Life without a postcard
A few months ago I decided to close my accounts at Die Post (payroll account, savings account, pension account) or transfer them to new accounts at Zürcher Kantonalbank. The reason for this was something political, definitely nothing technical. I think it was in connection with the big bank discussion and the collapse of Credit Suisse. For a long time, Postfinance was the ultimate for many, but in recent years it has changed its policy, charged new fees, cooperated with UBS, done strange things, such as marketing address data… so that switching to a cantonal bank (or to the cooperatively organized bank) was not possible Raiffeisen) has imposed on many people. In short: Postfinance has become more and more unsympathetic, ZKB has become more and more likeable.
Implementation takes a while, not for technical reasons but for emotional reasons. I’m very attached to my Postcard: it’s opened up the world of cash to me for almost forty years, I’ve never changed the code… but now the Postcard is gone and I’m getting used to new forms of payment. I reinstalled the Twint app on my smart phone in the summer and now need it for almost all payment transactions. At checkouts I am asked “cash or card?”, I answer “Twint!”, receive a nod and use my smart phone to scan the QR code that appears on the card terminal. Twint works wherever cards work. I can also send money to private individuals and they can send them to me, for example when I need to transfer a portion of a meal or buy something at the flea market.
Only today there is a problem. I loudly announced that I would take over lunch, but the pub we were sitting in doesn’t accept Twint or cards. I don’t have any cash and I don’t know how I could get it. I never remembered the code for my new bank card and will probably have to order a new one for this purpose. For today K. is taking over the bill. I later found out that I could use Twint to withdraw money from many K Kiosk branches. I’ll try that out soon.
(Franziska Nyffenegger)