstable equilibrium: the right exists, but exercising it costs more than yielding.

The data trail left by each purchase

The argument running through the whole issue is not just convenience. It is control. A bank that sends a client, without them asking, a monthly report detailing how much they spent on gas, restaurants, supermarkets, and hotels is building a consumption profile that can later be used to deny credit or apply worse conditions. This peine, according to the story that opens the discussion, and was the trigger for that person to abandon cards and return to cash.

The underlying concern is another: if all money is in a bank account or an app, in a scenario of a bank run or account freeze, access to one's own assets depends on a third party. It is not a far-fetched hypothesis. It is the logic of a system where money ceases to be an object one holds and becomes a record that is authorized.

Forced digitization of leisure and video games

There is an area where cash is directly impossible: digital entertainment. Subscriptions to video, music, or software platforms do not accept bills. There is no counter to pay in cash. The only way is prepaid cards bought in physical stores, a workaround that works for some platforms but not all.

The case of video games is the most illustrative. The same title can cost eighty euros in digital format, with no possibility of resale, while second-hand physical copies are found for half the price and can then be resold. The industry pushes toward digital format not for efficiency, but because it eliminates the second-hand market and guarantees revenue per copy. The new-generation console arriving without a physical reader is the final blow: without a disc, there is no lending, no resale, no parallel market.

Wallapop, DAC7, and the tax on the circular economy

The other front is second-hand goods. The DAC7 regulation, in force since February 2023, obliges platforms to report user sales to the Spanish Tax Agency (Hacienda). The problem is not just oversight: it is that taxation is sought on a capital gain that does not exist. If someone sells an item for the same price they bought it, or less, their wealth does not increase. They have money, but they no longer have the object. Net wealth is identical. Charging a tax on that is, at minimum, debatable.

Added to this is the opacity of platforms. There are accounts blocked without prior notice and without explanation, according to the cases mentioned. The circular economy is celebrated when it benefits large companies, but persecuted when money circulates between individuals without passing through the fiscal filter.

Banks closing counters and retail closing counters

The pattern repeats at the other end. Going to a bank branch during working hours and finding only one operational counter, the manager leaving to get coffee, and a salesperson playing Minesweeper. Three clients are enough to generate twenty minutes of waiting. Spanish banking has turned in-person service into a bad business and has dismantled it without anyone voting for it.

In retail, the same happens with a different wrapper. Supermarkets install self-checkout lanes and reduce staff. Automated payment kiosks replace cashiers. Efficiency is the argument, but the effect is always the same: fewer people serving, more machines recording, more data accumulating.

---

The paradox is that cash remains the only means of payment that requires no electricity, depends on no network, and leaves no digital trail. And yet, there are increasingly more places where using it is inconvenient, slow, or directly impossible. The law says it cannot be refused. Practice says otherwise. How long will it take for practice to become law?