151–160 of 497 posts
Sure, with eShoping on an ever rise, this privacy increasingly vanishes.
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As an american, I find it strange that cash is faster. Most people who pay cash need to wait to get the change back unless they know the total beforehand and happen to have exact change. In the US, credit card machines are very fast even the chip enabled ones. Cash workflow: - Cashier tells you the total amount - You look in your wallet/purse - You spend time counting exact change if you do have it - If not, you take…
In america prices are always cent-specific (2.85, 3.78). Berlin, much like Argentina (cash strong markets) have rounded prices for everything, its actually much faster. What ist errible is the waste of time going to an atm frequently, or handling lots of petty coins or bills. Cards are definitely more convenient.
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I (German) have never used NFC payments and was curious how that would work with my bank. Turns out they want me to install an app on my phone for this, which is definitely not going to happen.
We just tap our credit cards against the terminal in Canada. No PIN, no signature, way faster than cash.
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Not really. Debit cards are debit cards, not cash. You are comparing CC to DC as far as I can tell, but they are completely different products. There is a huge difference between having currency in your hand or use a medium to access money held by the private organization that can go bankrupt (and this happens much more often than, for example, governments with their currencies).
Some relevant info: In the USA average consumers are protected by the FDIC for the balances of their deposits up to $250,000. A large number of banks have consumer liability limits in place for protection from fraudulent charges on their credit cards. https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/banking/facts/
Those claims are made to increase trust and lower market interest rates for companies to borrow money but regularly failed once really needed.
> "But the real point isn’t that Germans love cash. It’s that—for the same historical reasons—they loathe debt. (Armchair anthropologists have also long noted that German word for debt—Schulden—comes from the word for guilt, Schuld.)"
Sweden has the same culture and words for debt. "skuld", and the saying "Den som är satt i skuld är icke fri" ("He/She who is in debt is not free").
Yet Swedes likes using Credit Cards a lot. But as the author might say we have a lot higher household debt than Germany.
But Switzerland also has high household debt. And as another commenter notes Switzerland has the same cash behavior as Germany. I'd like to see some data on that though.
https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm
I do feel like an armchair anthropologist though.
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When paying with cash you are also only exposed to the risk of loosing what you have on hand. A debit card is a bit more akin to handing over the key to the vault with a contractual agreement as to how much can be taken.
If you think that is a problem with debit cards you should go get a better bank.
Now I realize that if your account is used without authorization most banks refund the money. This can take a certain amount of time and could lock up your remaining funds in the meantime.
According to https://www.cashforless.de/ec_cash_info/Fakten_zur_Kartenzah... methods for payments in stores 2011 was 57% cash, 5.3% credit card, 33% debit card ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cash ). > "of course, [the Germans] attitudes toward currency must owe something to Germany’s tumultuous monetary history. During the Weimar-era hyperinflation that peaked in 1923 [...]" > "the German tendency to sett…
Debit card is pretty equivalent to cash, though. When my friends and family from my hometown (Istanbul) visit me the first time, they are usually quite shocked that most shops here do not accept credit cards at all. In Turkey (a place I call micro-USA), many credit cards automatically divide the payments for some transactions to 3+ months, whereas here in Germany, there's always some bureaucracy involved, even if you…
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Debit card is pretty equivalent to cash, though. When my friends and family from my hometown (Istanbul) visit me the first time, they are usually quite shocked that most shops here do not accept credit cards at all. In Turkey (a place I call micro-USA), many credit cards automatically divide the payments for some transactions to 3+ months, whereas here in Germany, there's always some bureaucracy involved, even if you…
Not really. Debit cards are debit cards, not cash. You are comparing CC to DC as far as I can tell, but they are completely different products. There is a huge difference between having currency in your hand or use a medium to access money held by the private organization that can go bankrupt (and this happens much more often than, for example, governments with their currencies).
From some aspects, yes. From others (no interest in purchases, directly reducing one's account balance, etc) they are the same.
>There is a huge difference between having currency in your hand or use a medium to access money held by the private organization that can go bankrupt (and this happens much more often than, for example, governments with their currencies).
Still not often enough to matter, especially since the cash one has at hand will be a limited amount anyway.
It's not like having $100 or $300 in your pocket to buy things (as opposed to using a debit card) really protects you from the "private organization that can go bankrupt", when the large majority of your money will be in some bank anyway.
Except if you propose we keep all our money in cash at all times. This has other issues, not just a government going bankrupt, but inflation, theft -- and those things are much more common than a bank going bankrupt.
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Did you learn about the inflation @ school? In the UK we weren't taught about the Weimar Republic's hyperinflation (in education up to 16 y/o). My friend who did history @ a more advanced level was, however.
It's part of the GCSE curriculum, which is examined at age 16. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/german... (Please write "at".)