Almost like I acknowledged the specific analogy wasn’t great because rent is typically pre-paid.

Fine, let’s talk post paid. Electric bills. How you would you feel about an electric company that sent you an invoice and wanted to be paid daily? Yes, yes, the analogy is also imperfect because consumer electric companies can do auto-pay and walmart generally does not for small vendors. But please try to see the point even with a less than totally perfect analogy to consumer life.

> How you would you feel about an electric company that sent you an invoice and wanted to be paid daily

This would be trivial via Direct Debit.

Maybe your anologies just don't work, because the situation is completely different? The payment terms spoken about above are not to minimize transaction fees, often enough they are 90 days after the order is completed even for a single order, how does that minimize transaction cost (and how is that comparable to electricity bills?)?

I know that in Australia the terms in groceries are horrendous. Generally, frood vege suppliers have to buy specific boxes for delivery (from the supermarket chain) they then still have to pay rent on those boxes and if items don't sell they have to take them back (and pay a box use fee again), make items available at discount for specials run by the supermarket, on top of that the payment terms are as described above. Essentially the big chains don't take any risk, and the small suppliers all the risk. This might be particularly bad because the market is dominated by 2 chains. Supposedly Aldi and Lidl were much better at the time, because they tried to break into the market.

I would expect the electric company to work like EZPass does where you're expected to maintain a non-negative account balance that they pull money from when you go through a toll and you either periodically top it off by stopping in and paying cash or letting them do so automatically (via direct deposit / CC).

This situations where paying in advanced _every_ time would be cumbersome just means the customer has to maintain a balance. There is also a difference between a business and residence.

It can vary by landlord and jurisdiction. Some places you’re technically paying for the month you just finished, others you’re paying for the month upcoming. It only really differs on the accounting after the first month.

Interesting - in India, I have only paid house rent at the end of the month (post-paid). It was a shock to me to learn that in UAE they expected rent annually, in "advance" (I guess it is smart as that weeds out those living paycheck-to-paycheck, who may default on rent)!