Is cash dead?

Sweetgreen (www.sweetgreen.com) specializes in salads. Their uniqueness is that they locate themselves in densely populated areas, like downtown areas of larger cities, where there is a lot of foot traffic. If you want a salad for lunch, you can order it ahead of time using their app and tell them you will pick it up at 11:30. You pay for the salad using their app and at 11:30, you walk in, pick up your salad and leave. No waiting in lines. In some stores they don’t even have sitting areas.

If you choose to not pay for the salad when you order it in the app, then you'll need to have your credit card ready when you pick up your salad because they do not accept cash. That’s right… no cash. You can either pay for your salad with your credit card stored in the app or you can pay with your credit card when you pick up your salad. But don’t walk in with a $20 bill or heaven forbid try to write a check, because you won’t get your salad!

So, what does any of this have to do with you? You don’t sell salads. You sell welding rods. The point is that what Sweetgreen is not so subtly saying, is that cash is dead! Yes, you may have a wad of $20 bills in your hand and your checkbook in your pocket, but the diagnosis is in. Cash is dead or at best it is dying a fast death.

Again, what does this have to do with you? Everything. When you look at your customer base, you have a lot of baby boomers who are used to paying with cash or writing you checks. Talk to the people replacing the baby boomers, the millennials, and they don’t have a checkbook or carry cash. They pay with a credit or debit card. It does not matter if the millennial is standing at your sales counter or you delivered the product to them, they don’t want to write you a check.

That’s where DataWeld’s state of the art credit card enhancements come to the rescue. You can accept debit or credit cards virtually anyplace your customer wants to use one. Credit/debit cards are built into point-of-sale. Your customers can call you on the phone and easily pay an invoice with their credit card stored securely on file. Your customers can even say “store my card on file and automatically pay my cylinder rental invoice when it is due.” And so much more.

Sweetgreen is one more example of companies across the United States ringing the bell and loudly shouting “Cash is Dead!”. If you want to make sure you can offer your customers the latest in card processing technology, give us a call at 318-317-7977 and talk to Andi. She will answer all your questions and explain how you can get started.