In defense of cashless, there is so much you don’t have to worry about as the business owner; yes the credit companies take a somewhat exhorbitant percentage but you don’t have to worry about having thousands of dollars in cash at the end of the day, don’t have to worry about employees skimming or making mistakes like coming in short. It also automates a ton of the accounting. So there are some benefits.
On the other hand, you have to worry about disputes and chargebacks, of which you can only accumulate so many with your processor, and which also tend to have unfavorable outcomes for merchants.
The pros may still outweigh the cons, but it’s not all roses with cards.
I can’t put any numbers to this, but yes, it’s probably the case that as the ATV increases the dispute rate also increases, and probably particularly rare in the food service industry.
In my experience it can be rare even with an ATV in the thousands of dollars, but it’s still (unfortunately) a non-zero risk.
Yes - it's hard to automate because it's offline, it's higher risk because you have to show your face, it's usually low value products, and if there's any issues people usually go back to the cashier and then void the transaction - removing a large part of refund costs.
