Up until 2010 merchants weren't allowed to charge extra for purchases made by credit card even though they had to pay swipe fees every time one was used. But that year the Department of Justice settled a lawsuit against the big credit card companies which put an end to this prohibition. Since then, subject to state laws, merchants have been allowed to offer cash discounts. Alternatively, they can pretend to raise all their prices by 3-4% and then rebate the extra to cash customers. This is the equivalent of charging more to credit card customers.
I was all in favor of this—but not because I objected to swipe fees. It costs money to run a credit card network, and swipe fees are a reasonable way of recouping those costs. My problem was that, thanks to the near-monopoly they enjoyed, credit card companies could keep their fees invisible and almost certainly too high. After all, credit card companies charge swipe fees and then rebate much of it in the form of reward programs for affluent customers. This makes no sense.
So why not let merchants charge the fees openly and let consumers choose? If merchants decide to charge more for credit card purchases, it's a sign they think swipe fees aren't worth it and would prefer cash. If they don't, it's a sign they think they're getting their money's worth.
Since then I haven't noticed many merchants charging for credit card use, but that's largely because I live in California, where it was still illegal until a few years ago. Today, though, the Wall Street Journal tells us how things are going:
Overall, about 3% of merchants offer cash discounts. This is up from 2% before the pandemic, but it's still a pretty low number. The evidence isn't entirely in yet, but I'd say I turned out to be wrong. Even in the face of ever-rising swipe fees, barely any merchants feel slighted enough to bother trying to get their customers to pay cash. Inertia and habit are a big part of this, but it's nevertheless the case that changing the rules made little difference. Apparently the vast majority of merchants are OK with funding bank reward programs. Go figure.
dealing with cash is a pain for both the vendor and the customer, so i'm not surprised. i carry a bit of emergerncy cash, but almost never use it and a 2% discount wouldn't entice me to carry enough to go about daily life paying for everything in cash.
I had assumed "cash" also included debit card purchases. But maybe that's wrong. I agree bank notes and coins are a pain in the neck.
Debit cards have swipe fees, but I understand they are generally lower than CC fees. No rewards programs!
I used to carry a checkbook in my pocket and don't recall it ruining my life.
Me, too. Until
(1) the rising cost of checks
(2) the bank switching to supplying checks in large folder-things with four pads of checks, instead of separate booklets
(3) getting a rebate on credit card purchases!
carrying a checkbook is totally different from carrying cash. like a credit card, you can make out a check for any amount needed and DON'T need to carry cash.
I do. It was a colossal pain and time sink.
On our last visit to Seattle, I noticed some places (not just restaurants) who had posted notice that they were "cashless establishments".
I was in South Africa most of this past summer, and there were a couple of notable things:
1. Essentially everyone has a contactless credit card (at the time, I didn't -- yet another victim of the ongoing chip shortage), and several people were taken aback when I had to insert my card in the slot.
2. Many places, especially government facilities like national and regional parks, were card-only; no cash accepted.
The US is behind most of the rest of the world when it comes to banking technology. I lived in New Zealand in 2000 and, even then most people were paying most things with debit cards. I currently live in Canada and pay with almost everything with a contactless debit card.
Yeah, I still can't believe it when I'm in the states for a visit and see someone whip out their checkbook. Checks?!! I've been in Germany now around three decades, and I have NEVER written a check (nor seen anyone do it).
In respect to online banking, the differences are also like night and day. I still have a bank account in the US with a well-regarded bank, but even the most basic banking functions like electronic payments are so unbelievably convoluted -- or even the fact that the function needs to be activated at all -- show how far behind banking services are in the US. Possibly because electronic money transfers were already so well established in Europe before the internet, making and receiving payments with online banking has been the norm here for many years.
The only people who use checks are old folks.
I write one check a month, the one I write for my rent.
My mother, who passed away almost a year ago, wrote checks for groceries, credit card bills, and to pay people for personal services. She absolutely refused to use online banking.
