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Card is a permanent %2+ tax, how does it compare?

See my sibling comment, but it is hard to quantify how much cash costs because a lot of the costs are indirect or infrequent capital costs. Things like employee time, and money handling equipment. It will also vary enormously based on the scale and nature of the business.

A small coffee shop can get by with a $129 cash drawer hooked up to an iPad and a manager spending a few hours per week counting money and visiting the bank. A large store like Walmart can easily spend $100k+ on all of the equipment for cash handling in addition to having to contract with an armored car company.

Note that "a few hours per week" for the manager costs perhaps $30/hour total compensation. That's more than the price of that drawer, every week.

Over a year, it's perhaps 4 hours/week x $30/hour x 52 weeks/year, which comes to over $6,000. That's real money for a small coffee shop.

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