From znww5:
For comparison's sake, I do a few days at a local flying club and they prefer payment by debit card. The reason is that it's quick and easy, there's a paper trail, an instant receipt and students aren't expected to wander around with wads of cash.
If you are looking at payment methods from a business point of view, it is important to note that cash transactions also carry a processing cost. Cash is easily stolen, it can be forged and somebody has to be paid to physically go to a bank in order to pay it in - so cash is far from being 'cost free'.
I'm with znww5 on this one. We choose not to make a separate charge for the various payment methods we accept - debit and credit cards and cash, the latter is definitely NOT as cost-effective to us as a debit card, for the reasons given; also not mentioned is the staff cost of cashing-up at the end of the day, especially if things have been mis-rung in the till or the wrong change given, plus of course storing the cash on the premises overnight. I'd do away with cash altogether if I could. We don't take cheques from non-club members, there's no guarantee with them now and they could simply not be worth the paper they're written on.
We've thought about charging for credit cards, but the reputational thing gets to me, so we just look at the charges as a part of the cost of running our Club.
What we're really keen on getting, is a card machine for the fuel pump, but no luck so far.
Cheers,
TOO