I use checks with our town office because they are required by the state to charge card fees separately. For transparency, as I understand it. Also, our garbage man and firewood guy, whose collection of payment is less amenable to “convenience” practices.
The US is behind most of the rest of the world when it comes to banking technology. I lived in New Zealand in 2000 and, even then most people were paying most things with debit cards. I currently live in Canada and pay with almost everything with a contactless debit card.
I agree the United States has fallen badly behind on payment systems. I'm not sure why citing debit cards is an example of that, though. Debit cards have been fairly common in the US for a good couple of decades, I'm pretty sure. I just got a new one sent to my US address, and it's contactless.
To me the evidence that the US is behind on this score flows from:
Lack of standardization wrt payment platforms: I spent a month in the States this past summer. Apple Pay is pretty widely available but not everywhere. Google Pay seems to be becoming more common but not yet ubiquitous or seamless. In at least one restaurant I dined at, I scanned the OCR code on the bill, only to be taken to the restaurant's own payment website, where I was prompted to hand over bank information (yeah, not going to happen). It's a Byzantine mess compared to our arch nemesis China, where two highly simplidied, dominant phone-based payment platforms (Wechat and Alipay) are all you need, and they work exactly the same throughout the country. And I personally feel more secure having a third party between my bank card and the hordes of scam artists out there (for similar reasons I think credit cards are the way to go in the US, or, keep a secondary bank account with a modest balance, if you really prefer to use a debit card).
Along similar lines, identity theft and/or SSN fraud are much bigger issues in the US than in Europe (not sure about Canada). Apparently in Europe folks aren't terrified to hand over their national ID numbers. Indeed, these numbers (equivalent of US SSNs) are used to facilitate payments and purchases. Some kind of token-based security protocol takes cares of it. (don't recall the details). Americans guard their SSNs at all costs. Third Fucking World.
The thing about the national ID numbers in Europe, at least in Germany where I am, is that they are used only for a few very specific things, like opening a bank account or applying for a loan. They are also tied to a specific, registered address, which provides an additional means of verification.
SSNs in the US have gotten to be so unsafe because they were so widely used for decades as general identification numbers for any number of unrelated purposes. This is why, like most people I guess, I have been able to recite my SSN since I first got it when I was five.
By contrast, I have absolutely no idea what my German ID number is, nor do I know my German SSN, which, of course, is an entirely different number!
One reason Europe is so far ahead in payments is that credit card swipe fees are so much lower there. In Norway, it's 0.3%, for example. Debit card fees are even lower.
I particularly like the Interac system where you can send money to anybody who's tied a bank account to an email address. At least in Ottawa it's routinely used to pay for services and as far as I know all the banks are in it so there's no need to find out what system the other party is using. I wish we had that in the States.
I agree with most of the commenters here, but it should be pointed out that here in the US we do have Zelle. It's run by a contortium of the banks, allows payments to be made to anyone who has tied their bank account to an email address, and has zero fees. This sounds a lot like what you are describing.
We do, but-- and just my impression-- I don't have the sense that a lot of businesses are set up to take Zelle payment, or don't publicize it if they are, and banks mention it but don't put much effort into encouraging people to use it, in my experience. Also, in the US Zelle is sort of competing with Venmo, which seems better-known and used between friends and all that, but you have to maintain a balance etc so it works differently.
As far as I've seen in Canada, Interac gets used for the kind of payments where I'd be mailing checks at home and it's routinely referenced on invoices in Canada. And a lot more businesses there do billing by email (maybe because their snail mail is expensive and so, so s l o w) so you're predisposed to think of e-payment.
I've gone to online payment for most regular monthly bills but through individual websites rather than my bank's. Probably just habit that could be changed by a Zelle campaign by the banks and payees, if they wanted to do it.
I think a lot more places are set up for Zelle and Venmo now, still not ubiquitous by any means but getting more common, like I think most of the places that have an iPad as a register take them.
