In age of digital payments, New York City store still ringing in cash. Literally.

February 26, 2020

In an age when some retailers and restaurants are going "cashless," there's a store in New York City where the cash register is still king.

Everyone collects something. “I like cash registers,” says Brian Faerman, the owner of the Faerman Cash Register Company.

Faerman’s family has been selling cash registers since 1910, when his grandfather first arrived in New York from Poland. “It’s in my veins,” he says. “You can see my father’s footprints here while he would stand here and work at this table.”

Faerman Cash Register Company on New York’s Lower East Side has seen business decline in recent years, with people swiping to pay instead of pulling out cash.

Nick Maynard is lead analyst at Juniper Research based outside London. The firm has data that shows global transactions from digital commerce are exploding from $641 billion in 2019, to a projected $1.1 trillion by 2024. Still, Maynard believes cash will live to see another day. "The role of cash will persist for a while. I think we're having a lot of people saying that 'cash is dead.' I don't think that's necessarily the case."

As cash commerce dwindles, Faerman is preparing to sell his building. “I’m very sad that I’m going to be leaving the cash register business. I don’t want to, but the economy has changed. The world has changed.” When Faerman’s business does eventually close, he plans to take home all of the historic cash registers and tools that have been in his family for decades.