Background
The canteens are switching to "cashless" payments
It’s likely that all the university canteens will be "cashless" in the long term.
Thursday 23 November 2017

 "At the moment, only eleven per cent of all transactions in the university restaurants and cafés are conducted in cash", answered Sander Rooijakkers of the General Services Department (UFB) when asked.

In January 2015, CaféUBé was the first to be fully cashless – not just because of the dropping numbers of cash payments: in 2014, 35 per cent of them were still cash. It’s partly due to the University Library’s late opening hours, which pose a threat to safety "when combined with cash, so, we, the employer, want to reduce the risk as far as possible", Rooijakkers explained. Moreover, the UFB made credit card payments possible at all the locations for the international academic community when the ChipKnip system was replaced by the contactless payment option in late 2014.

CaféUBé served as a trial location. Contactless payment was accepted after a short adjustment period and proved to be the solution to the long queues for coffee: transactions speeded up. In the spring of 2016, the number of cashless locations was extended to include Café Noord on Witte Singel and the restaurants at the Sylvius and Van Steenis locations. The new catering facilities in the Science Building and the Wijnhaven Building were set up as cashless.

The UFB thinks that all locations will switch to electronic payment in the future. But what happens if your PIN card jams? Rooijakkers: "If you have the amount you owe in cash on you, we have instructed our staff to accept it, but only at the last resort."

MVW