I don't have the sense that a lot of businesses are set up to take Zelle payment, or don't publicize it if they are, and banks mention it but don't put much effort into encouraging people to use it, in my experience
This is kinda it in a nutshell. Bits and pieces of the payments system in the US are fine—heck, Paypal seems to work ok for some things, too—but the system seems addled by lack of standardization, excessive complexity, a slow rate of innovation, and balkanization. It's byzantine compared to what's on offer in many other countries.
“…several people were taken aback when I had to insert my card in the slot.”
How did they react to you needing to sign the credit card receipt instead of entering a PIN? In my foreign travels, having to find a pen is extremely annoying for foreign wait staff. As Displaced Canuck wrote, the US is behind most of the rest of the world when it comes to (pretty much everything technological).
That, too, although weirdly enough, since I do have a PIN on my credit card, there were a few machines (out of probably a hundred or so) that let me enter the PIN instead of signing the receipt.
(pretty much everything technological)
C'mon, man! How about MRNAs? Our space program is at least as strong as anybody's else's. How's Nokia doing compared to Apple? Or Sony? You also may have read about the utterly miraculous cancer treatments pioneered in the US (some of them described by our host). Seen the Nobel prize awards lately? Our agricultural sector is jaw-droppingly productive. And so on.
US payment systems suck. But let's not get crazy!
We can send a man to the moon, but...
????????????????????
Not quite sure how to interpret the graph-- 55% of renters pay with cash or by credit card? Wow, bye-bye checks, huh?
Anecdata here-- New York State apparently lets gas stations discount for cash. Stations seem to like this because they can post the lower price, but it's kind of a bait and switch unless you're carrying enough cash, plus they often pair it with an even lower posted price that turns out to be only for affinity-card sales. Very annoying and not an encouragement for cash sales.
For me as a consumer in a state where cash discounts are either uncommon or not allowed, cash has become kind of inconvenient at check-out time. I might feel differently if some merchants offered a cash discount, but it would probably depend on how much I typically pay. Tangential, but if I pay utilities online, the utilities charge a very hefty "convenience fee" for credit but none for EFT, which affects what I do.
For merchants, how much sense does it make to encourage more cash sales? Sure it's the automatic default they need to be ready for, but handling cash also has costs associated with it that I'm sure the big retail chains and supermarkets have calculated to the tenth of a farthing. If the swipe fees were much higher than handling costs for cash, wouldn't they be offering cash discounts? Given where I live I'm not sure whether they do or not, so that's an honest question.
OK, I think I have a little better sense on the graph-- share of each type of payment that carries either discount or surcharge respectively. So the rent one makes the most sense, with the most cash discounts and credit surcharges by far, for what'll be substantial slugs of money that landlords want to get as cash or bank deposits as directly as they can, no messing around and no subsidizing credit card companies.
A credit surcharge at gas stations or groceries might motivate me, ditto for major appliances, say. Discounts are much less motivating, especially for smaller transactions. But the merchants would also have to be willing to eat the costs of handling more cash, wouldn't they, so disincentives on both sides.
In this case I'd guess that "cash" includes writing a check. Not sure how they count setting up automatic transfers from your bank account.
people don't carry cash anymore, so it's probably not worth the trouble to have a different pricing for cash.
but the cash rebates are not worth it! For instance, gas price is $5.29 for cash and $5.39 for credit card. So the discount is 10c, or about 2% of the price. I can get some credit card reward for 1% cash rebate on one card, or some air miles that can be redeemed for 2% if you're careful. So it's pretty much the same without the hassle of getting at the register, waiting in line, prepaying, going back to the pump, filling up, back at the register, getting the difference back, and then driving away.
No, it's that they're afraid of blowback from their customers for additional, not-on-the-price-tag fees.
I can't tell you how many posts I see attempting to shame restaurants or stores for additional fees, and a credit card surcharge of 3% is one of those that gets called out. People don't always know how much those fees cost people and where those fees go to (as mentioned, to affluent people with rewards cards).
