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I imagine handling cash probably has hidden costs that are comparable to the swipe fees, though.

It does. Here in the UK at least, it's usually a lot cheaper to take cards than to pay transport (this is a real pain) and deposit fees (the latter is 2% on top of a fixed monthly fee, for my business account) so its usually only tax dodgers that go cash only

I think in the US merchant fees for card transactions are much higher though so may be a different ball game over there.

I thought that was really clever when the supermarkets started offering cashbacks - customers get a means of getting cash easily and they reduce the amount of cash they have to transport and deposit.

Mind you - haven't used that for years and I think most supermarkets have stopped offering it.

"x costs three times as much as y" is a kind of comparison ;)

(The factor of three is real, but perhaps that business had unusually bad contracts with the credit card companies. I wouldn't know.)

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