I can remember the days when many foreign airports required cash on fuel purchases and the travel advances our pilots were given were staggering.
Today we're a plastic world. Very few businesses don't accept cards. You can accept them just using a smart phone. I knew a restaurant in my hometown once that thought they wouldn't. Well business people would go in with large groups and no warning. They had no money. It was then take a check or nothing. And it was never return there.
All our fuel and dockage away from home is by card, even when there is a cash discount. Now we do make up much of the cash discount with rewards. A marina offers 5 cents per gallon discount when fuel is $3.50 a gallon. You're getting a 1.5% or even 3% reward for using the card and that's 5.2 cents to 10.5 cents per gallon.
Even though cards cost processing costs, smart businesses for the most part still don't want to encourage cash. Every cash transaction runs risk of some of the cash disappearing. Plus marinas are not famous for having the best controls in place.
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