“No, it's that they're afraid of blowback from their customers for additional, not-on-the-price-tag fees.”
The hilarious thing is you’re probably right yet some of these same business owners have no problem adding other bullshit fees like “health insurance for my employees” or “compliance with federal regulations” or “fuel surcharge” or the like when the purpose of the fee is to make a comment about something government allegedly did to raise their costs. They don’t seem to mind any blowback for that shit, even as their competitors don’t have the same line-item on their receipts making it clear that the alleged unfunded govt mandate or inputs inflation could simply be rolled into “cost of doing business” and reflected in the price of the item or service.
The simplest way to deal with the issue of high prices resulting from high swipe fees being rebated to affluent credit card holders is to tax the benefits credit card holders get. Impose income tax on the miles or points or whatever, either at the time they are accrued or at the time they are used, and consumers will have less incentive to sign up for those cards. (Many countries already do this for credit card incentives.) Of course, this will be hugely unpopular especially amongst the class of people that Congress is most responsive to, so it will never happen here.
don't see how this could be considered income, no more than if i use a coupon to get a discount on a product i might buy or if i get a "free" sub after purchasing five at my favorite sandwich shop. maybe i'm missing something.
As the OP said, other countries apparently do this. Doens't seem conceptually complicated. I do think you'd have to limit taxation to when they're used, though, as long as expiration dates are involved.
I'm not sure it'll have a huge effect, though: affluent consumers will still take 70% of a loaf even if they'd prefer 100% of a loaf. And, of course, such a tax code change would likely be DOA in Congress.
It depends on how the taxing authorities interpret it. Some (not many) taxing jurisdictions charge sales tax on the pre-coupon or pre-sale price, depending on how the coupon is funded or how the sale is structured. I definitely have gone into a store in the US with a coupon for a "free" item... and had a cashier ask me for a few cents in sales tax after zeroing out the item's price. (The most recent one was when Coke gave me a coupon for a free Coke, and CVS charged me like 9 cents in sales tax because the manufacturer was providing the discount/rebate, not CVS.) https://www.taxjar.com/blog/calculations/2021-12-sales-tax-discounts-coupons-promotions
The same would hold true for credit card incentives. The IRS currently considers these programs to be "rebates" on the original sales price and thus not income. But a lot of credit cards now allow you to cut yourself a check for whatever value they've assigned to the incentives, e.g. "cashback." It's unclear why getting $200 "cashback" for using a credit card or bank account would definitively not be considered income, because if a bank gives you $200 for signing up for a bank account, that money will usually be reported as "interest income" at the end of the year. It's simply that the IRS has determined taxing credit card benefits to be undesirable, while taxing anything that can be construed as "interest income" is more palatable.
"...because if a bank gives you $200 for signing up for a bank account, that money will usually be reported as "interest income" at the end of the year. .."
I have gotten hundreds of dollars of points for taking out credit cards and it was not reported as income. There was a minimum spending requirement presumably allowing the payments to be classified as rebates.
I think a lot of people underestimate the merchants’ processing costs of cash. (Time per transaction, risks, handling charges by banks, keeping change, …)
So even if cc companies charge 3%, the advantage of cash is far less than 3%, reducing the possible rebates for cash transactions.
In my current rental situation, I have to pay the following fees depending on how I pay rent:
$5 for paying by check (this is moronic - electronic deposit via app is now a thing), plus the cost of my getting the check to them (a stamp and an envelope presumably)
$25 for paying by cash
$2 for paying through an app, PLUS $2.49 handling fee from the app itself
The cash charge makes sense to me - they've got to pay somebody to take thousands of dollars in cash to a bank and deposit it, so fine, whatever. The other fees, though, classify as junk fees to me and are annoying to the point that they feel like being bent over a barrel for nickels and dimes.
Hold on, there's something wrong here, unless I'm totally misreading.
This chart has something less than 10% of gas stations changing the price by credit or not. Here where I live in NorCal, EVERY gas station has at least a 10 cent difference between cash and credit. Every one.
