Pin? These North Hollanders prefer to pay in cash

“Cash is no longer worth anything in Amsterdam these days,” says Frans Stuy (62). Stuy is the city’s fairground boss and sees how cash is slowly disappearing from Amsterdam and making way for a ‘pin only’ policy.

Stuy can still vividly remember the transition from a stack of bills to a card in his pocket. “It really took a while for me and my generation to get used to debit card payments,” he explains. He gives his trips to Febo as an example. When the snack bar chain switched to debit card only in May last year, Stuy didn’t know what to do with it. “It took two years before I pulled a croquette out of the wall again.”

Fear and distrust

It is always important to have cash with you, says Dave Jager (33) from Amstelveen. Dave worked for a long time at a pawn shop (a place where people can borrow money against items as collateral) and has had to deal with a lot of people who needed cash (quickly).

“Banks are being hacked, accounts are being looted or there is suddenly a PIN failure,” he sums up. These are all situations that make it important for him to have cash on hand.

Jaap Davidson (59) has been on the market in North Holland for forty years and he also sees that everything is now done with the PIN. As an entrepreneur he doesn’t make a fuss about it, but he still can’t suppress a little mistrust. “I still have the feeling that all transactions can be monitored,” he admits. The anonymity of cash payments appeals more to him.

Nowadays, almost all transactions at the fair are also done via PIN. That makes any disruption all the more disastrous for Stuy. “Then we really have a big problem,” he emphasizes.

Fear of a disruption or a feeling that the bank would monitor all transactions are two important reasons for people to pay in cash. But these fears aren’t the only reason to always keep some cash in your pocket.

The awareness of money

According to Jager, cash makes it more clear how much you spend and how much you keep. “With cash you learn to deal with money,” says Jager. In the pawn shop he came into daily contact with people who needed quick cash to make ends meet. “With a debit card you quickly lose track of exactly how much money you are spending,” says Jager. “At the end of the month the money was gone, and they were left at the pawn shop for a few tens of euros.”

Jager prefers to withdraw all the money from his account and then pay everything in cash. “It’s extra irritating that you can pay with it in fewer and fewer places,” he grumbles. “When I recently wanted to pick up a pizza, I couldn’t pay. Then someone else had to transfer it for me.”

They also had to deal with it at the Stuy fair five years ago: the pin machine. Although you will always be able to pay with cash here, Stuy promises. “It’s just a shame no one does it anymore.”