Remember cash isn't free either - armoured cars and the like cost money, I wouldn't be surprised if the overall work involved in handling cash ended up being more costly than card fees.

I guess I don't object in principle to a cash discount (a card fee would annoy me), but those tend to exist for the sake of tax evasion, which I won't support.

>I wouldn't be surprised if the overall work involved in handling cash ended up being more costly than card fees.

This is definitely the case for the underlying costs as you can imagine. Doing an online transaction is much cheaper these days than operating trucks, cash sorting, etc. It's however not always the case that banks will charge merchants less for cards than for cash handling unfortunately. This has maintained the weight of cash as a payment method past it's actual usefulness.

It's part of the merchant agreement not to charge a different price if using a CC (though it's common to offer a cash discount even if it does violate their agreement).