So what's the deal here?
Probably a regional thing. I don't think I've ever seen a cash discount at the gas station in my Midwestern city.
"...Here where I live in NorCal, EVERY gas station has at least a 10 cent difference between cash and credit. .."
Yes, I see that a lot. In New Jersey there is a mix. On the gas buddy map green is a cash price, black is a credit price. And if there are two prices posted is that a discount for cash or a surcharge for credit? In any case 5% seems too low for the number of stations that charge different prices.
So many small businesses have simply done away with cash transactions.
Cash becomes a liability at a certain point for robbery. Plus "the kids" don't use cash. They do everything by card and/or phone app.
I've had to work at getting ours to stop using their debit cards everywhere.
Luckily there are lots of stories about people's bank accounts getting wiped out from captured PIN's.
Even beyond that it’s just a hassle to deal with, someone has to take it to the bank every night.
Funny, just the other day, T-Mobil told me that it would no longer give me the $20 automatic pay discount if I used a credit card for my bill. In order to receive it, I would need to use a debit card or hook it up directly to my account. Which, I was thinking, was one way for them to avoid swipe fees on a large portion of their income.
Verizon has made a similar move, you have to pay extra each month if you do not allow them to auto debit your bank account each month. UGH.
That's awful. There are pre-payment options out there if Verizon really rubs you the wrong way.
Verizon FIOS does not have have a true alternative in my neck of the woods, Cox cable is not fiber so it's slower and expensive. Also Verizon first to build out the towers in the area so their cell service is better in Northern VA too. Verizon knows all this so they can get away with crap.
ahh, got it...I was thinking cell phone service.
swipe fees cost nowhere near $20; it's mainly a way of scaring people into paying an extra $20
given their history of data breaches it's not an irrational fear
also, the ftc is looking at forcing companies to include hidden/unavoidable fees into their top-line advertised prices
since autopay is avoidable they'll start moving all of their current hidden fees into that bucket to avoid raising their advertised price
if your bank allows it, you could try setting up an additional account to deal with autopay accounts and never has more than a few bucks in there
and also refuse to honor overdraft billings (centurylink contacted me 6 months after i terminated service claiming i owed them for 6 months of service)
credit cards are useful since you can contest the charge while bank accounts are not so friendly; i'm sure your isp would love for you to lose that benefit
I cannot wait for a ban on hidden fees. I bought tickets to a local Día de Muertos event and the fees almost made me cancel the entire trip.
Infuriating.
I'm not sure if it would apply in this instance, but:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/10/ftc-proposes-rule-ban-junk-fees
I've seen more and more businesses (and things like concession stands at sports events) only accept non-cash payment. I always wondered about the legality of this. It says on the paper money, "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private". That seems to be a meaningless statement if, in fact, it is not accepted for some transactions.
On a side note, Apple Pay is pretty amazing. It's so convenient to literally be able to text money to my kids when they are out and need some.
"This note is legal tender for all debts public and private". That seems to be a meaningless statement if, in fact, it is not accepted for some transactions.
Words the government prints on paper aren't the same as the law, so, yes, it's fairly meaningless in 2023, I expect, in jurisdictions that haven't passed laws to the contrary.
Just because a dollar bill says "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private" doesn't mean the person on the other side of the transaction has to take dollar bills if they don't want to. If you agreed to trade a piece of property for another piece of property, and then on the day of signing the deed transfers, you suddenly were like "oh here's the cash equivalent instead," the other party is perfectly free to say "no deal then - I want that specific piece of property and not the cash equivalent." It's the same with people trading services for other services. It's also the same with companies requiring checks in the mail vs. wads of cash stuffed in an envelope. Perhaps if you went to court over it, the courts could force you to accept the physical pile of cash instead of the piece of property, the service you were promised, or the digital "cash" on Apple Pay. But the freedom to engage in commerce doesn't require physical US cash to be accepted at the point of transaction. (This should have been made clear when companies started accepting/requiring checks in lieu of cash decades ago...)
this is a pet peeve. a debt is money owed, and your creditors do have to accept cash bills to pay your debts. but a transaction in a store is NOT A DEBT- you haven’t bought the thing yet, how could you owe them money? a seller is free to demand anything as payment- cash, credit card, a donkey, a bushel of wheat. it’s the right to contract.
