As seen at my local grocery store this morning at every check-out...

[Igel]

74. I do sometimes.

Small mom-and-pop places. They already have issues with economy of scale and the credit card charge cuts into their already narrow margins.

Often these are immigrant-run. Indo-Pak stores or restaurants. One long-standing non-immigrant-run burger place asks for cash if possible because it supports the business (the owner's in his 60s now) and it's both his income and retirement savings. He doesn't want to implement a surcharge for credit-card users.

Had a new roof put on. Told the guy I'd split the credit card charge and just give him a cashier's check for the full amount. He got an extra 1-point-something percent and I got the same discount. Not a huge amount, but it paid my electricity bill for the month and he got a small bump to his income. (And when I get a teacher's discount at local places, I split that with the server, person cutting my hair, whoever.)

Is it a great amount? No. But if more people did it, it would really help out sometimes struggling small businesses at the cost of little inconvenience to the customer.