Why do grocery stores in the U.S. offer cash back so eagerly?
The only card I've seen offer this on credit card purchases is Discover.  I think they have a special deal with the stores so that the cash-over amount is not included in the percentage-fee the merchant pays.  (The cash part shows up broken-out from the purchase amount on the statement--if this was purely something the store did on its own without some collaboration with Discover that would not happen). The first few times I've seen the offer, I assumed it would be treated like a cash-advance (high APR, immediate interest with no grace period, etc.), but it is not.  It is treated like a purchase. You have no interest charge if you pay in full during the grace period, and no transaction fee.  Now I very rarely go to the ATM. What is in it for Discover?  They have a higher balance to charge you interest on if you ever fail to pay in full before the grace period.  And Discover doesn't have any debit/pin option that I know of, so no concern of cannibalizing their other business.  And happier customers. What is in it for the grocer?  Happier customers, and they need to have the armored car come around less often and spend less time counting drawers internally. Cash-back also lets the store turn hard currency into an electronic transfer or check, which reduces the hassle/risk of hauling bagfulls of cash to the bank. (The smaller stores I've spoken to have called this out as a major advantage of plastic over either cash or checks. I'm assuming that the problem scales with number and size of transactions.) It doesn't cost them anything, they don't pay commission on you taking cash-back. But it brings customers to the stores because these customers would rather buy something and use cash-back to get cash, than go to an ATM and pay the ATM commission. The cost to the store is small. They may have to pay a slightly greater fee because the transaction is now bigger. They do need additional cash on hand. Even though the majority of transactions are electronic (credit/debit) or check, the local grocery store still seems to have significant cash on hand. This is seen as a customer service. If there is a 2% fee the $50 advance costs them $1 for the minority of customers that take advantage of it. After more than 10 years of doing this they have figured this into the cost of groceries. Of course the credit card company could also waive the fee to store. My credit card online statement does tell me how much cash back was received. The line says date, store, amount ($40.00 cash over and $123.45 purchases) $163.45 total. Therefore the credit card company knows that cash back was used. Cash back from credit cards is handled separately than the rest of the purchase, i.e. interest begins accumulating on that day, and likely at a higher rate, and usually comes out of a lower limit than the credit allotted to that card. Given all these differences, and the obvious revenue-generation situation for the lender, it makes sense for them to give the store an incentive, rather than penalize them further, for the use of such a feature.  Note: I am not privy to the inner-workings or agreements between large stores and credit lenders, so I cannot guarantee any of this. The reason is, stores want customers to use cash.   By giving us cash, we are more likely to use cash next time. I feel a little guilty when using my bank card at the store because I know I'm giving about 2-3% of the sale to the bank.  Unless I don't really like where I'm shopping (ie Walmart), I try to use cash if I have it.  I doubt these large stores pay extra for supplying the cash portion.  They just need to keep the cash onhand. In other countries, do they not mind paying banks a percentage of each transaction?  That's a huge loss for retailers.  (I also heard tipping isn't popular in some countries, maybe the lack of regard for vendors is related somehow??) Oh, plus, it's a value added service.  A customer is more likely to return to a store if they provide this service.
"We *are* talking at cross-purposes, but not for the reason you think.   The debt might or might not be legally or practically recoverable (the apple-farmer and everything he owns might have been destroyed in the fire), but the value created and destroyed was real, and so was the money.   You're focusing on the debt owed to the shoemaker, which is fine, but your mistake is thinking that the debt is in some way meaningfully different from money, which it's not.   Most people who try to explain this difference would go off on a spiel about how the overwhelming majority of money on deposit in banks and otherwise in circulation has never been printed, or something, which is okay, but it's not a very convincing argument because you'll come back with something like, ""But I can still withdraw all my money, I can still cash all my checks, etc...""  So instead, I'm going to try and break this down, bear with me...  The apple-grower got a deer (worth 12 loddars, let's set the ""interest"" part aside for the moment). I got a pair shoes (also worth loddars).  Forget about the shoe-maker and the debt for a moment, and focus on me. I sold a deer, and I used the proceeds to buy a pair of shoes.   - Did I defraud anyone? No, I engaged in a fair transaction with willing partners on both sides.   - Did I get paid for the deer? Obviously I did, because I used the payment to buy shoes.   - What did I get paid with, if not money?   I can hear you saying ""yeah, but the shoe guy...""   Forget about the shoe guy. When buy something on Amazon marketplace and charge it on a credit card and then get paid via direct-deposit and then have the money taken from your account to pay off the credit-card company electronically, is all of that real money? Of course it is.   