I have to explain this to so many people that it makes me worry about literacy- did you stop reading at the word “all” or do you not know what “debt” means?
That's easy. Until the buyer and seller reach agreement on a sale and the terms of it, there is no debt. The seller is entitled to demand plastic, or gold, or bitcoin, or whatever his heart desires and if the would be buyer doesn't accept that term there is no contract and no debt to be paid.
If a private business refused to conduct a transaction, there would be no debt for that cash to be legal tender for.
I am puzzled at your gas station numbers.
Nearly every gas station in our area charges. more for gas using a credit card than for gas using cash.
Although I do occasionally see it, it's rare around here (Ohio).
This is a state-by-state thing. It's not very common here in northern Virginia to see cash vs credit differentials.
In the vicinity of the beltway it is fairly common.
I can't recall the last time I saw that, and I'm 68 years old.
Go to an ARCO station in California.
Yeah in Washington and Oregon the only place I ever see it is at Arco or Am/Pm type convenience stores, maybe the occasional independent place in rural areas, all the others major stations are no difference in price.
In my corner of NY many restaurants do it. Margins maybe thin with CC’s but cash margins may be huge, as in off the books huge.
And gas stations 90% do it.
Yeah I used to figure the golf course being able to not report a few cash paid foursomes every day was basically their profit margin????
I can see why some merchants don't mind people avoiding cash. Cash makes robbery or employee theft more likely, and it takes longer to close out the till at the end of a shift.
Landlords, however, really don't have to worry about theft, and the amounts are nice round numbers (no coins). Cash - whether check, bills, or Venmo - doesn't cause enough annoyance to prefer credit cards.
We have a farmstand that we run on Saturdays. Cash accounts for about 40% of sales. If you pay with cash then I round down to the nearest dollar and I end up eating the tax and plastic bag fee. If you pay with a card then you pay for those. Either way the amounts involved are trivial when compared to either my other costs or my margin.
Xfinity and T-Mobile had a plan where you got a $5/line discount if you gave them credit card info and they billed automatically each month. They now want more direct access to your money and rescinded the “discount” unless you gave them access to your bank account or your debit card number instead of your credit card.
I don’t trust them with that info and worry about the increased difficulty in getting reimbursed if they are hacked and your account info is compromised or if they make an error.
I have T Mobile and have taken advantage that deal. (Between family members we have four phones and three watches so the monthly saving is not insignificant.) They have my debit card to auto bill but before they charge the monthly fee I go online and pay with a credit card instead so I get the points.
almost every merchants use a POS system to check you out- some version of a slimmed down computer with a barcode scanner and touchscreen. for small merchants, those systems are leased from your payment processor; for big merchants they’re bought as part of a once a decade deal. the POS systems generally make it a HUGE pain in the ass to configure a cash discount- I used to have to manually enter it each time, which is why I stopped doing it.
cash discounts are also something accountants discourage, for reasons mine never quite made clear to me- accounting is a black art.
anyway- there’s a lot more to this than just the fees.
Cash transactions require labor with math skills. Capitalists want to reduce their labor costs and their tax burden, which is why they also support a cashless market and privatization of primary education.
I used to always pay cash at my local pizza place to save them paying the fees. I mentioned it to the owner one day and he told me to just use a card. He said dealing with cash-- bank deposits, having change, etc.,-- was enough of a pain that he just preferred credit cards and their fees.
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I have never seen a cash discount where I live.
Where I'm at, there seems to be a fee for all types of accepted payments. Keep the advertised rent low, then tack on all sorts of fees.
