NEW YORK - The City Council passed a bill that would require restaurants and stores to accept cash and barred them from accepting only credit and debit cards.

The bill also prohibits businesses from charging cash-paying customers more than those who don't pay cash.

Fines start at a $1,000 and go up to $1,500 for repeat violators.

The bill's sponsor, Councilman Ritchie Torres, says businesses that don't accept cash hurt people who don't have credit cards or prefer using actual money.

"An increasingly cashless marketplace has a real world discriminatory effect on vulnerable New Yorkers, New Yorkers who have no documentation, who have no permanent address, who have no credit-worthiness, who have no access to credit or debit and therefore no means of purchasing goods or services in a cashless marketplace," said Torres.

Torres says Mayor de Blasio expressed support for the bill and is expected to sign it into law within a month.