It’s a surprisingly common experience that Christine Jacobs has had. On Wednesday afternoon, the 64-year-old lady was refused cash payment in a Foodmaker in Ghent, reports the Nieuwsblad. She wanted to buy a sandwich and a coffee.
“It’s painful because there isn’t always money on my bank card. I live in poverty, and budgeting for my living expenses is best done with cash,” she says.
It is not the first time that a cash payment has been refused to Christine: “I was surprised and insisted, but the cashier said that her boss did not allow her to accept money liquid. There were still people in the store, so I was embarrassed, even though I had the money. I only had a little left, so I wanted to treat myself to a coffee and something healthy. »
Theoretically, stores can refuse cash payments in exceptional cases, if the ticket is considered counterfeit, for example. The digital divide also explains why some customers, like Christine Jacobs, still pay without a bank card: “Prescriptions are only done online, whereas before, I could take care of them much more easily”, confides the one who only recently managed to look up his pension on MyPension.
The digital divide is one of the consequences of precariousness, insists Karleen De Rijcke, of the anti-poverty organization Kras vzw.