Importantly, there is only an incentive for L2/L3 data on business/corporate cards, which have an inflated interchange rate above personal cards anyway.

This is not a scheme to get enhanced targeting data for personal transactions.

Also available in Canada now!

It does, at least in some cases. When I book flights directly from an airline, the bank knows the name of the passenger, the date of the flight, the origin and destination airports, as well as the cabin class. For one bank (Chase), the information is printed on the statements; for another they have a web lookup tool.

It's crazy it is resold but we don't even get it for our own use. Budgeting with credit card statements would instantly become so much more useful with less effort.

Well, they still pay a fee, it’s just reduced.

They primarily don’t deal with cash because cash is a pain. It needs to be physically taken to a bank and protected from theft by both staff and random robbers with guns, it needs to be counted all the time, and you need to maintain the right denominations to make change.

I have reservations about businesses getting rid of cash, especially if they’re turning away people who don’t have alternative ways to pay, but I certainly understand why they do it.

It’s also always awkward when a coffee shop is like 95% credit, and you try to hand them cash and they look at you like you’re Rip Van Winkle.

I don't think this is the reason, cash will always have no fees. In some senses it can have negative fees if you're not very diligent with your tax reporting *wink wink*.

Not accepting cash is probably more to do with not wanting to deal with it, not needing to trust employees with it, keeping poor people out, and preventing robbery.

Credit card companies and banks know basically squat about your purchase except in certain circumstances (buying gas or flights causes more data to follow, called L2 or L3 data), or if they work with a data enrichment provider. There is a lot of action in this space right now, but the banks are hardly equipped to handle more data even if it became available.

Merchants aren't going cash only to sell your data, they're doing it because it's expensive to handle cash and makes their taxes a whole lot more troublesome too.

Huh, I thought accepting legal tender was a federal rule, I guess not. Looks like a salad variety of regulations that vary by state and city.

Coffee shops don’t qualify for l2/l3

I mean, cash is also expensive in its own way. It has to be handled and insured, coins may need to be rolled before being taken to the bank, a register is a mechanical device to power and maintain, petty theft by employees is a concern.

It's not really that hard to see why a business charging $5-20 per transaction from people who all have phones and credit cards anyway might choose not to accept cash.