Visa campaigns for cashless small businesses

Money talks to small business and one credit card company is speaking loudly.

Earlier this year Visa unveiled a campaign to encourage small business food service owners to stop taking cash as payment. The effort highlighted the continued move by merchants to make it easier for customers to pay with credit cards, and now even digital currency, like Bitcoin.

For Visa’s campaign, small business food service owners who committed to join its 100 percent Cashless Quest could be awarded up to $500,000.According to Visa, 70 percent of the world’s people, or about five billion, will have a connected mobile device by 2020.

That is an “incredible opportunity to educate merchants and consumers alike on the effectiveness of going cashless,” Visa noted. The card company’s campaign was a call-to-action for small business restaurants, cafes, and food truck owners to describe what cashless meant for them, their employees, and customers.

It also highlighted the opportunities for small business merchants. Visa found that if businesses in 100 cities switched from cash to digital, their cities stood to gain $312 billion of savings, largely in the form of labor costs.

Small food service businesses already have been making the move away from cash with the explosion of easy ways to accept with credit cards. Now that tide is even turning as people take advantage of digital currency, like Bitcoin, to make their purchases.

The number of ways for merchants to accept digital currency is growing, as Bitcoin, and other types of cryptocurrencies, shed their negative reputations.