Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Cash is King (Not)! Small Business Owners – Accept Credit Cards or Wither



When it comes to transacting with customers cash is becoming less and less popular every day. It has come to a point when many people don’t even carry any cash in their wallet, if they carry a wallet at all! According to Gallup poll only 24% of US population is using cash for all or most of their purchases. This is down from 36% only five years ago. If this trend continues it will not be surprising if the federal government starts phasing out some of the cash all together! Few months ago India took a controversial step of banning large currency and instead encouraged the use of credit card and mobile payments for all transactions.



Small business owners who do not facilitate the use of credit card as a method of payment stand to lose customers. While it is true that it costs more for small businesses to accept credit card when accounting for the transaction fees they have to pay to credit card processing companies when you consider the negative impact of not accepting credit cards in the form of lost business it would be ill-advised not to pay this transaction fee. Just consider it as a cost of doing business. The alternative can be even worse!