Concept · article 03 of 09

Why fees apply
to card only.

Cash doesn't go through an acquirer. Why we never apply your card fee % to BAR revenue.

Ibrahim Ölmez Ibrahim ÖlmezFounder · nouz · 4 min read · Updated this week
Cash is free of fees. The card terminal charges a fee per swipe. Cash crosses no terminal — so no fee. nouz applies your fee % to card revenue only.

The cash-vs-card fee rule is one of the simpler nouz rules but it has real consequences for how you read your numbers. Knowing the rule and why it exists helps you interpret variance day-to-day.

01 The rule

Hard-coded in calcTransactionFees in lib/calculations.ts: the fee % is multiplied by card revenue, never by cash revenue. That's why every revenue entry has separate BAR and EC columns — so the math knows which is which.

02 What the math looks like

A day with €240 cash, €600 card, 2% card fee:

SourceRevenueFee
Cash (BAR)€240,00€0,00
Card (EC)€600,00€12,00 (2%)
Total€840,00€12,00

The fee is 2% of card revenue, not 2% of the day total.

03 The cash advantage

A cash-heavy day has higher net revenue than a card-heavy day at the same gross. That's real — and it's why a lot of small shops still encourage cash. nouz captures this signal honestly because of the column split.

Over a year, the difference adds up: at 2% fees, a shop with €100k gross all-card pays €2.000 in fees; an all-cash shop pays €0. The difference is genuine EBIT.

04 Edge case: digital cash

What if you accept digital payments that don't go through a card processor — say, a SEPA direct transfer from a regular customer? Strictly speaking, that's neither BAR nor EC. In practice, log it as BAR (cash) since no acquirer fee applies. The label is a slight fiction, but the math is right.

Different processors, different fees. If you use multiple card processors with different rates (rare for small shops), the global fee % is an approximation. Most owners use one acquirer, so this isn't typically a real issue.

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