Dealing with cash is technically free to merchants. Banks have gotten more and more greedy, and come up with new and creative ways to charge extravagant fees,

Dealing with cash is technically free to merchants. Banks have gotten more and more greedy, and come up with new and creative ways to charge extravagant fees, and thus charge merchants for cash orders and deposits (even though it is free for private customers). These fees are however a very different concept, as the bank here is only a storage service. The fees are entirely avoidable by buying a safe, and the fees are not related to money changing hands. With a credit card, fees are unavoidable and part of the transaction itself, and they're not even going to your bank, meaning that they want a slice of the cake from elsewhere (despite them technically earning money on your stored money through investments).