> So, plain act of talking money from your customer is... inefficiency?
Hey, bit of a late reply, but yes.
You need to keep a float to provide change, you need security measures around your float and your takings. You have to count and reconcile the cash at the beginning and end of the day. Someone has to take it to the bank. Banks charge businesses for handling cash deposits. You need a cash register too! Which implies space as well as expense. There are many costs around a business taking cash.
Clearly, taking cards isn't free either, but it's often missed when people moan about card fees that sure, if someone gives you the cash for your goods, you have the cash now. But you don't just stuff it in your pocket forever, and credit card fees often come in cheaper than the cash handling costs mentioned above. People like to say that hiding card fees is evil, and cash customers are subsidizing credit card prices, but often it's the reverse that's true. While there may not be a per-transaction charge you can point to, overall costs to a business for cash are non-negligible.
Apparently this was a major driver behind the "Cashback" model in the UK in the 1990s when supermarkets started to be able to perform a cash withdrawal as part of your food purchasing transaction - it saved you a trip to the ATM, but more importantly for them it cut their handling costs and security requirements.
I've interacted with a few IRL businesses that don't do cash at all. Many food vans in London when I worked there were operating with a phone and a square reader only. This morning I bought a doughnut from a new doughnut shop here in Western Australia, and they run the business from an iPad on a stand and a similar reader. Any lost business from not taking cash is clearly not important enough for them to take on the added costs and problems.
Hey, bit of a late reply, but yes.
You need to keep a float to provide change, you need security measures around your float and your takings. You have to count and reconcile the cash at the beginning and end of the day. Someone has to take it to the bank. Banks charge businesses for handling cash deposits. You need a cash register too! Which implies space as well as expense. There are many costs around a business taking cash.
Clearly, taking cards isn't free either, but it's often missed when people moan about card fees that sure, if someone gives you the cash for your goods, you have the cash now. But you don't just stuff it in your pocket forever, and credit card fees often come in cheaper than the cash handling costs mentioned above. People like to say that hiding card fees is evil, and cash customers are subsidizing credit card prices, but often it's the reverse that's true. While there may not be a per-transaction charge you can point to, overall costs to a business for cash are non-negligible.
Apparently this was a major driver behind the "Cashback" model in the UK in the 1990s when supermarkets started to be able to perform a cash withdrawal as part of your food purchasing transaction - it saved you a trip to the ATM, but more importantly for them it cut their handling costs and security requirements.
I've interacted with a few IRL businesses that don't do cash at all. Many food vans in London when I worked there were operating with a phone and a square reader only. This morning I bought a doughnut from a new doughnut shop here in Western Australia, and they run the business from an iPad on a stand and a similar reader. Any lost business from not taking cash is clearly not important enough for them to take on the added costs and problems.