The new headache for small shops: the card fee lands before the takings do

For a butcher on a high street the arithmetic is simple: at the same turnover, every sale paid by card rather than cash takes a small slice out of the margin. The percentages are tiny; by the end of the month the total is not.

Some businesses do not put it on the price and balance it by cutting deliveries instead. The customer feels the difference in the service, not on the receipt.

Trade bodies say they expect a change in the rules. There is no draft to hang that expectation on yet.

Putting it in numbers

Figures on their own can mislead. The same data tells two different stories depending on which month you compare it with.

What traders describe and what the monthly numbers show line up this time. That has not happened often in the past two years.

What shops are doing about it

Analysts agree on one point only: the effect will show up late. On everything else they split.

Cash is not coming back. Which is why the argument has stopped being cash-versus-card: what is being discussed now is whether the fees can be worked out differently for the smallest firms.