Comment by foobarian
16 hours ago
Clankers found me one study [1] that suggests total handling costs may actually be this bad, but are highly business dependent e.g. restaurants are worse than grocery stores
[1] https://www.ihlservices.com/product/the-cost-of-cash-handlin...
I'm just seeing what looks like an attempt to sell me a PDF.
What actually is the source of such costs? The cashier still has to be paid even if the customer is using a card. Presumably there isn't anywhere near that much theft from registers, or people messing up giving change?
Employee theft. Store manager theft. Robberies. Counterfeits. The extra time spent at each cash transaction and re-counting at the end of the day. Going to the bank, or paying an armored car service. Banks charge merchants a percentage of each cash deposit. Buying safes and pointing cameras down at each register.
This. My extended familys shop really benefitted from moving away from cash. Now the only source of cash is people who are paying from their black money stashes.
Great examples all around !
Clank deeper, please. You gave us content marketing from the electronic payment industry:
"Does IHL Group have any connections to merchant providers?"
> IHL Group sells market intelligence, vendor directories, and lead generation data to the electronic payment industry.
Definitely a conflict of interest.
Cash handling costs is a real issue though. Not counting under-reporting income, credit cards cost the most at US intercharge levels of 1-3%. Then the all-in cost of cash handling. The lowest cost method is debit.
The lowest cost is in the EU in this regard. Anti-rent-seeking regulations ain't so bad for everyone, save the rent-seekers.
BTW, I used to handle around $7M/year in credit card transaction in the USA, and if you got actual hand-written partial numbers on a signed contract, then we could avoid nearly 100% of charge backs, as we always delivered on our end. I think in 14 years, we had around 10 charge back attempts, and our merchant provider loved us. The only time I ever magically lost a charge back was to a Visa executive for ~$10k, and our merchant provider just shrugged. Whatayagonnado?