Now, what happens if you die before paying the the credit-card bill? Does that mean that the money Amazon paid to the seller doesn't exist?  Does that mean that money paid by the CC company to Amazon doesn't exist? How about the money in your bank account, does that exist? What if your employer once defrauded someone, how about then?   None of that money has ever been *printed*, nobody got permission from Ben Bernanke to authorize these transactions, but the money that changed hands was absolutely real, even though it was nothing more than a *series of promises.*   Before you argue with me, think this through: all these account-transfers ultimately boil down to *promises* by the end bank to produce cash when and if the account-holder walks up to a teller and demands it. The bank doesn't have nearly enough cash to pay every account-holder, but they *do* have enough (hopefully) to keep their promises, since they know they won't all be called in at once.   Nobody ever actually delivered a package of paper currency to cover these transactions. Everyone is just trading promises, and passing those promises along to others. It sounds crazy to say it that way, but it is *absolutely* true.   Tally up your net worth (or if that's too ugly, imagine tallying up someone's net worth who has a net worth). Chances are that you have never in your life seen that amount of paper cash, certainly not in your physical possession. So who has it? It's not like your local bank branch has a box marked ""C_B_M"" with $400,000 in bills and coins sitting there.   What you have is a series of promises.   When your employer gets by credit-card, the customer promises to pay the credit-card company, who promises to pay your employer's bank. Your employer then pays you with a direct-deposit whereby his bank promises to pay your bank. You then swipe an ATM card and your bank promises to pay the grocery-store's bank, who in turn sends a check to their supplier which is a promise that the grocery-store's bank will pay the supplier's bank, who in turn does the same with the farmer, who does the same with his mortgage-company, who does the same to their investors, who do the same to whoever they spend money with.   Occasionally one of them takes a cash withdrawal to tip the stripper or stick in a birthday-card or buy hot-dogs at the ballpark or something, but overwhelmingly, we are all just spending and re-spending *promises*, and the remarkable thing is that, overwhelmingly, *we keep them*, without anyone involved ever hiring a truck to deliver a bindle of cash to the ""first person"" because there *is* no ""first person.""  All of that stuff is *absolutely real money*.   I used the example of a wildfire, but maybe it will be more useful to think of something that just changes in value for no obvious reason. Think of some article of clothing that has gone out of style-- everyone was buying that stuff up until the day they stopped. Somewhere, someone was stuck with the last warehouse full of hot-pink parachute pants or whatever. A month before, when they were ordered from China or wherever, they were worth $50 each. Now you can't give them away. That value is gone, it's just vanished. The money that bought the pants was real, the pants are real, but they are no longer worth anything.   The person holding that warehouse full of pants now has to *pay* to either store of dispose of them. They might start bouncing checks and breaking promises. There was no fraud, but there also might not be any way to recover the money owed. $10mm worth of parachute pants is now negative $1mm worth of trash that has to be disposed of and mortgage obligations on the warehouse.   I hope some of that makes sense. It is really hard to explain this stuff via analogy and hypothetical and the kinds of terms that lawyers think in, if you will forgive me for saying so." "This might not be the answer you are looking for, but the alternative to ""don't patronize these merchants"" is this: DO patronize these merchants, and pay cash.   Credit cards are convenient.  (I use a credit card often.)  However, there is no denying that they cost the merchants an incredible amount in fees, and that our entire economy is paying for these fees.  The price of everything is more than it needs to be because of these fees.  Yes, you get some money back with your rewards card, but the money you get back comes directly from the store you made the purchase with, and the reward is paid for by increasing the price of everything you buy.  In addition, those among us that do not have the credit score necessary to obtain a rewards card are paying the same higher price for goods as the rest of us, but don't get the cash back reward. Honestly, it seems quite fair to me that only the people charging purchases to a credit card should have to pay the extra fee that goes along with that payment processing.  If a store chooses to do that, I pay cash instead, and I am grateful for the discount." "There absolutely is a specific model that makes this so popular with so many credit card companies, and that model is ""per transaction fees"". Card companies also receive cost-sharing incentives from certain merchants. There is also a psychological reasoning as an additional incentive. When you want to accept credit cards as a source of payment as a business, you generally have three kinds of fees to pay: monthly/yearly subscription fees, percentage of transaction fee, and per transaction fee.  