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Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

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Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#451

Post by kuschku »

germanier wrote: post #448
kuschku wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some REWEs have, but not all. There's still some where I live that don't. (REWE eG is a cooperative, so it's all a bit more complicated)

Basically there is Rewe Dortmund (with stores across NRW) and Rewe anywhere else (including NRW). The latter requires credit card acceptance for all Rewe-branded stores. If a store does not have that, an email to Cologne usually changes it.

There's also Rewe and Coop (Sky, Plaza, etc) in Schleswig-Holstein, which have merged now, but offer different amounts of credit card acceptance.

And members of both have reservations against MasterCard and VISA, due to what happened with Rossmann a few years ago (Rossmann sold cuban cigars, as punishment MasterCard, VISA and PayPal seized Rossmanns funds and suspended all payments), but as EC was also bought by MasterCard and merged with the Maestro brand, currently there's no option but to continue on.

Personally, as member of both the REWE eG and coop eG, I'd support a move away from CC to any national or EU based payment system as soon as possible.

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#452

Post by germanier »

kuschku wrote: post #348
martinald wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, such a pain. Especially in restaurants if you take a large group out and want to pick the bill up. It has got better but I have been totally caught out with this on one of my first visits to Berlin with a fairly pricey group dinner and I physically cannot take more than €250 out of the ATM a day without taking cash out on CC which involves horrendous cash advance fees. I also don't buy this cc fee argument. It…

EC cards have 0.125% fees. That’s an entire order of magnitude cheaper than CC. Of course no one is going to support CC if they can save that much money.

Where can I get those magical 30€/0.125% fees? Girocard is cheap (though less than an order of magnitude compared to CC) but I'm not aware of an offer that cheap, especially for low volume.

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#453

Post by pimeys »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #81
mtmail wrote: post #2

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…

As a German a.) I mostly pay cash because it's faster b.) some shops that can afford it only have cash payments to save on CC costs Not because of inflation or because something happend 100y ago.

Then again finding a working Sparkasse ATM in Berlin is always something you have to plan to do a couple of times every week, or then you must carry lots of money with you.

Again I owe to my colleague for my lunch because I forgot to pick money in the morning.

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#455

Post by germanier »

kuschku wrote: post #451
germanier wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically there is Rewe Dortmund (with stores across NRW) and Rewe anywhere else (including NRW). The latter requires credit card acceptance for all Rewe-branded stores. If a store does not have that, an email to Cologne usually changes it.

There's also Rewe and Coop (Sky, Plaza, etc) in Schleswig-Holstein, which have merged now, but offer different amounts of credit card acceptance. And members of both have reservations against MasterCard and VISA, due to what happened with Rossmann a few years ago (Rossmann sold cuban cigars, as punishment MasterCard, VISA and PayPal seized Rossmanns funds and suspended all payments), but as EC was also bought by Mast…

I know that there are some reservations but the rule the cooperative (including SH) decided as binding still stands. You are of course free to lobby internally for change.

Rewe has a fairly complicated legal structure, I'm not sure which you are a member of. There is no single "Rewe eG" which you can just buy into, especially not if you don't happen to own supermarkets.

EC was not bought by MasterCard, the brand was always owned by them (though there have been various mergers). The system behind those cards was not merged with Maestro (which is a different system) but merely rebranded as Girocard, an independent scheme by the German banks. It works without any reliance on MasterCard.

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#456

Post by kuschku »

germanier wrote: post #452
kuschku wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EC cards have 0.125% fees. That’s an entire order of magnitude cheaper than CC. Of course no one is going to support CC if they can save that much money.

Where can I get those magical 30€/0.125% fees? Girocard is cheap (though less than an order of magnitude compared to CC) but I'm not aware of an offer that cheap, especially for low volume.

Those were the prices offered by EC (the original EC back in the day, before MasterCard bought it: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Cash) back when a local business wanted to start supporting EC, and made an inquiry to several payment processors.

