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If you're choosing locally owned businesses for your coffee, groceries or other things, kudos for supporting alternatives to corporate-owned outlets. A reminder that paying with cash allows them to keep the full proceeds rather than sharing them with moneygrubbing banks and payment processors.
privacy is another good reason for paying with cash. What's the point of using encrypted comms or ad blockers or taking other privacy-preserving measures and then buying everything with a payment card? Payment cards allow data brokers to track every purchase you make, every business you visit and when. When you split a check with someone else, it lets them know who your friends and coworkers are. The amount of privacy lost using payment cards is astounding.
So many responses from people trying to find reasons to hold onto their payment cards. Fine, go ahead. Have your purchases, contacts and whereabouts permanently stored and tracked. Just don't lecture anyone about the dangers of unencrypted comms or website tracking.
@dangoodin Because replies don't appear to know this, credit and debit card transactions cost merchants on average between 1.5-3.5% of sales price.
PayPal is higher, IIRC.
Chart from NerdWallet:
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/credit-card-processing-fees
@femme_mal @dangoodin For dealing with a local merchant, or a tradesperson, sure pay cash on the spot. The trades person may well designate that "beer money" and pocket it.
For dealing with big companies and online sellers, a credit card gives you quite a bit of protection. They do NOT like chargebacks.
Also I get that 1.5% back from the card company, so unless the big business is giving me a cash discount, I am 1.5% better off by using a card.
The tracking of your hourly whereabouts, your purchases and your contacts seems like a high price to me. YMMV.
@dangoodin @femme_mal To me the ideal approach is to decide what you want "off the record" and figure out how to isolate that. Maybe you buy alcohol or cannabis products or vapes with cash so that doesn't go to your insurance company. Maybe you have a VPN for online activism. You have a boring on the record life, and keep the spicy stuff offline.
@dangoodin @mike805 Excellent point — ex. women absolutely should be concerned about their purchases of feminine products as one example since fertility can be deduced from buying habits as well as the legal jurisdiction in which they are purchased.
But a purchase of a household appliance is different from monthly purchases of personal consumables. My home is public record and the 1-in-20 year replacement hot water heater is less noteworthy.
@femme_mal @dangoodin If it's "on the record" already then might as well use a card.
Buying excess alcohol or tobacco products might actually affect your health or life insurance, so those should definitely be cash purchases. Likewise cannabis products in places where those can be bought OTC.
@mike805 @dangoodin Yes, all good points. I don't need the protections a card offers on purchases of fresh vegetables at the local farm market but the purchase of hard goods like a new refrigerator certainly merits them.
@mike805 @femme_mal @dangoodin The rule of thumb when I ran a small shop in the 90s was to keep a third off the books. Almost no one was using cards then.
@femme_mal @dangoodin why is American Express even a thing? I don't know any stores that support it, and this fees table kind of shows why.
@sophieschmieg @femme_mal @dangoodin
My Amex is my grocery store card. 6% cash back. Guess where I purchase gift cards for Amazon, Airline tickets, and other common big corp? All subsidized by cash payers and CAC budgets.