MM so your the annoying person who isn't organized enough to bring cash and causes long queues at the bar or coffee shop when I am buying my morning coffee and paper at the train station.
The more you use your card the more chance of getting skimmed using cash for small purchases is a way of reducing your attack surface.
To me it's common decency to not be negligent and I deeply dislike the opinion that "the bank will cover it".
For starters it's irresponsible, secondly the cost goes back to the banks customers anyway. But also, one day the bank will say no. You didn't do what we expect of you, we will not give you anything.
This is not that uncommon and if it happens you might loose a lot (although to keep good faith and keep people using the cards the banks usually go to great lengths to cover up that fraud ever happens and they usually repay losses of their customers, but I seriously do not get why anyone would be willing to take that risk - even the hassle of having to get in touch with your bank and temporarily be out on a lot of money etc. is enough to avoid that risk).
Not to mention that I don't feel like "it's okay, the bank took care of it" is okay. The bad guys got away with it and that is never okay.
There is also the risk that they steal small amounts from you and you don't realize it. This won't happen if you check your statements but I don't always and there are enough small charges for me not to notice if I was charged a small amount extra every month.
No really, the card readers are damn quick these days so it hardly takes much longer than paying with cash but I admit that it takes slightly longer. I would argue that most people pay their morning coffee with card in Sweden.
I have used my card all over the world, for small and large purchases, and have yet to get it skimmed - lucky I guess.
But another aspect of increased card use is that tax fraud becomes harder for the businesses as I believe the logging of card transactions are quite a lot harder to hide from the tax authority so I do see that as a positive thing.
At my medium sized local station around 2k people catch trains within 45 mins every morning so cash is much much faster and allows a greater through put of transactions.
The more you use your card the more chance of getting skimmed using cash for small purchases is a way of reducing your attack surface.