It’s no secret merchants love being paid in cash – and it’s certainly not a surprise that some customers hate lugging around change. A new startup aims to increase customers’ cash usage to help merchants save on credit card fees. It does it by forwarding the change a customer would normally receive straight to his bank account. Credit cards deliver convenience to customers, but the fees to the merchant can add up. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Square continues to lose money, on the order of $100 million last year — because it is paying out the majority of the fees it collects to the card networks. Consumers don’t see these charges, but merchants feel the pain of those 3% fees on transaction after transaction. Enter Piggy, a Los Angeles-based startup that aims to help merchants acquire more cash customers. A customer enters the store and spends $9.26, for example. He hands over a ten-dollar bill. Piggy will transfer that $0.74 change straight to a customer’s bank account via its digital platform. The platform will also allow merchants to offer rewards and discounts to cash customers via its mobile app. The bonus for merchants is that customers are incentivized to use cash rather than cards […]
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