For many many years a retail business that I work for has been cash only. The people who own the business are elderly, and they have been very resistant to upgrading their POS to take credit and debit cards. Their reasoning is that they can’t afford the fees. Every day they lose multiple sales because people don’t always carry cash. I need some hard statistical facts to bring to them to convince them that they will make more money taking carts, even if they have to forfeit a small percentage for fees. Anyone know where I can get these sorts of numbers? For example the average percentage that sales increase when people decide to upgrade their payment system to take cards.
There might be more to it than you know. They might be quietly putting the cash in their pockets and the IRS is completely unaware of their actual income. It’s not an insignificant amount of money, if they do that.
Realistically speaking you’re not likely to find any real concrete numbers to use.
Research like that would have been bought and paid for by a company that intends to use it. You won’t find it for free.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that a business that refuses to take card in 2023 is not long for this world.
Especially not in retail or small ticket service.
If they insist they don’t want to pay fees, they could set up with a company that offers surcharge processing and offer it to clients without cash.
So many resturants ive avoided just cause its “cash only”. I don’t ever carry cash
I know many bars that are cash only that won’t change, have integrated it into their model and continue to thrive and grow.
It is a charity gift shop run by elderly people. They want to take cash.
Although they lose some customers by not taking cards… and cards are very much king in a retail operation… if people really want the item, which should be at a reasonable charity thrift store price, they will go get cash and come back for it.
What is the average price of a transaction? How is inventory kept? How are donations priced?
It seems like the operation is built as it wants to be, a tax-exempt, charity thrift store that operates on donations.
It is a glorified yard sale. There is no need to upgrade anything for any reason. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Where I live (Canada) the banks charge about 2.25% as a cash deposit fee. Credit card fees are not that different. By far the least expensive way to take payment is with a debit card - only 3-4 cents per transaction.
The security risk of cash is not worth it in that context. And my electronic payments show up in my account the next day. It’s hard to beat the convenience.
Try it for a month with a square reader and compare sales to the same month the year before. No other stat matters.
Pass the 2.5-3% swipe fee along at checkout, or since this isn’t r/illegallifetips, switch systems and claim a shit ton less on your taxes next year 🤷♀️
What city are they in? NYC still does cash only.
Start making a business plan for yourself as the new owner. Then, get in a position to buy it cheap at bankruptcy prices. Sounds better than saving them from their own greed and stupidity.
Just wait for them to go broke and buy the business, if they are not upgrading well, their problem.
A large portion of sales are going to wind up being card if they decide to take cards. My suggestion is to raise prices 10% across the board and then have a 10% discount for cash transactions if they want to do it that way. Alternately they could just go ahead and raise prices 10% across the board and just not offer a cash discount. As far as percentages of people paying with a card, I would peg it right at about 75%.
Wait a second, they have a POS system and don’t take card? Thats odd. Well, don’t they know they can charge a fee for card to offset the extra expenses? To put it plainly, they’re also probably doing a lot of business off the books which they can still do (not advocating for it) if they implement card payment.
Not sure why no one is mentioning you can pass these fees onto the customer, depending on the state. Most allow convince fees to be added, 3% per charge is what they’ll be getting and customers gladly pay…. Not to mention this actually will make everything easier for them. They are older not dumb… just need more YouTube videos or hand holding, but they aren’t incapable just cause of their age…