This is why your grocery store partners with an ATM network to let you take out extra cash at the POS. As long as you're paying the fee, they'll do whatever they can to trade you cash for a digital deposit into their bank account.
I'm pretty sure lots of people are putting these on credit and... might not ever pay it back.
She literally couldnt get cash from these people.
(US medical btw)
The routine was to show up at the store with your paycheck, cash it, pay for your groceries, and keep the change.
Our store used to have the safe up front next to the bags of charcoal.
Card payments made the price of the service more expensive for all customers because we weren't allowed to have a card payment fee.
However nothing beats that sweet sweet tax evasion that cash allows.
From talking to other business owners, though, the lure of "tax free" cash is definitely a factor.
You accepted multiple currencies without taking a spread on Forex? How did you convert it for free? Not even actual forex businesses can do that...
Used the EUR in Cuba when a buyer mailed me cash.
Actual forex businesses convert currency at negative cost. That's what it means to be a forex business.
BTW. Good luck catching that. In SF, that is how many businesses work. You want to use a card? Ok, one extra dollar. Nothing enrages visa more, but, the merchant should have this right.
https://portal.ct.gov/DCP/Legal/Credit-Card-Surcharge
>Connecticut law prohibits a business from charging a customer a surcharge for using one payment type (usually credit card) over another payment type (usually cash). However, the law does allow a business to offer a discount if a customer chooses to use one type of payment (e.g., cash) over another type of payment (e.g., credit card). Receiving the discount is not the same as adding a surcharge. As long as the discount policy is clearly written and presented to the customer and the final receipt shows a discount, it complies with Connecticut law
This would actively drive interchange fees lower when consumers have to choose to pay 3% on an Amex swipe vs 1.6% no frills MasterCard swipe, or .05% for a debit swipe.
The reasons there is no downward pressure today is because there is because there is no transparency, and no incentive for consumers to choose a lower cost card.
Convenience Fee.
So you can have a cash discount but it's okay to say no credit card fees. These are the "junk fees" that came up in political discourse in the last year or two. Credit card vendors shouldn't be allowed to restrict cash discounts. I know this isn't libertarian, but I want it to be a pre-negotiated thing simply for the sake of keeping cash alive, like how minimum wage is a pre-negotiated wage to avoid the overhead of getting the whole nation into a labor union.
That's why I like free shipping on Amazon. I know it's not literally free, I just want to see what you're _actually_ gonna charge me, it cuts off an avenue of bullshit.
This is not universal.
Where I currently live, and where I lived five years ago, supermarkets charge a fee (50¢ here, 25¢ where I used to live) to take out cash at the POS, because the card transaction cost more than handling cash.
There was a lot of "Are you sure?" prompts on the screen because the supermarkets (both big chains) didn't want the burden of the plastic transaction.
I've seen it stated a lot in technology forums that "cash is more expensive for merchants than cards," but I've never seen that spelled out from any source other than the card companies.
Every low-margin business I patronize, from the garden centers, to the convenience stores, to the antique stores all either offer a discount for cash, or charge a fee to use plastic.
Just last week, a woman who's run an antiques store for 35 years told me that card fees were going to put her out of business, and she practically begged me to go down the street to my bank to get cash for my purchase.
Car-centric as it is, gas prices are arguably the commodity that US consumers are most price sensitive to (and which is also most commonly evoked in politics). So this shows that consumers would prefer to discriminate between card and no-card purchases if given the option, except that the vast majority of retail outlets do not give them that option.
Which can lead to seemingly ludicrous results somethings. I paid a "convenience" fee for parking the other night because presumably collecting a bunch of quarters from a meter was cheaper for the municipality than getting a bit less money transferred from the parking app people?
This will vary depending on where you are.
Most retailers here in New Zealand pass the fee on to customers. Even paywave gets the percentage fee.
This is how Doordash works on the restaurant side, they can't charge you the customer 20-30% of gross on orders, everyone would stop ordering. So mostly they just have to eat it or lose those sales. Some places choose to lose, some choose to raise prices on DD if they can but mostly they eat it.
This is why you are most likely to see credit card surcharges for tax payments, court costs, and other non-discretionary charges. Anything that either is optional to pay, or isn't but they really want you to pay now (ex. a debt collector) has every incentive to subsidize the card acceptance fee as it will increase their sales.