Entrepreneur Takafumi Horie sparked a stir on X (formerly Twitter) by sharing how he’d handle running out of cash at a cash-only shop. It started when creative director Shimpei Takagi posted, “I came to Kyoto without my cards or wallet — if my phone battery dies, I’m done for.” In response, someone suggested asking the shop for its bank account details and paying by online bank transfer, but on 5ch this set off a wave of practical questions: “Can the shop even confirm the deposit on the spot?” and “Would a part-time staffer even have the authority to look up account details?” The discussion expanded further into past disasters where cashless payment became unusable during power outages, escalating into a broader debate over whether people still need to carry cash.
Horiemon — what would he do with no cash at a “cash-only” shop? His trick has people saying “I never thought of that!”
Entrepreneur Takafumi Horie (53) updated his official X (formerly Twitter) account by the 27th, revealing his solution for when you’re out of cash at a “cash-only” shop.
Creative director Shimpei Takagi had posted: “Uh oh, I came to Kyoto without my cards or wallet. If my phone battery dies, I’m as good as dead.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article
Doesn't matter for the person on the receiving end, does it?
Lol, "cash-only means tax evasion" — that take is 30 years out of date.
They probably just don't want to eat the transfer fees.
There's nothing wrong with sharing it — you can transfer money in, but you can't withdraw from someone else's account.
What does this guy even think a bank account is?
The transfer account is printed right on invoices, and any regular business partner basically already knows it. It's not some big secret.
But a shop's bank account is still private info to the shop — would they really hand it over that easily (in an emergency)?
For example, if someone eats at a cash-only place and has no cash, and says "give me your bank account, I'll pay electronically" — would they really give it out 100% of the time?
No, they wouldn't necessarily give it out 100% of the time. If anything, refusal or trouble is more likely.
There are mainly four reasons a shop would be reluctant — or refuse outright — to share their account info.
〇1 Security and abuse risk: once someone else knows the account number and name, there's a risk of it being misused as a destination for scam transfers, or signed up for unauthorized direct debits.
〇2 Confirmation hassle and time lag: with electronic transfers (like bank-transfer features), the shop may not be able to confirm the deposit on the spot (outside business hours, or due to system limits).
〇3 Bookkeeping headaches: what should be recorded as cash sales becomes messy for bookkeeping and tax purposes once it's transferred into a personal (or separate) account instead.
〇4 Store policy: at chain stores especially, any payment method or account disclosure not covered by the manual is almost always flatly forbidden.
Weird that people don't even think to carry ten ¥10,000 bills.
Only if you're the type who gets excited about that — normally it's just annoying.
Knowing full well that cash-only shops exist, and still not carrying cash…😿
That's just a nuisance to everyone around…
If you're already at the convenience store, just pull cash from the ATM.
I mean, outside business hours you can't even confirm the transfer until the next day, right? Are they gonna keep the customer hostage at the shop till then?
During a big earthquake, wouldn't shops just be closed in the first place?
If retailers aren't open, how would you buy food or supplies? Even during the Great East Japan Earthquake, convenience stores did their best to stay open, and trucks tried their hardest to keep delivering goods, didn't they?
There were tons of stories about places barely staying open to sell supplies, but the power being out meant it had to be cash — and I thought, are these people even really Japanese? Well, I guess it's fine even if you don't eat for a few days, since you can get bread rations at an evacuation shelter, right?
…That's what I thought, but then I googled it, and the fact that major newspapers and the police keep putting out warnings like this must mean there are plenty of clueless people who go "I don't carry cash~" and then get stuck with no cash when an actual disaster hits.
Hokkaido M7 Earthquake
"Cashless payment shows its fragility in disasters — cards unusable during power outage" 2018/9/8 23:08
https://www.sankei.com/article/20180908-NYURJUUVJJLD7BPJ4RGOE7RCIE/
"Cash after all" in disasters — Kyushu floods expose the fragility of cashless payment, July 20, 2020, 06:00
https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/43615
Cashless payment doesn't work during power outages! "Keep cash in your disaster kit" — police say "coins in a coin case give peace of mind" too
//www.kobe-np.co.jp/rentoku/omoshiro/202203/0015152097.shtml
Nah, no cash, just call the police and be done with it.
You know you can actually borrow a bit of cash from the police, right? (Japanese police boxes sometimes lend small amounts to stranded people.)
It's a fantasy.
Well, these days transfers within the same bank reflect instantly, and even between different banks some reflect within minutes.
If the convenience store's open, you can use e-money there, or just withdraw cash.
The POS systems would be dead, so shops staying open and selling whatever they had on hand for cash — that probably happened a bit.
Exchanging cash costs fees too, you know.
It's not about the bank's systems — it's that whoever's actually at the shop can't look it up. There's no way they'd hand a part-timer the online banking login. Only the owner could pull that off.
Can't they just contact the person in charge? That person could check it from wherever they are, right?
Back in the day, people used to leave their license or a watch as collateral, yeah.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Cashless payment is convenient in normal times, but it stops working during power outages or communications failures — a point raised before during the 2018 Hokkaido earthquake and the 2020 Kyushu floods, with the Metropolitan Police Department and newspapers repeatedly urging people to “keep cash on hand for emergencies.” What split opinion in the thread was how practical the fix Horie and others proposed — “get the shop’s bank account and confirm it via online transfer” — actually is in real-world use. Plenty of practical questions came up: transfer fees and free-transfer limits, the fact that deposits can’t be confirmed outside business hours, and that part-time staff often lack the authority to look up account details — turning it into a debate that doesn’t resolve with a simple “just carry cash.” Note that whether Horie himself actually used this method to pay isn’t confirmed by the original article.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Horiemon] Takafumi Horie — what would he do with no cash at a “cash-only” shop? His trick has people saying “I never thought of that!”“
