If I'm being honest, I feel like a lot of us who live in third-world countries shouldn't put as much trust in cash transfers online as those who live in first-world countries, and this is because the tech and network services here aren't as advanced as the ones over there.

[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/prayzz/23xeBp3qXMRFgJg44rjgHmmbknouGCEL9hXNmZVTABFyCMXKGKtTzSkEZSynAiiBr8VAQ.jpg]
photo by Sunday Abegunde

Some few years ago, there was this one time I and a friend of mine had gone to this restaurant to buy food. Luckily for us, we had gotten takeaways and didn't stay there to eat. After the lady was done packaging our food, it was time for us to pay, and all of a sudden, my bank app decided that was a good time to misbehave.

We stood there battling with this problem for almost twenty minutes before I eventually called another mutual friend of ours to help me make the payment. The crazy thing was that the moment we stepped out of that restaurant and I tried sending back the money to that friend of ours who helped us, it went smoothly, almost like the app had done all of that just to embarrass me and my friend in front of those people.

Fast forward to today, and I was getting ready to go get a haircut. Usually during times like this, what I do is I call my barber to make sure she's available, and after confirming with her, I just walk down to her shop. I never get to open my bank app until after the haircut is complete and it's time for me to pay.

But for some reason, just before I left home, I had decided to check my bank app, and to my surprise, there was a glitch in it. I tried all I could to access the money in it, but I couldn't. I tried contacting the customer care representatives, but no one was online to attend to me. Then I tried calling their number but instead got an automated response telling me that the number does not exist.

All of that happened around 11am this morning, and it's currently 10:15pm, and I still haven't been able to access the money on that account.

Imagine I had gone ahead to get that haircut, or worse, imagine I had gone out to an event or a restaurant and had eaten there, hoping to make payment, only to be confronted with this problem.

This is why cash is always better for me. I know we can't always carry cash around, especially in large amounts, but if I can, I honestly will. It is reliable and doesn't give you any surprises.