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ARCHIVED - Bank branches close as Spain moves towards cashless society, leaving OAPs out in the cold
The Covid-19 pandemic has been the push for slow Spain to finally start using cards and digital payments more, but not everyone is happy with the change
Before the pandemic, many people wouldn’t have dared to pay for something as insignificant as a coffee or a loaf of bread with a card. Not in Spain anyway, where the move towards a cashless society has been slower than the USA and northern Europe.
That’s all changing, though. Minimum card payments are a thing of the past in most places and the convenience of being able to pay with just a mobile phone means digital payments are becoming more popular.
Even after the “end of the pandemic” – which has categorically not ended yet – cash has not seen a resurgence, according to a report published by David Navarro.
Cash withdrawals from banks in Spain fell by 33% in 2020. Today it remains 27% below pre-Covid levels. By contrast, POS machines, the little machines which are used to make payments, have increased by almost 50% over what they were three years ago.
And while many people are happy not to have to carry around mounds of heavy, cumbersome coins anymore, it’s not all good news. The death of cash has a heavy price.
On the one hand, there is a psychological effect of paying by card that intensifies consumerism and prompts us to overspend. Despite having apps which track our spending, not seeing the physical money can actually lead us to lose any real notion of what is paid for a product and how much we’ve already spent this month.
As if that weren’t enough, bank charges have increased by an average of 34 euros in the last 12 months, prompting more people to turn to online-only bank accounts, which are free.
As a result of all this digitalisation, there are fewer and fewer physical bank branches, which has a particularly negative effect for less technologically-minded groups, such as the elderly.
This is one of the reason that the popular awareness campaign in Spain “Soy mayor, no idiota” (“I’m old, not an idiot”) has been so successful in shaking the consciences of the banks and put them on the spot.
Many banks have already taken steps to provide older people with more training in their digital tools and to make it easier for them to do business with physical banks while they make the transition to digital transactions.
But whether it’s enough to ensure that Spain’s ageing population isn’t left in the red remains to be seen.
Image: Archive
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