# How costly is using cash? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 26, 2009, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868 "2009-03-26T14:01:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/21 "2009-03-26T19:21:19Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Using cash is 7 cents per gallon cheaper at gas stations in Detroit suburbs. Not at Sam’s, and not quite at all of the other gas stations, yet. There are only a few that I go to anymore because of it. > [@Magiver](#): > > I mainly use cash to maintain spending limits and to limit identity theft. It’s also the fastest way through a checkout. I don’t know why people keep saying that. Unless it’s a little mom and pop place with a dial-up modem, credit cards are almost instant. At a convenience store (small amount) swipe and run – no signature needed. At a supermarket, swipe while you’re being run up. Sign the receipt. Still much faster than making change, and at worst, it takes the same time. Versus smelly, crusty old women who dig for exact change in the bottoms of their gargantuan purses (or who write checks), swiping a card is an order of magnitude faster. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/22 "2009-03-26T19:30:53Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > …when the store is busy a card transaction usually takes longer than cash. Apparently you have not been patronized by the nice old lady who always gets in front of me at the grocery store and takes out her wallet and counts out her bills, one at a time, unwrinkling each one, then puts away her wallet, then takes out her change purse, and counts out her quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, until she has the exact change. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/23 "2009-03-26T19:37:30Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > You’d be surprised. One of the most common techniques is to pretend to ring something up and pocket the cash for the sale. Since there’s no record of the sale, it looks like product went missing. This is one reason many businesses want prices that end in odd numbers of cents. I don’t understand how this technique leads to the “odd number of cents” thing. When I was a kid I worked in a neighborhood convenience store. This was before computerized cash registers. I found that two guys that worked there were using this method. Lots of customers would just drop money on the counter and leave, and most people didn’t look at the total on the register or care if they got a receipt (common for cigarette sales–smokers know exactly what a pack is going to cost). So they would try to read the situation, and just hit the “no sale” button, which opened the register drawer. Then they would make change if needed, just as in a normal transaction. At the end of the day they reconciled the register and kept the extra money. No security cameras. ---
**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/24 "2009-03-26T19:41:27Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Unless it’s a little mom and pop place with a dial-up modem, credit cards are almost instant. At a convenience store (small amount) swipe and run – no signature needed. At a supermarket, swipe while you’re being run up. Sign the receipt. Still much faster than making change, and at worst, it takes the same time. Two problems. One, every system around here has a different setup; fiddling with the card as you try to figure out which end up/swipe or insert/can I swipe yet? takes longer than handing over a $20. Two, some systems don’t allow you to swipe the card until the cashier has totaled the bill and/or won’t process the transaction until the cashier gives some secret sign. This slows things down to a ridiculous extent (the supermarket closest to my house is a prime example). ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/25 "2009-03-26T19:45:44Z")
> [@smagglebutt](#): > > I hate carrying cash! That’d be a dream come true if everyone did that. Woohoo I can only dream of the day when government tracking expenses are reduced because no investigative work has to be done due to payments in cash. The NSA will have a boomtime as they can track our every move based on the digital trail we leave behind us. It’ll be a halcyon Utopia! ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/26 "2009-03-26T21:11:03Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > I don’t understand how this technique leads to the “odd number of cents” thing. If you make something .99 and have .07 of tax added, the customer can’t get away with giving you a single dollar bill. They might give you exact change, or $1.10 so that they don’t need or want change back, but most people are going to give you $2 or $5 and expect change. Your example shows that it isn’t a fool-proof solution, but it is one step that does reduce theft by employees. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/27 "2009-03-26T21:55:33Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Not at Sam’s, and not quite at all of the other gas stations, yet. There are only a few that I go to anymore because of it. > I don’t know why people keep saying that. Unless it’s a little mom and pop place with a dial-up modem, credit cards are almost instant. At a convenience store (small amount) swipe and run – no signature needed. At a supermarket, swipe while you’re being run up. Sign the receipt. Still much faster than making change, and at worst, it takes the same time. Versus smelly, crusty old women who dig for exact change in the bottoms of their gargantuan purses (or who write checks), swiping a card is an order of magnitude faster. You can’t swipe a card and sign until the transaction is complete. Otherwise you would be agreeing to anything. And I manage to get behind people who don’t swipe the card correctly or the computer is slow. While there may be people who have problems operating a wallet, I’m not one of them. Before the total is calcuated I’ve already got my money out and the transaction is faster than a card and doesn’t expose me to companies that get hacked into. It also doesn’t expose me to fraud at restarants where palm sized card readers can be used. Finally, checks are not cash. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a check at a business. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/28 "2009-03-26T22:46:53Z")
