Small business owners generally make themselves dependent on third party selling platforms, which they pay a 15-25% commission to, depending on sector.

That's where they get new clients, and most of the rest of their sales go to loyal repat customers who know them already.

Try to tell them how they could capture a large part of those new customers themselves by investing in their own presence - very little money in comparison - and they start complaining if they have to pay any monthly fee and complaining about card fees to receive payment.

You have to spend money to make money, and any money you spend to get out of the claws of third party platforms is usually money very well spent. But small business owners don't want to hear it.

I think credit card fees are often positioned against what businesses believe is the cost of cash, i.e. zero.

However, with cash one needs to have / has / has to pay for:

* a more complex register * a person who takes more time to do the transaction * someone who counts the register at the end of the day to ensure it matches * someone who drives to the bank to deposit the money (at random times) * additional insurance * a bank account which probably charges for these cash services

If you don't count time, then cash is better.

And also, in Europe, if you as a business prefer cash, we all know it means that you make X, but you only report X/2.

In Europe, interchange fees are capped at 0.3%, so generally handling cards is going to work out _cheaper_ than handling cash for most retail businesses. In the US, interchange can be ten times that, so it's a slightly different situation...

But unless you don't accept cash at all, you have to do that anyway.

I've been to several cashless cafes that just had a Square tap thingy.

That said, I expect the cost of taking cash does scale to some degree with how much of it you take. Obviously you still need a cash register, but if only 10-20% of your business is cash, maybe it only needs to be reconciled and emptied out every second or third day? And it's a faster and lower stakes process if there's less in it? Insurance is cheaper as well if the total loss is 1/10 what it would be if every dime was passing through there.