A small restaurant that just opened near me charged for the credit card fee. This was the first time I had seen a business do that, although I have been reading about it. I asked the dentist if they would give a cash discount for an $1165 procedure, and they offered $100 off if I paid cash!
As a former small business owner, I always thought asking for cash was an admission that I was planning to pocket the money and not pay tax on it.
at least they didn't ask for the cash in small bills
There is a strain of American crackpot who is very concerned about what they believe is Joe Biden's plan to confiscate all cash and issue money cards -- "tracking cards," if you will -- that will give the government complete access to and control over everyone's money. "They" will know what you buy, where and when, and will have the power to prevent you from making certain unapproved purchases, or just take all your money if they feel like it. Naturally, the crazies are defiant, but only on the internet, because Biden's evil plan is not yet happening in the real world.
This notion, of course, is catnip to many evangelicals, so they are getting on board with it, noting that their bible predicts this. Add in open warfare in the middle east, and it's more than just a conspiracy theory. It's The End Times.
Online scammers love the cashless.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/12/americans-lose-billions-to-social-media-scams-red-flags-to-spot.html
I keep wondering when the scammers will pull off a real heist which destroys trust in all these systems. The rise of the AI bots!
"...or just take all your money if they feel like it. ..."
It happened in Canada:
"Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said at Monday's news conference that banks would be able freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order."
That was a very specific situation, the trucker convoy protests in Ottawa more than a year ago, and it was done under a pre-existing emergency law that gave them authority to freeze accounts in some circumstances. It was probably the most controversial aspect of the government's response at the time and I think that authority is being reviewed. The protest organizers are being tried right now, btw.
I think the fever-swamp idea here is more like thinking the government will set expiration dates on money in accounts. Though I may have seen a report about something like being done, maybe in China. But it's that, as well as the tracking (which I'm not wild about myself, says I as I whip out the credit card . . .).
"... Though I may have seen a report about something like being done, maybe in China. ..."
In 2016 India forced the exchange of large denomination bank notes:
" On 8 November 2016, the Government of India announced the demonetisation of all ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes of the Mahatma Gandhi Series. It also announced the issuance of new ₹500 and ₹2,000 banknotes in exchange for the demonetised banknotes.[1] Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that the action would curtail the shadow economy, increase cashless transactions and reduce the use of illicit and counterfeit cash to fund illegal activity and terrorism.[2][3][4]"
I don't understand the basic data showing that 3-5% of gas stations offer discounts or surcharges.
In the DMV area, EVERY gas station has a different price for cash vs card.
omg, this looks great,
https://twitter.com/i/status/1713966616235655189
Without reading any other comments first, I can only speak from my own experience. I owned a small lodging business for 8 years. We accepted cash, personal checks, credit and debit cards, and money orders. No one ever had traveler’s checks.
With all the expenses loaded on a business based wholly on real estate and tourism, card fees are minor, but annoying. Most cards cost 0.05 percent and American Express decided to stop killing small businesses while I was running our place.
The cash back bonus stuff is exactly the same as being robbed by your guests, but without the threat of violence. The card company, mostly Discover, hit you for 5.0 percent of every transaction. Precisely 100 times what all the other cards cost, except AmEx which was 0.15 percent.
Many, many people carry little or no cash when traveling and for good reasons. We were able to set up automated online booking, which was a godsend. If someone got angry with us, we could issue a refund and tell them it was the bank’s fault if they didn’t have the money right away. And if we had to charge extra for damage (boy, did we), I could have a policy of requiring a credit card to be on file.
So, I don’t know if the chart reflects what other business owners really think about credit card fees. From my perspective, they are a seriously mixed bag. We were much better able to grow our customer base by accepting cards than the people from whom we bought the business. But it definitely brings a host of challenges as a practice.
Darned edit function.
I meant to type that card fees were 0.5 percent and AmEx was 1.5, with the expected effect on the math wrt Discover.
why offer cash discounts when you can just pocket the extra cash?