Visa Inc. has unveiled an interesting proposal for restaurants and food vendors across the U.S. The credit card giant is willing to give as many as 50 food-related merchants $10,000 each to upgrade their systems, especially to accept contactless mobile payments. The catch: they must agree to no longer accept cash.

It?s no secret that cash has been Visa?s longtime competitor, but we?ve never seen them wage war quite like this before.

?We?re focused on putting cash out of business,? Visa?s new CEO, Al Kelly, told investors in June. Globally, payments by cash and check are actually increasing. Americans still use cash in 32% of transactions, and Visa is on a mission to change that.

Pros & Cons Of Going Cashless

According to one New York City restaurant, they save 23 hours each week worth of work by going cashless. However, the downside to this is having to pay transaction fees on all of the revenue it takes in.

The National Retail Federation is not in favor of going cashless, pointing out that fees take an average 2% bite off the top of business. This percentage is even higher for smaller merchants. They also noted that expenses related to accepting cash, including the risk of robbery and theft, are still lower than paying credit card fees.

Visa will pick the participating businesses for their cashless program from an application process that begins in August, and from there it will be interesting to see how customers respond to it.

Since we recently began offering Aliant merchants Bitpay, we?re also going to throw this out there: one way that businesses can avoid both interchange fees and cash would be to accept blockchain currencies like Bitcoin! For more information on Bitpay, contact us today!