Where I live in Seattle, a lot of businesses simply don't handle cash at all, because break-ins for the cash register are quite expensive to deal with, and they circumvent that problem by simply posting outside the business that there is no cash.
One of the few businesses near me that must take cash, a dispensary, recently had an issue where somebody tried to break in using a stolen pickup truck to crash into the building. They didn't get the cash because they didn't get past the interior bollard system, but they did cause enough structural damage that the roof partially collapsed into the street.
I mean sure, US is special in this case, especially since you don't actually persecute small time thieves...
But i've paid with cash all over europe, and except for some vending machines, i've never been turned down, be it london, paris, berlin, belgrade or athens... from large supermarkets and museums, to local corner newsstands with a small fridge and cold drinks and local fast food joints. On the other hand, the most unsafe I ever felt as a traveller was in chicago, supposedly in a "nicer/safe area", and I've been through the balkans in the 1990s.
Where I live in Seattle, a lot of businesses simply don't handle cash at all, because break-ins for the cash register are quite expensive to deal with, and they circumvent that problem by simply posting outside the business that there is no cash.
One of the few businesses near me that must take cash, a dispensary, recently had an issue where somebody tried to break in using a stolen pickup truck to crash into the building. They didn't get the cash because they didn't get past the interior bollard system, but they did cause enough structural damage that the roof partially collapsed into the street.