[toastal]

Living in Thailand where cash is primary and often the only form of payment, it took no time to adjust to it and now that piece of mind of not having every purchase tracked is great. Yesterday I bought a monitor at the mall and they gave me a pretty nice discount and free shipping because I didn't go credit/debit. You see card usage requiring $50 minimums or buyer pays the network fee too. Herein lies a pretty big societal difference where the network fee isn't built-in and cash payers aren’t subsidizing or implicitly paying those fees for card users.

[yummypaint]

Credit cards in the US are effectively a regressive tax, because the people with good credit using cards get their fees refunded through card perks. Thailand is very good about not having regressive taxes in general. Someone making the median income doesn't pay more than about 2% tax at most.

[orev]

In the US, card companies require that merchants charge the same price for both cash and credit, so there’s no incentive to avoid using cards (so the processors make more money overall on fees).

[midasuni]

Cash handling costs for normal businesses - at least in the west - are higher than cars handling costs. The only time that changes is for companies avoiding tax or money laundering.