I love getting rewards on my credit cards as most people in this forum do as well but I work as a manager for a business and can sympathize with businesses not accepting credit cards, certain networks, debit cards, etc. The business I work for pays many of thousands in merchant fees every year even at a low rate depending on the type of cards we run.
Just a note for people that don't know that credit cards are more expensive to run than debit and Amex is the most expensive of them all. Other factors like visa signature, world elite, international cards, business cards, etc. drive up the rates even more.
One also aggravating detail is merchant processors take their cut on GROSS revenue. This is before any cost is assoicated even SALES TAX (not a cost but still). Business must also cover the percentage of sales tax that merchant processors take and we can't do anything about it. Pretty much all merchant processors do this. They take money that isn't even revenue for the business. Sales tax is owed to the state government.
Also many business don't shop or know how to shop for the best rates so they end up with higher rates and pay much more. We were paying at least 40 percent more before I shopped around for rates and the business was paying tens of thousands for card fees. Certain industries will automatically pay higher rates due to risk.
I did a ton of research when I was shopping around and it is a MASSIVE pain to actually know what is going on with these credit card fees. I can see why businesses don't want to deal with cards.
Remember when Walmart sued Visa because of card fees? Visa, Mastercard, and top US Banks got hammered by a lawsuit and lost because of card fee funny business. Visa and Mastercard also lost a legal battle about surcharges as well. Even Kroger dropped Visa cards for a while before accepting them again.
This is just my experience with the card industy. Businesses that are pulling in millions in revenue are easily paying tens/hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in card fees every year. The percentage fee might look small, but the actual dollar amount is pretty astounding. I could also go on for days about the extra fees that merchant processors charge for card transaction like address verification. If your terminal is connected via ethernet there is a network charge vs a POTS line (no network charge).
In my opinion, it's not that easy to say/think "Well, they should all accept cards"
