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Belgian fondness for cash costs banks millions
Belgians’ preference for paying with cash instead of bank cards costs Belgian banks about €300 million a year. If more people would use cards, as is the case in Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, the banks would save money on cashpoint machine maintenance and money transport, according to a study by consulting firm Sia Partners.
Over the past decade, the amount of coins and bills in circulation in Belgium doubled to a total of €1,000 billion. As a result, Belgian banks spend about €300 million annually on cashpoints and police escorts for the transport and counting of money.
Nowhere in Europe is the number of cashpoints as high as in Belgium, with about 1,138 machines to every 1 million inhabitants, compared to 1,009 machines in the UK, 892 in France and 439 in the Netherlands.
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That is a load of crap, the reason Belgians use cash is because no where takes cards / if they do there are unreasonable surcharges / bancontact hors service signs are everywhere when a restaurant or bar decides it doesn't want to record its income that week
I find this statistic very surprising. Compared to say Germany, there is a much more card-friendly culture here and infrastructure too. I suspect the abundance of cashpoints is partially a historical artifact of several bank mergers. I find I very rarely need cash.
Until your husband or wife dies and the banks block all your cards.
So lets all use cards just to save money for the banks !!!
Savings that will never come back to us.
So lets work for the banks once more.
We have already bailed them out (from their reckless investments) with our hard earned wages.
Why stop here? Lets make all money electronic by law right now so when reckless politicians and banks decide that they have to be bailed out, they can, in an instant, freeze and confiscate our deposits. It has happened in other countries (and within the EU) and they called it "haircutting".....how about calling it beheading?
No cash? Oh lordy, how the Belgian State, and the banks would love that.