[blurrybird]

FWIW I am Australian and we have a similar adoption rate of cashless payments.

If a merchant tries to promote cash options I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons - not because of the touted reason that “card payments cost more to process” (they don’t once you factor in the cost of handling cash).

[tdeck]

I think the same thing in the US about small businesses that only take cash, but it's still pretty normal to use cash in the US.

[jhbadger]

People forget that the credit card companies charge businesses to process transactions. Some stores/restaurants even give discounts for paying in cash because of this.

[markdown]

In my country if you pay with credit card at a grocery store (or anywhere) you get 3.5% tacked on to your bill. Merchants don't eat the cost, and don't hide it in the listed price of goods; it's explicitly passed on.

[smegger001]

I know its not uncommon at small business to ad a surcharge for using cards on purchases below a certain dollar value rather than a discount for cash.

[swiftcoder]

This is explicitly forbidden by almost all card processing networks (and by the government, in many countries). If you report a business who is doing this to the card processor, they'll likely get their card processing privileges suspended.

[DaSHacka]

What's the difference between giving discounts for cash and adding surcharges for cards?

[mercutio2]

I thought they changed the rules around this ~6 years ago, and it’s now allowed (at least in the US)?

[OptionOfT]

On the other hand, cash has its costs. You need to have a register, more training, more insurance, processing of cash at the bank, having it deposit cash at the end of every day, etc.

With credit cards you pay a fee, but you don't have to deal with all of those other things that people often don't consider.

[ajsnigrutin]

But they already have all this, there are very few merchants that don't actually accept cash at all.

[xmprt]

If a significant amount of your business is cash based then the risk is much higher. If you're doing $100 worth of cash transactions per day then your registers and safe probably don't have much and you can probably get away with weekly or even monthly deposits. Whereas if you're dealing with $1000s in cash then you probably want to deposit daily, need a lot more security around your register and safe, and probably have a much higher quality safe too.

[8bitsrule]

I've lived in Seattle for decades, and have -never- found a business that would not accept cash. If I -had- I would have set down my prospective purchase and walked out the door with a promise never to return.

Apart from a transit card (all the mass transit also takes cash ... no fee added), I'm not going to pay to feed the surveillance machine.

[bobthepanda]

This is a function of geography.

Where I live in Seattle, a lot of businesses simply don't handle cash at all, because break-ins for the cash register are quite expensive to deal with, and they circumvent that problem by simply posting outside the business that there is no cash.

One of the few businesses near me that must take cash, a dispensary, recently had an issue where somebody tried to break in using a stolen pickup truck to crash into the building. They didn't get the cash because they didn't get past the interior bollard system, but they did cause enough structural damage that the roof partially collapsed into the street.

[dfxm12]

It's pretty much required to accept cash in Seattle:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/king-coun...

[ajsnigrutin]

I mean sure, US is special in this case, especially since you don't actually persecute small time thieves...

But i've paid with cash all over europe, and except for some vending machines, i've never been turned down, be it london, paris, berlin, belgrade or athens... from large supermarkets and museums, to local corner newsstands with a small fridge and cold drinks and local fast food joints. On the other hand, the most unsafe I ever felt as a traveller was in chicago, supposedly in a "nicer/safe area", and I've been through the balkans in the 1990s.

[mercanlIl]

IME (in Canada), the cash discount is surprisingly close to 15%, which is approximately the sales tax in most provinces.

[jayknight]

Here in the deep (American) South, small businesses give discounts for cash because those global elites are trying to take away our cash and want to track us or whatever. To that mindset, cash is a way to resist a theoretical oppression.

[phil21]

This is the reason I try to pay everything I reasonably can with cash. I’m about as northern as you get.

I’m definitely looked as crazy in my friend group from time to time, but over the years I’ve just become known as the guy who will always have cash on him if necessary so I guess the walking ATM bit helped with acceptance of it?

I figure that if folks don’t take a stand and use cash even if they don’t need to now, we will lose the ability to later. I don’t want to live in a world where all my purchases are mineable, because that eventually turns into monitored and then authorized.

The inconvenience is a small price to pay for freedom from surveillance.

It has amused me though over the years how bad cash handling skills have become. When I was a cashier as a teenager 25+ years ago, myself and all my fellow coworkers could break change at relative light speed and often just from mental math/memory. Now it’s amusing watching a young cashier give change back on a $48.31 order after handing them a $100 bill. Sometimes takes longer than the proverbial grandma writing a check back in my day.

[z0r]

They're right :) even if it isn't a conspiracy, that's what will happen because it will be convenient and easy.

[noduerme]

Here in the Pacific Northwest, businesses give discounts for cash just because it saves them money. In Portland, we still have a fair number of bars that are cash only. And yeah, liberals here also consider it an invasion of privacy to have to use a card, but they couch it in terms of it being unfair to people without credit or bank accounts (which, tbh, is also a fair argument).