The subscription fees can be waived and sometimes are expressed as a ""minimum cost"", so the business pays a certain amount whether you actually have people use credit cards or not. Many of these fees don't actually make it to the credit card companies, as they just pay the service providers and middle-men processing companies. The percentage of transaction fee means that the business accepting payment via credit card must pay a percentage usually ranging from 1-3% of the total transactions they accept. So if they get paid $10,000 a month by customers in the form of credit cards, the business pays out $100-300 a month to the credit card processor - a good portion of which will make it back to the credit card issuing company, and is a major source of income for them. The per transaction fee means that every time a transaction is run involving a card, a set fee is incurred by the business (which is commonly anywhere from $0.05 to $0.30 per transaction). If that $10,000 a month business mentioned previously had 10 customers paying $1,000 each at $0.10 a transaction, that's only $1 in fees to the credit card processors/companies. But if instead that business was a grocery store with an average transaction of $40, that's $25 in fees.  This system means that if you are a credit card company and want to encourage people to make a specific kind of purchase, you should encourage purchases that people make many times for relatively small amounts of money. In a perfect world you'd want them to buy $1 bottles of water 5 times a day with their credit card. If the card company had 50,000 card holders doing this, at the end of 1 year the company would have $91,250,000 spread across 91,250,000 transactions. The card company might reasonably make $0.05 per transaction and %1 of the purchase total. The Get Rewarded For Drinking More campaign might earn the card company $912,500 in percentage fees and over $4.5 million in transaction fees. Yet the company would only have to pay 3% in rewards from the percentage fees, or $2.7 million, back to customers. If the card company had encouraged using your credit card for large once-yearly purchases, they would actually pay out more money in rewards than they collect in card-use fees. Yet by encouraging people to make small transactions very often the card company earns a nice net-income even if absolutely every customer pays their balance in full, on time, and pays no annual/monthly fees for their card - which obviously does not happen in the real world. No wonder companies try so hard to encourage you to use your card all the time! For card companies to make real money they need you to use your credit card. As discussed above, the more often you use the card the better (for them), and there can be a built-in preference for small repeated transactions. But no matter what the size of transaction, they can't make the big bucks if you don't use the card at all! Selling your personal information isn't as profitable if they don't have in-depth info on you to sell, either. So how do they get you to make that plastic sing? Gas and groceries are a habit. Most people buy one or the other at least once a weak, and a very large number of us make such purchases multiple times a week. Some people even make such purchases multiple times a day! So how do people pay for such transactions? The goal of the card companies is to have you use their product to pay as much as possible. If you pay for something regularly you'll keep that card in your wallet with you, rather than it getting lost in a drawer at home. So the card companies want you to use your card as a matter of habit, too. If you use a card to buy for gas and groceries, why wouldn't you use it for other things too? Lunch, dinner, buying online? If the card company pays out more and makes less for large, less-regular purchases, then the ideal for them is to have you use the card for small regular purchase and yet still have you use the card for larger infrequent purchases even if you get reduced/no rewards. What better way to achieve all these goals than to offer special rewards on gas and groceries? And because it's not a one-time purchase, you aren't so likely to game the system; no getting that special 5% cash-back card, booking your once-per-decade dream vacation, then paying it off and cancelling it soon after - which would actually make the card company lose money on the deal. In the end, credit card companies as a whole have a business model that almost universally prefers customers who use their products regularly and preferably for small amounts a maximum number of times. They want to reduce their expenses (like rewards paid out) while maximizing their revenue. They haven't figured out a better way to do all of this so well as to encourage people to use their cards for gas and groceries - everything else seems like a losing proposition in comparison. The only time this preference differs is when they can avoid paying some or all of the cost of rewards, such as when the merchants themselves honor the rewards in exchange for reduced or zero payment from the card companies. So if you use an airline card that seems to give you 10% back in airline rewards? Well, that's probably a great deal for the card company if the airline provides that reward at their own expense to try to boost business. The card company keeps the transaction-related fees and pays out almost nothing in rewards - the perfect offer (for them)!  