At the risk of pointing out the obvious.... I hear it mentioned quite often that a credit card theft didn't cost anything. That is, they were reimbursed for all their fraudulent charges. Since these are expenses to the credit card company they are costs that are built in to the prices we pay for everything. And when we pay cash we are paying the extra money needed to pay credit card rewards and getting nothing in return. In other words, we the consumers pay for all this fraud.