Your bookseller might become your banker. A new payment institution is born in Belgium. It will allow you to withdraw cash from the bookstore. A paying service: 20 euros per year and 1.5 euros per withdrawal. Creating your current account will only take a few minutes. “It would be very easy, because in the neighborhood, there is no longer a distributor“, says a customer in a bookstore in Dilbeek. Another adds: “I might kill two birds with one stone. Make a small purchase and at the same time withdraw.”
Deposits and withdrawals of money will be capped to fight once morest money laundering and protect booksellers once morest possible thieves.
The project represents a possibility of diversification for the 2,300 independent booksellers in the country. Finding other sources of income is essential today. Xavier Deville, vice-president of prodipresse: “The three basic businesses, tobacco/press/games are complicated. We have to diversify. Beyond the small commissions paid on the right and on the left, it attracts people, it helps; we strengthen our position in a neighborhood or a town.”
The system will be available in 230 bookstores by the end of the summer. The goal? Occupy 1,400 booksellers within 5 years.