Visa seems to be waging war against cash. The company has declared that it will offer $10,000 to any restaurant if it decides to go cash free and only accepts payment in the form of credit, debit cards or mobile payment. In a bid to promote the cashless transactions, Visa is offering the prize money to up to 50 small restaurants who adapt the policy of only accepting money in the digital formats.
What Visa is offering and ways of going cashless
Visa said that cash is something which is slowly going out of fashion. This revolution is underway all over the world but is being led by Sweden.
Over half the banks in Sweden reportedly do not stock any cash, which is why the country is well on its way to becoming the very first cash free society in the world. The United States is also not that far behind on this revolutionary concept.
Visa said that it would go further than just awarding $10,000 to any restaurants that took up this cash-free initiative. The company said that it would also bear the cost of installing Digital Payment accepting machines in these restaurants. These terminals would be programmed in a way to conduct contactless transactions. Mobile services such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and others are already quite popular across the country.
However, most restaurants in the country have yet to adapt this cash free style of conducting the business.
Restaurants interested in the initiative will have to sign up online on Visa’s web page. From there the company will select 50 businesses and offer them a chance to go completely cash free. Currently, cash accounts for just 30 percent of personal retail spending in America which shows how far digital forms of payment have come.
Why going cash less is beneficial
Jack Forestell, Visa’s head of Global Merchant Solutions, claimed that going cashless is beneficial its added security, convenience and ease of use. With such a system, people will no longer have to worry whether they have enough cash with them at some point and will instead be able to conduct business freely.
However, Visa is not supporting the initiative out of the goodness of its heart alone. Every digital transaction would mean that the company would get to keep a part of each transaction. Thus, removing the method of cash payments would immensely increase the profits generated for Visa as well. However, preliminary estimates suggest that if 100 cities went totally cash free, it would result in around $312 billion profits annually.
