Visa is challenging small restaurants, cafés and food trucks to stop accepting cash. The credit card company announced in a news release this week it is offering $500,000 to 50 eligible U.S.-based eateries to go 100 percent cashless. Restaurants signing up can get a gift of up to $10,000 from Visa to help pay for technology upgrades, the San Francisco-based company said. The businesses are asked to describe what cashless means for them, their employees and customers. Visa has been trying to get the public and business to move beyond cash payment for years, but cash is still used to settle more transactions than any other means of exchange. “At Visa, we believe you can be everywhere you want to be, and that it should be easy to pay and be paid in more ways than ever — whether it’s a phone, card, wearable or other device,” Jack Forestell, Visa’s head of global merchant solutions, said in a statement. “We have an incredible opportunity to educate merchants and consumers alike on the effectiveness of going cashless.”
Credit card companies charge processing fees to businesses for the plastic charges. “The important thing to realize is that going with ‘fast and easy’ is not always the best and most cost effective,” said Marco Carabjo, a credit expert, in 2013. “Typical merchant account companies can charge up to 5 percent of everything a company earns with prices consisting of merchant processing costs, gateway fees, interchange costs, Visa, MasterCard, American Express charges, statement fees and so on.”
But Visa said it recently conducted a study it said showed that if businesses in 100 cities transitioned from cash to digital, their cities could see net annual benefits of $312 billion. “In New York City alone, businesses could generate an additional $6.8 billion in revenue and save more than 186 million hours in labor, by making greater use of digital payments,” Visa said in a release. “This amounts to more than $5 billion annual costs savings for businesses in New York.” As of Dec. 31, there were 3.1 billion Visa credit cards and 141 billion total transactions, the company reported on its website.
When cash transactions are no more, banks, governments and others will have control over spending. Banks will use that control to increase their profits. Governments will use that control to try to stamp out some forms of crime. And churches will see a way to penalize someone who doesn’t go along with the soon coming worship laws.
“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:15-17.
Source References