[logicalmonster]

You won't find this too often in a big corporate chain, but some small businesses do offer some form of cash discount.

I find cash to be a lot more convenient and satisfying than a credit card and I prefer to use that for most everyday purchases. It's easy to open your wallet and see how much you've allotted to spend on a trip out (and avoid the temptation to spend more than what you've budgeted) rather than having to deal with logging into some app and trying to figure out how much you want to justify spending.

Once in a while, I run into a business that refuses to take payments in cash. I always ask the business, why do you prefer giving away a percentage of your income to the credit card companies rather than dealing directly with your customer and keeping all of the money that you possibly can? I've never gotten a satisfying response to that.

[tothrowaway]

There's a cost to handling cash. It can get stolen by employees or robbers. It can leak away when giving incorrect change. There's a chance you get counterfeit bills. The bank charges you to deposit it. And most brick and mortar businesses aren't paying the 3% that Stripe & friends charge. They get much better rates.

[logicalmonster]

Nothing in life is 100% perfect, but as a business owner I see quite a few risks with a business handling credit cards.

Even when you deal with customers properly and fairly, you take a risk handling credit cards because you can deal with false disputes and chargebacks long after you've already provided the product or service. It doesn't matter if you can provide detailed records proving that you provided the service (including signed shipping records and emails from a customer verifying delivery) the payment dispute is judged in a non-transparent process by a busy person that barely puts 30 seconds into checking your documentation and usually has much more of an incentive to favor the fraudster.

And on top of being out on the product and losing your payment, you also have to deal with paying an extra chargeback fee to the payment provider for them to have to deal with the dispute.

Worse still: every one of these false disputes holds the potential to trip some random algorithm at a payment processor and effectively kill your business by them blocking your account due to too much fraud. It's not super common, but it does happen that businesses get destroyed due to fraud.

As long as you walk free and have at least 1 arm, nobody can ever prevent you from handling cash.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

It costs businesses money to handle cash; it has to be counted, transported, deposited, and it can be stolen.

[logicalmonster]

It's fair to say that there's a bit of manual work involved with cash.

But I gotta say if my biggest problem as a business owner was having a pile of cash that took too long to count, well that wouldn't exactly rank highly on my list of biggest life concerns to deal with.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

Your employees can't steal card transactions made with your POS equipment.

Most banks charge businesses a fee for cash deposits per thousand dollars deposited. It's not typically free.

I would say that it's more or less even between cash and card (although much better in Europe where the fees are capped much lower).

[tanseydavid]

It is an essential part of doing business.

This is almost like pointing out that inventory can be stolen. Of course it can.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

Of course it is, but it was suggested that the businesses would save money by accepting cash; it might be a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other.