TWINT my wallet?

Once again, you can’t find your wallet and still want to go shopping – no problem, you can pay with you cell phone. You are standing in front of the parking meter and have no change – no problem you can pay with your cell phone. Given these promises, I downloaded the smartphone app TWINT last year and was looking forward to leaving my wallet at home in the future.

TWINT is said to have many advantages that are gradually being used more and more by the Swiss population. TWINT meets the modern needs for digital, contactless and mobile payments. After initial teething troubles, it has reached a user base of 4 million users in Switzerland this year, with one million users added in the last year alone. Soon, around 50% of the Swiss population will have registered with TWINT.

Slowly the benefits of TWINT are also being recognized in the food industry. At first the retailers were divided on how best to use TWINT. While Coop opted for the so-called “Beacon” (sensor that interacts with the smartphone), Migros opted from the outset for a payment process using QR codes. Thereby codes are displayed on the credit card terminal and must be scanned by the user. However, due to the technical unreliability of the “Beacon”, Coop changed as well to using QR codes. Besides the big players, TWINT is also a boon for farm stores, market stalls, food trucks and other small merchants. In addition to the simple payment process, the app brings the advantage over cash payments that each payment is recorded directly, making bookkeeping easier. It also eliminates the need to purchase an expensive credit card terminal.

However, after a year as an intensive TWINT user, I can say that sometimes an unpleasant wind blows against me. After trying to pay with it at the bakery in my village, you can’t avoid a 5-minute lecture on how expensive the fees are when you sign up as a business. For a small business, it doesn’t seem easy to balance customer convenience with increased costs. Also, it happened to me that I walked out of Coop thinking that I have completed the payment process, but a few moments later being told otherwise by the security officer. Regarding the importance of a good internet connection, the payment process with debit card will certainly always have the edge. Since I so far had several experiences where I had to fetch my wallet in the car due to dead spots, I now always have it with me as a backup. This is the only way I can currently use TWINT with pleasure and without sweaty hands.

Author: Laurent Monnier

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