[101008]

Same here in Argentina

[noduerme]

It's been 10 years since I lived in Argentina, but at that point having a credit card (not a debit card) was still reserved mostly for the folks in Barrio Norte. Has that changed now, or is it still mostly debit?

[101008]

It's mostly debit and digital wallets such as MercadoPago. MercadoPago will launch a credit card though, so that may change things.

[Theodores]

In the UK this was banned in 2018. The cash price has to be the same as the debit/credit card price, which is not exactly 'freedom'.

[fn-mote]

In the US a recent change was made in the other direction. Credit card surcharges are much more common now.

I believe it was part of an agreement with the card companies over anti-competitive behavior.

[throwawayq3423]

Yes, mostly to avoid paying taxes on their revenue.

[wbl]

It's the tax evasion. Nobody ever pilfered an interchange account.

[tdeck]

I know that this is true (I used to work in card payment infrastructure), but I've also talked to people who run cash businesses and deliberately under report their income. So I think it's not so uncommon.

[boringg]

And lets hope that never changes

[russelg]

If a tradie offers me a better price when I pay by cash, of course they're doing it to dodge tax. I'm still gonna take that discount.

[tossandthrow]

Here is likely not that much handling cost for an independent hairdresser just earning their own (quite meager) salary.

In the EU you can not charge a card fee on consumer transactions, so the merchant has the eat the cost.

If your revenue is - 2-3000 Eur a month, payment fees (and terminal subscription fees) can have a big impact.

[andrewaylett]

I, as a private individual, can accept card payments for 1.69%. I have a physical chip and pin reader (that pairs with my phone), it cost me £25, but I can take contactless payments using just my phone. If I didn't want to use my phone, I'd need the £75 reader that comes with a 4G connection (at no extra transaction or subscription cost).

If I were charging £3k/month, I'd be just above the threshold where paying £19.99/month to get a transaction fee of 0.99% saves money overall.

[swiftcoder]

I get the terminal directly from my bank here in Spain, it's something like €5/month + 0.02% of transaction. Is it much higher in other parts of the EU?

[xigoi]

0.2% of 3000€ is 6€. I’m not sure how big of an impact that is, considering the non-negligible costs of handling this much money in cash. If a business earns more money after accepting cash, it’s probably because they don’t pay taxes.

[Reason077]

> "FWIW I am Australian and we have a similar adoption rate of cashless payments. If a merchant tries to promote cash options I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons"

I don't know about Australia, but in New Zealand many small retailers and restaurants add a card payment surcharge (typically 1.5%-2.5%) automatically when you pay by card. So you are somewhat penalised for the convenience of using a card. This never happens in Europe.

[inkyoto]

1.5%-2.5% card surcharges (both, debit and credit) are a commonplace in Australia as well.

Visa and Mastercard have successfully lobbied and conspired with local banks in both countries to bury EFTPOS, which were national debit card payment systems with a flat transaction fee ranging between 10 and 50 cents per transaction (depending on the bank).

A while back, Visa/MC realised that debit card transactions, being on the rise, were a highly lucrative market to tap into that they had been missing out on, so they set out on a war of attrition and conspired with the local big banks to phase out EFTPOS cards in favour of Visa/MC debit cards, where the cost of transaction was to be passed on to the card user. Tiered debit cards quickly followed (Platinum, etc.), that attracted higher fee percentages for Visa/MC – payment network commission fees are published on the respective payment network websites. Other than consumers, all parties involved (big banks, payment networks) became moist with excitement at getting a huge slice of the card transactions pie.

But there is the light at the end of the tunnel (other than the light of the oncoming train) – the RBA has moved to ban all card surcharges from July 2026.

[bobsmooth]

>I immediately think they’re doing it for tax evasion reasons

What's your opinion on that? In NA, for small businesses it's common to offer to pay in cash to avoid paying sales tax.

[normie3000]

Where is NA?

[gnabgib]

Mexico + USA + Canada.. North America

It's also not common (and illegal).. this account posts a lot of vague platitudes.

[phil21]

It’s quite common in the US everywhere I’ve lived. Every tradesman I’ve used outside of large companies will offer a large discount for cash if you ask about it. They will likely not be the first to initiate though at a certain level of customer, since the social expectations change at a certain level of wealth.

This is almost always in a portion of the invoice written up at around half the agreed amount, and the rest in cash. Or for smaller jobs just on the side with no paperwork involved outside of a firm handshake.

This is the norm for the lower end of the trades. If you’re dealing with a single owner company with a few employees I’d be very surprised if they would not be willing.

Yeah, once you get into “real companies” that are charging upper middle class rates on million dollar properties it changes.

I haven’t had trades work done in Mexico, but considering all my visits were effectively cash only transactions I’d be pretty surprised if it wasn’t at least as common as in the US.

[bobsmooth]

It's very common for small and independent businesses. You've likely never interacted with one.