Background · 1 June 2026 · Coffeeshops and payment services
A tolerated business that cannot get a payment account or card-payment facility is forced into cash. That is precisely the opposite of what regulators say they want: traceable money flows.
This paradox is the core of the payments dossier: the very same authorities that demand transparency allow the infrastructure for transparency to be withdrawn.
Chronology
Background
Banks and payment service providers base their policy on the Wwft [Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act]. Customer due diligence is mandatory, but the law does not require categorically excluding an entire sector.
De-risking
In practice, financial institutions choose to exclude sectors deemed risky. Coffeeshops thereby lose accounts, insurance and payment facilities, even without concrete evidence of wrongdoing.
Termination of card-payment contracts
Worldline terminates its card-payment contracts with coffeeshops. This removes the ability to pay electronically for a large part of the sector. The BCD conducts correspondence and takes legal steps on behalf of its members.
Politics
Parliamentary questions and answers on de-risking make clear that tolerated businesses' access to banking services is a politically recognised problem — without a conclusive solution being in place.
Case law and legal framework
Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act
Wwft
The legal framework for customer due diligence. The Act calls for risk-based investigation, not categorical exclusion.
Procedures around termination
BCD correspondence and proceedings — Worldline
The aim is that terminating an essential facility must be properly justified and must not amount to sector-wide exclusion.
Why this is a safety issue
More cash means more money on the premises, more cash-transport movements and a greater risk of robbery. It also means less traceability for the Tax Authority and the municipality.
Anyone who wants transparency must make electronic payment possible. That is not a favour to the sector but a condition for oversight.
- Access to a payment account for tolerated businesses
- Workable card-payment facilities instead of sector-wide termination
- Risk-based customer due diligence instead of categorical exclusion
Our conclusion
Our conclusion is that de-risking cannot be dismissed as a private-law choice made by individual institutions. As long as the authorities tolerate and supervise the sector, access to basic payment services should follow from that.
Without card payments and without an account, the sector is pushed towards cash — with all the safety risks that the authorities themselves say they want to combat.