As a business owner are you finding that you are handling less cash and coin these days? Sienna Kossman’s of CreditCards.com recent article: Poll: Pay with cash or card for $5 purchase? surmises that this is true and particular types of shoppers are driving this shift.
The survey may also highlight a weakening of the purported stigma associated with using a payment card for small-ticket purchases, suggests Matt Schulz, senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com. “But now, that’s really gone,” Schulz tells Digital Transactions News. “What we’ve seen in this survey is those folks under 50 have no problem paying with plastic for small purchases.” It also found that the anti-cash trend is particularly strong among the young. A majority of those ages 18-29 now prefer paying for small purchases with credit or debit, and only 36 percent will pay with cash.”
The recent poll* referred to was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for CreditCards.com, (a card comparison site for consumers) compiles some interesting data that you may find insightful in explaining more about your customers and their card and cash habits.
The findings boil down to this: Cash is still king, but its crown is slipping. Two years ago, when we conducted the same survey, cash was at 65 percent” compared to 58% today says Kossman.
* Was conducted by contacting a representative sample of 1,000 adults, 616 of whom said they had a major credit card – American Express, Visa, MasterCard or Discover. The cardholders were asked, “When you pay for something in person that is less than $5, do you usually pay with cash, a credit card or a debit card?” The margin of sampling error for the cardholders is plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.
