site.btaLidl Bulgaria Rolls Out 53 Tonnes Of Coins On First Full Euro Day

Lidl Bulgaria distributed 53 tonnes of euro coins across its store network since December 2, Lidl Bulgaria Chief Executive Officer Milena Dragijska said on Friday. She spoke at a briefing on the introduction of the euro in Bulgaria.

Friday was the first working day for the chain’s stores already operating in euros. “We opened at 10:00, I personally made my first purchase at 10:02 at our store in the Iztok borough and everything went smoothly at a self-checkout with a card,” Dragijska said.

She said there was no rounding of prices and that receipts showed change in both levs and euros.

“The law requires us to give change in euros; only if there is no physical availability, in levs, but the customer can pay in any combination of the two currencies. That is why, for convenience, we programmed it so the change can be seen in both levs and euros,” Dragijska said.

She said that from 16:30 on December 31 until Friday morning, the chain had replaced the labels, with all prices now displayed in euros on top and in levs below.

“To ensure we were prepared to provide exact change, [on Thursday] we conducted a live test of what we had practiced repeatedly over the past several months,” Dragijska said. “About 350 people were on duty that day, two in each store, so we could run through everything one last time in practice,” she added.

She showed a cash register drawer. It weighed 10 kg because it was stocked with every coin denomination so staff could give exact change without rounding prices. She said it contained the most rolls of one- and two-cent coins and added that the company was not concerned about making change for large banknotes.

She said the company had not experienced any issues with POS terminals in its stores. In Sofia and other large cities, she noted that some individual stores had more than 60%-70% of payments made by card, while the national average was between 38% and 42%, depending on whether it was a weekday or the weekend.

“We were inspected by regulators on December 31, and on Friday we have had one or two further visits, but that is normal. Let the inspections take place so it is clear how we have done our work and, in fact, to reassure citizens,” Dragijska said.