That's because US federal law no longer allows credit card companies to forbid cash discounts.

The above poster was incorrect.

(1) Cash discounts were always permitted ("2% off for paying with cash")

(2) Credit surcharges and minimums used to be forbidden, but they are not anymore ("2% surcharge for paying with credit, minimum $10 for card payments")

(3) It wasn't federal law, it was the merchant agreements that precluded credit card minimums and surcharges as a condition of signing up to accept credit card payments from each of the major issuers.

In Germany lots of places just don’t accept any cards besides Visa and MasterCard just because of the seller fees.

And even Visa and MasterCard took a while to get hold. I remember Aldi holding out for ages.

There are many places in Europe that have weird rules... Like some dutch places not accepting EU debit cards. Aldi in Ireland doesn't accept out of country debit cards.

I've also seen a number of gas stations in ND that have a $10 minimum for cards. This also carried over to some grocery stores.

Small dollar transactions really need a better solution. Idk swipe rates, but something like 2.9% + $0.30 being a total transaction cost of 5.9% is just insane. Especially if you’re business is majority small transactions such as could be the case in a bodega or gas station.

Yes that was a very odd thing about moving to SF: people using credit cards on <$5 transactions and merchants actually allowing it.