There is nothing stopping stores from offering a discount if you pay in cash or debit. Businesses most often choose not to, so they must feel like they are getting somthing out of the deal.
As a small merchant I can tell you: cash sucks to deal with and it costs money too. I went to cashless years ago. The 2.x% I eat in processing is more than made up for in not having to deal with shrinkage (either due to theft or inaccuracy or counterfiet bills), security, having to count money and go to the bank regularly, etc.
It's probably different when you're at a much larger scale than I am, but even Wal-Mart (who I was employed by in my late teens) has all sorts of cash-handling procedures to mitigate the risk of money just walking away. Even a their scale, they spend 1% on CC processing, but by the time they added up all of the labor and expenses of cash handling,it might be comparable. And for a small business it's likely more.
And then there's the data collection which has value too.
People act like accepting cash is free, it is not.
Thanks, this is an interesting opinion to read! I went through a period where I asked most small/local businesses I happened to be shopping at whether they preferred cash or card, as I had both to hand. It was a small sample size, but the vast majority said they didn't care either way, and a handful said they preferred cash. I never experienced card-only or a card-preference. That did surprise me, as I expected at least some to feel as you do.
Humorously, there are laws against credit card surcharges but not against cash discounts.
Realistically, the price difference is probably not worth the hassle of needing two prices and card sales are probably affordable enough and common enough to not bother.
They basically said a surcharge for credit is effectively the same thing as a discount for cash, and because of freedom of speech, merchants are free to communicate the difference to their customers either way.
Gas stations do the cash discount for a particular reason - to get you inside the building where you might buy profitable convenience-store items, which you won't if you just stay at the pump. (Though yes, the differential might be less than the kickback from a card rewards program.)
