McDonald’s has figured out that it can extract more value from customers who use its app whilst simultaneously pricing out people who can’t or won’t use digital ordering. The people being excluded are exactly the ones who historically relied on McDonald’s being cheap: low income, potentially older and possibly with low digital skills or no smartphone.

This isn’t about McDonald’s being evil. It’s about a structural pattern that’s accelerating across every sector where poor people buy things.

The affordability crisis nobody’s tracking

One million people in the UK disconnected their broadband in a single year because they couldn’t afford it. That’s not a statistic about consumer choice. That’s structural violence.

Currently, 6 million UK households struggle to afford communications services. Nearly 2 million households specifically can’t afford broadband. 10% of people are reducing spending on food or clothes to pay for internet access.

The most common things people sacrifice to keep internet access: food (38%), gas and electricity (32%), travel costs (31%) and clothes (29%).

When 7% of UK households have no internet access at home and 4% of adults don’t have mobile phones, “just use the app” isn’t customer service. It’s exclusion with extra steps.

How the app tax works

McDonald’s presents it as a choice: “You can still order at the counter!” But at a premium. The “choice” is between paying more for the same burger or learning to use an app.

Tesco Clubcard prices versus non-Clubcard prices create the same two-tier system. To get Clubcard, you need email, ability to navigate their system and capacity to keep track of a card or app. Enrollment is increasingly difficult without digital access, though physical cards still exist for now. The “regular” price is often 20-30% higher on the same product.

That’s not a discount for Clubcard holders. It’s a penalty for people who can’t or won’t use the system.

Sainsbury’s Nectar, Co-op membership and Boots Advantage Card all require digital engagement to access the actual affordable price. Not the “reward” price. The price that used to be standard.

Amazon has been doing this the longest. No Amazon account means no access to often the cheapest options for everything from nappies to kettles. Amazon Prime creates another tier: if you can’t afford the £95 annual subscription, you pay more per item through delivery charges and wait longer.

People in poverty pay premium prices for slower service because they can’t front-load the annual fee.

The pattern is everywhere

Being poor has always cost more. Prepayment meters charge extra. Rent costs more than mortgages. High-cost credit for people who can’t access loans. Insurance paid monthly instead of annually.

What’s changed is the digital dimension. Now you need to spend money on internet and devices to access the ‘cheaper’ tier. Every other poverty premium at least lets you pay more without upfront costs. This one prices you out of even participating.

And it’s harder to challenge because it’s presented as customer choice, ‘rewards’ for loyalty and technological progress. The prepayment meter premium was scandalous enough to trigger regulation. The app tax is so normalised that people defend it.

Clothing retailers run app-exclusive discounts. Electronics and appliances cost more in-store than online. Petrol stations increasingly require cards for pay-at-pump, with some offering cheapest prices only through apps.

Parking has become a particular nightmare. Increasingly app-only, cash payments surcharged or removed entirely. Public transport: paper tickets cost more than contactless or app tickets.

Each individual change seems reasonable. Convenient, even. But only if you’re not the person being excluded.

Who pays the app tax

People on Universal Credit are managing unreliable internet because they cancelled it to afford food. Pay-as-you-go phones that run out of data. Shared devices that aren’t available when they need them. Library computers with time limits and booking systems. Cognitive overload from managing poverty whilst learning multiple apps.

They’re expected to maintain digital access to get affordable prices on essentials, whilst simultaneously being priced out of digital access itself.

Social tariffs exist: cheap broadband for people on benefits, costing £12-23 monthly and potentially saving £200 yearly. But 69% of eligible households don’t know they exist. Only 10% of eligible households use them.

The solution isn’t working because the people who need it most are exactly the people least likely to have capacity to: research tariffs, compare providers, navigate application processes, prove eligibility through digital systems and maintain the service when circumstances change.

This isn’t about age

The “grandparents” using food banks are people aged 35 and over, not wealthy pensioners. Digital exclusion tracks class and poverty, not age.

Around 51% of low-income households earning between £6,000 and £10,000 don’t have internet access. That’s not because they’re technologically backwards. It’s because they’re making impossible choices about what they can afford.

When you’re managing that level of poverty, learning a new app to save 30p on beans isn’t trivial. It requires cognitive bandwidth you don’t have. It requires a reliable internet connection, which you’ve cancelled. It requires a smartphone that works when the screen’s cracked and you’re on the cheapest possible tariff.

The business case for exclusion

Organisations love this model because:

• Data collection: every app interaction provides customer intelligence
• Cost reduction: fewer staff needed when customers self-serve
• Price discrimination: charge more to people with fewer options
• Lock-in: switching becomes harder when you’ve invested time learning their system

It’s presented as customer preference. Look at the data! Customers love the app!

Of course they do. The customers who can’t use it have disappeared from your data. Classic survivorship bias.

What Consumer Duty should mean

Financial services aren’t special. They’re just one sector in this pattern.

When regulators write guidance about accessible services and avoiding foreseeable harm, they need to understand that charging more to people who can’t access digital channels is structural discrimination.

It doesn’t matter if it’s wrapped in loyalty schemes, membership benefits or app-exclusive offers. If the result is that people in poverty pay more for essentials, you’ve created a poverty premium through digital exclusion.

Consumer Duty compliance should mean:

• Understanding who gets excluded by your digital strategy
• Tracking how pricing differs between channels
• Ensuring non-digital routes remain genuinely accessible
• Not using “efficiency” as a cover for excluding vulnerable customers
• Recognising that cognitive load is a real barrier

This isn’t about whether your app passes accessibility guidelines. It’s about whether people who don’t use your app are paying more and why.

The uncomfortable truth

Making essential services conditional on digital access, whilst millions of people are priced out of that access, is a policy choice. Not an inevitable consequence of technological progress.

Organisations could:

• offer equivalent prices across all channels
• automatically apply discounts based on eligibility rather than app usage
• maintain genuinely accessible non-digital routes
• support social tariff awareness rather than relying on customers to find them
• stop presenting exclusion as customer choice

They don’t, because it’s cheaper not to.

The McDonald’s app doesn’t just tell you where cheap burgers are. It tells you exactly who our society has decided doesn’t deserve them.