I think I disagree with nearly everything you've written 🙂 Last time a big group of us went out for a meal, we said to the server "Can you put £30 on every card, please?" Tapping cards and phones on a terminal was a lot quicker than faffing with cash on a table. The fees for card payments are pretty reasonable - once you take into account the costs and risks of dealing with cash. If you have to spend time cashing up, or need to buy a safe, or travel to a bank, or look out for dodgy currency - it all adds up. Given that tiny food stalls use iZettle or similar, I don't understand why cabs and barbers don't. Unless they're involved in something dodgy. I get the privacy thing. But I balance it against it being harder for merchants to defraud me or the state. I value the protection of being able to do a chargeback more than I value MasterCard knowing I buy sprouts at Xmas. Sure, Dixons might lose my credit card details, but I'm protected against fraud and it takes me a button-click to get a new card number.