> [@Desert\_Nomad](#): > > On a recent flight (American Airlines IIRC), they said duty free and/or alcohol purchases could be made in any convertible currency. There were obviously expecting Pounds, Euro or Dollars. I didn’t buy anything, but as I had currency from UAE, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Jordan and New Zealand (all of which are convertible), it was tempting. “Convertible” has no official definition. No doubt in this case it would have been construed as “any currency, so long as it’s on our [short] list.” ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/29 "2009-03-26T23:19:29Z")
This thread makes me weep. Anyone that thinks Credit Cards are faster or cheaper has a seriously poor understanding of how a business (and money in general) works. First the merchant pays a ~3% service charge on everything that goes through the credit card machine. In many cases that is augmented by an additional per item fee, or a per transaction fee ranging going as high as 50¢ per. Second, the merchant needs to maintain a T1 line or several dedicated phone lines for the credit card machines at several hundred dollars a month. Take a step back and think about that. People freak out when they are asked to raise their Sales Tax from 7.2% - 7.5%. People lose their minds when Democrats are elected because their Federal Income Taxes could go from 33%-35% on certain brackets. Now, these same people will giddily hope for a Credit Card dominated economy where EVERY TRANSACTION carries an additional 3-4% charge? That is a much bigger chunk of your income than anything Washington or local governments will do to you from election cycle to election cycle. So, asking if CASH is somehow costly is completely and utterly asinine. Mind you, these 3% fees that are being charged to the business (which you pay for directly _with additional markup to maintain margins_ in the goods you purchase) are held down by the fact that cash is available as a market competitor. If cash were to disappear, or shrink to a very small proportion, in our economy business owners will have no choice to do business using credit and debit. That would mean that Visa/MC/Amex would essentially be able to change anything they wanted in fees. Fees that we’d directly pay for. As the banks continue to consolidate and the credit card issuers are already monolithic there’d be ZERO pressure to contain these fees. Cash, while not free to produce and use as a country, is profitable. The US Treasury turns a profit and supplies our federal budget, in effect reducing the tax burden. Using credit would transfer that wealth creation to privately owned (and recently proven to be greedy and destructive on the whole) banks! Not to mention the fucking phone companies/utilities getting 8 and 10 access points in every business as opposed to the 2 the phone/internet uses normally. So, you people think that transferring to a cash free society would be convenient? Really? Have you used your deductive reasoning skills at all? I also find this idea that cash is somehow slower than credit to be bafflingly stupid. You might talk about the ONE old lady struggling to dig out her exact change but that’s what, 1 of every 10,000 customers? And how fast do you think she’d be trying to figure out the speedpass and touch screen? Work for 15 minutes in any retail environment and you will instantly loathe the use of credit cards for every minor purchase. They waste epic amounts of time. The Speedpass things at the grocery store, 7-11 or McDonalds where you don’t have to sign and can swipe ahead of time or while odering are in the VAST minority. Most places don’t have them and have dedicated credit card machines that require them to initiate a completely new process (in addition to the register functions that they still need to do) to run the credit card and they don’t always respond instantly. Most places still require a signature or a PIN, two things you shouldn’t want to share 50 times a day no less, for any purchase and that takes, much, much longer than a cash transaction. People. Cash is your friend. Credit Cards are great at the gas station so you don;'t need to go inside. They are stellar for the internet and big ticket item purchases. If you use it at the 7-11 and McDonalds you are throwing away your money and bleeding our economy further in needless administration and service fees. Finally, Cash is essentially no-cost for a business. The time it takes to cash up is much faster than the time it takes to total up and process credit card receipts. If those receipts involve tipping you can triple it. Banks don’t generally charge businesses for cash deposits and big businesses pay services to come and claim their cash for a fee that pales in comparison to the fee they pay to their credit card processing machines. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/30 "2009-03-26T23:38:11Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > You can’t swipe a card and sign until the transaction is complete. Otherwise you would be agreeing to anything. And I manage to get behind people who don’t swipe the card correctly or the computer is slow. And like I said, I get behind people that use cash slowly. I guess we could compromise and say that if you know what you’re doing with cash, and I know what I’m doing with my credit card, there’s no time difference. However, in every modern place I’ve ever shopped, you can swipe your card and hit the credit button the moment the cashier starts running your order. Meijer, Kroger, Target, Sam’s, JC Penney, Nieman Marcus. Only the Apple store is different, because they don’t have a terminal out. Cashier hits the total button, sign the screen, and you’re out of there. Really, it’s only creepy little places with early 90’s technology with the dial-up modems that don’t work that way. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/31 "2009-03-27T00:03:29Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > Really, it’s only creepy little places with early 90’s technology with the dial-up modems that don’t work that way. Chip & PIN is widespread here in the U.K. and you put your card in the reader after all your goods have been totalled. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868/32 "2009-03-27T00:04:42Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > “Convertible” has no official definition. No doubt in this case it would have been construed as “any currency, so long as it’s on our [short] list.” Actually some currencies are non-convertible: Tunisian Dinars and Seychelles Rupees to name a couple. [http://www.investorwords.com/7680/non\_convertible\_currency.html](http://www.investorwords.com/7680/non_convertible_currency.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-costly-is-using-cash/490868.md?page=1)