And this assumes no shenanigans like black-out periods, ""not valid with any other offers"" rewards like on cars where only a fool pays full MSRP (and sometimes the rewards are tagged in this sort of way, like not valid on sale/clearance items, etc), expiring rewards, the fact that they know not everyone uses their rewards, annual fees that are greater than the rewards you'll actually be obtaining after accounting for all the other issues, etc. And credit card industries are known for their shenanigans!" "Spend your first 50 euros on research materials. Warren Buffett got started as a boy by reading every book in the Library of Congress on investing and stock market analysis. You can research the company filings for Canadian companies at http://www.sedar.com, U.S companies at http://www.edgar.com, and European companies at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house. Find conflicting arguments and strategies and decide for yourself which ones are right. The Motley Fool http://www.fool.ca offers articles on good stocks to add to your portfolio and why, as well as why not. They provide a balanced judgement instead of just hype. They also sell advice through their newsletter. In Canada the Globe & Mail runs a daily column on screening stocks. Every day they present a different stock-picking strategy and the filters used to reach their end list. They then show how much that portfolio would have increased or decreased as well as talking about some of the good & bad points of the stocks in the list. It's interesting to see over time a very few stocks show up on multiple lists for different strategies. These ones in my opinion are the stocks to be investing in. While the Globe's stock picks focus on Canadian and US exchanges, you might find the strategies worthwhile. You can subscribe to the digital version at http://www.theglobeandmail.com  Once you have your analytical tools ready, pick any bank or stock house that offers a free practice account. Use that account and their screening tools to try out your strategies and see if you can make money picking stocks.  My personal stock-picking strategy is to look for companies with: - a long uninterrupted history of paying dividends, - that are regularly increased, - and do not exceed the net profit per share of the company - and whose share price has a long history of increasing These are called unicorn companies, because there are so very few of them.  Another great read is, ""Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?"" by Hendrik Bessembinder. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2900447 In this paper the author looks at the entire history of the U.S. stock universe and finds that less than 4% of stocks are responsible for 100% of the wealth creation in the U.S. stock market. He discusses his strategies for picking the winners, but it also suggests that if you don't want to do any research, you could pick pretty much any stock at random, short it, and wait. I avoid mutual funds because they are a winner only for the fellas selling them. A great description on why the mutual fund industry is skewed against the investor can be found in a book called ""The RRSP Secret"" by Greg Habstritt. ""Unshakeable"" by Tony Robbins also discusses why mutual funds are not the best way to invest in stocks. The investor puts up 100% of the money, takes 100% of the risk, and gets at best 30% of the return. Rich people don't invest like that." Because they believe that negative interest rates will force people to push capital around, and promote investment to avoid the negative interest rates associated with having your cash sitting in an account. Most likely they will be banning cash within the next 10 years anyway which will prevent you from being able to keep it yourself. You will either need to: or A combination of the following: Shareholders pushing for larger and larger returns. Combining with Nixon opening China and the rise of foreign manufacturing. On top of this, the decline of unions and support of unions in the US. Over time, American consumers have been conditioned to buy the cheapest item. They'll sell out a competing item for pennies.   Now we live in a globalized world, so to bring back American labor, we probably have to make it competitive with cheap foreign when all costs are calculated (logistics, training, wages, etc). In China, many of the big factories are run like clockwork, with the workers living in dorms and away from their families.   If we try and legislate a solution with tax cuts for onshoring jobs and penalties to offshore, we'll probably see repercussions from China. The store keeps track of what you buy. It is all part of their big data. The knowledge of what you buy helps them project future sales. It allows them to target their marketing. But maybe even more importantly they can sell this knowledge to outside companies. They aren't going to give away that information to another company that would love to have that data, just so they could sell it. Stores use those loyalty cards to be able to link your household to those purchases. Those discounts, or free products, are what they use to entice you to give up your privacy.  The fact that in your town young adults love caramel apples, even more than the town next door, makes them confident that your town will love caramel apple scented shampoo. Thus they send you coupons when it become available. They will also sell this knowledge to the shampoo companies. Do some stores make it possible for you to download the data? Yes they do. Apple stores send all receipts via email. Kohls allows me to see detail information about my transactions on line. There must be others. I don't know if any are grocery stores. It depends on the business. Some ask for ID and check against the signature (rare); some ask for ID but barely glance at it; some check just that it's signed (also rare); some ask for me to input my ZIP code on the card reader (KMart); and some don't do anything (most common). What they do doesn't seem connected to whether I put the card in the reader myself, or hand it to the cashier for them to scan. It does seem silly to check IDs, etc., as there are places such as gas stations where I never even see an employee, and can spend just as much there as at WalMart, KMart, or the grocery store, all places that tend to do more checking.