Increasingly more often, you can pay only with your card (‘pinnen’) on campus. Easy for the university, but problematic for international students because foreign cards don’t always work.

The Dutch love to pay by card. Last year almost two-thirds of all payments in the Netherlands were made by card. The current generation of students are the most enthusiastic users; figures provided by the Dutch Payment Association (Betaalverenigning Nederland) show that most digital payments are made by people between the ages of 19-25. More and more shops and restaurants only accept card transactions.

Almost no place in Nijmegen illustrates this as well as the Radboud University campus. A tour taken by Vox showed that you can pay in bills and coins at only four places on campus: the Copy shop, the porter at the UB, the Cultuurcafé and the Restaurant FNWI. But after renovations in the Huygens Building have been finished, there will no longer be a cash desk there either.

Facilities & Services (FB) is responsible for all of the restaurants and cafés on campus. FB has opted for ‘card only’ because customers hardly pay in cash anymore, according to department head René Hagels. Where cash payments are still possible, only about 10% of the customers choose this option. ‘We understand that customers are happy to pay by card because they don’t have to wait in a queue for so long.’

Hagels said that doing away with cash has other advantages as well. It’s safer and employees also spend more time and attention on the service they give the guest. According to Hagels, cash is also very unhygienic. ‘Every time employees who work with food accept cash, they have to wash their hands.’

Bulgaria

Hardly any official complaints about this policy have been submitted: last year FB received only one. Nevertheless, many employees say that a cashless campus can cause problems, especially for international students. ‘I often hear complaints from our members,’ said Nadina Zaharieva of Erasmus Student Network (ESN) Nijmegen. ‘International students are often not used to paying by card. In Bulgaria, where I come from, you can’t even make a transaction by card in most places.’

Some international cards don’t always work in the Netherlands so international students sometimes can’t pay for their orders. This is particularly true when they’ve just arrived in the Netherlands. Hagels said that staff deal flexibly with such situations. ‘Although we don’t advertise it, we usually let them pay in cash.’

Campus locations are also as flexible as possible if there are problems with the machines, Hagels emphasised. ‘If the card system malfunctions, we try to respond in a friendly way. For example, managers can decide to temporarily accept cash or to think of a suitable solution together with the customer. This way we can still provide them with our service.’