Card Payments

So, we have dealt with cash. Now the question is: how do we accept payments from our visitors? The three obvious options are cards, online payments, and direct transfers (from the customer’s account to ours). In this episode, I will talk about cards.

First of all, everyone has a card. Really—everyone. We run into people who do not have one maybe a couple of times a week. No more. When someone says, “I do not have a card,” it is either a rare coincidence or, more often than not, just not true. Ninety-nine point nine percent of our visitors have cards. And that is the key to why our approach works.

Yes, from time to time, certain customers ask why we only accept card payments. But when they hear the reasons, they usually understand. Very rarely, someone takes a stand and says: “No, then I will not buy anything.” But that happens maybe once a week.

I already explained the disadvantages of cash here. You can see that every disadvantage of cash corresponds to an advantage of cards. No need to repeat it all. But here are the arguments we give our customers when they ask why we take only cards, not cash:

• Speed. We waste zero seconds counting money. No issues with running out of change.
• Hygiene. We do not touch money.
• Protection from fraud. No situations where someone claims they gave us €50 when they only gave €10.
• Protection from robbery. We have no cash to steal.
• Protection from dishonest staff. Obvious.
• Financial transparency. No explaining to tax authorities why cash does not match receipts, or dealing with endless questions about unissued checks.
• Saving time. No depositing cash at the bank, no buying coins for change.

A few words about speed. This was the main reason we first switched to card-only. When you have a line of 5, 10, or even 20 people—all in a hurry—every second counts. Card payments not only speed up service, almost doubling efficiency, but also remove the need for a separate cashier. That saves us at least €3000 a month in Austria.

And of course, greater speed is not just convenient for customers—it allows us to serve more customers per day. Direct financial benefit. Small details like this are the foundation of real success.

Now, the one thing that seems to weigh against cards: transaction fees. Let me explain how we deal with that.

The standard payment provider model often looks like this: a fixed fee per transaction, plus a percentage of the sale, plus annual or monthly terminal fees. For example, €0.15 + 1.5% per transaction, plus €200 per year for the terminal. In that case, a €2 espresso is burdened with €0.18 in fees—9% of gross revenue from that drink. That is enormous.

Here is our example. In August, we had 7248 card transactions. At €0.15 each, that is €1087. Gross turnover on cards was €63,550, so 1.5% equals €953.25. In total, our payment processor charged €2040 for the month.

That is a lot of money. Over €24,000 a year. And this is the main reason why businesses with many small transactions avoid going cashless. I believe most payment providers are old, slow dinosaurs—losing their markets.

Because new players have entered. Aggressive, sharp, logical, and effective. For example, SumUp. They offer 0.95% on domestic cards and 2.5% on foreign ones. No fixed fee. No annual or monthly “maintenance” fees. Just that percentage. Nothing else. For businesses like ours, that makes a massive difference. We now pay significantly less than 1% on our turnover.

And since we only accept cards (and online payments), providers like SumUp give even better terms if your annual turnover exceeds €100,000. Very attractive.

There are several such companies. Their rates allow us to negotiate strongly with other processors to get better deals.

I may have gotten carried away with the math here—but I think someone will find this useful.

Now, a quick technical note. We do not enter the payment amount into the terminal manually. Our system sends the order amount to the terminal automatically. So, zero wasted time.

So, in summary, I will say this: I truly do not understand entrepreneurs who think otherwise. Keeping cash as a payment method only hurts your business and your revenue.

If entrepreneurs are in business for money, then going cashless is a basic necessity. Anything else comes from unfounded fears (I would call it ignorance) or so-called “principles.”

I plan to dedicate two more episodes to this topic: one about the negative experiences of going cashless, and another about how we communicate with customers on this issue.