I'm not sure about values today, but they don't seem to be much higher if you exclude costs for the actual readers and the connection.

Currently I seem to find for low volume situations only contracts from iZettle and co for 0.95% fees.

EDIT: Just found this Verordnung setting the maximum fee for EC at 0.2%: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX...

> das Interbankenentgelt, das Zahlungsdienstleister bei Debitkartentransaktionen pro Zahlungsvorgang bieten oder verlangen dürfen, beträgt höchstens 0,2 % des Transaktionswerts.

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#457

Post by m_mueller »

louisswiss wrote: post #82
m_mueller wrote: post #33

As a Swiss German I think the currency stability argument is moot. Swiss Frank is one of the most stable currencies available and we still have a similar attitude to cash as Germans. IMO it's mainly due to the following reasons: 1) CC is slow, at least in Switzerland. Like in Germany, efficiency is baked into the culture - people hate to wait on someone paying his chocolate bar with credit card. It's also not rare fo…

Have been living on and off in Switzerland for the last 7 years(Zurich mainly). Your post describes my experience in Switzerland when I first moved here, however for the past year or two (since contactless payments and NFC took off) I would say that your first point has completely reversed - it is now much faster to pay with card unless you have the exact change ready. Also regarding your third point, anecdotally I h…

Interesting point about contactless, I've been living abroad thr last 3 years ;)

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#458

Post by kuschku »

germanier wrote: post #455
kuschku wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Rewe and Coop (Sky, Plaza, etc) in Schleswig-Holstein, which have merged now, but offer different amounts of credit card acceptance. And members of both have reservations against MasterCard and VISA, due to what happened with Rossmann a few years ago (Rossmann sold cuban cigars, as punishment MasterCard, VISA and PayPal seized Rossmanns funds and suspended all payments), but as EC was also bought by Mast…

I know that there are some reservations but the rule the cooperative (including SH) decided as binding still stands. You are of course free to lobby internally for change. Rewe has a fairly complicated legal structure, I'm not sure which you are a member of. There is no single "Rewe eG" which you can just buy into, especially not if you don't happen to own supermarkets. EC was not bought by MasterCard, the brand was…

> Rewe has a fairly complicated legal structure, I'm not sure which you are a member of. There is no single "Rewe eG" which you can just buy into, especially not if you don't happen to own supermarkets.

I'm personally not sure either. Originally my entire family was just a member of the coop eG, but when they started to merge with REWE eG in the past months the coop eG offered an option to invest additional money into the REWE eG (at better than usual terms). So we did.

https://www.shz.de/regionales/schleswig-holstein/tschuess-sk...

So now we have some stores that have just been rebranded REWE, some still branded Sky, operating with the same mix of REWE and Sky products, and some accepting CCs, some not.

> The system behind those cards was not merged with Maestro (which is a different system) but merely rebranded as Girocard

In marketing, EC stopped being the main brand, though, and MasterCard provides their EC cards under the "Maestro" brand within of Germany, although they are not operating over the Maestro network, or in any way compatible with it. Take any recent EC card, it'll work only via the EC system, say Girocard Electronic Cash on the back, and Maestro on the front, but doesn't actually have any relation to the Maestro system. That's what I was referring to with the rebranding.

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#459

Post by jshevek »

ahartmetz wrote: post #442
jshevek wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that social network still exist, and can you share its name please?

Jodel https://jodel-app.com/ I had it installed for a few days once. I decided to uninstall it because it took too much attention (there are MANY users in Berlin) and I kind of felt too old. The typical user is a student in the first few semesters.

Thank you!

Re: Why Germans pay cash for almost everything

#460

Post by pishpash »

haeffin wrote: post #324
codegeek wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 efficient stores (e.g. Aldi in Germany and branches in Switzerland and Austria) the cashiers start taking the change into the hand the moment you say you pay cash. They do that up to the next bill and if you pay with a higher bill, picking up extra bills from the registry is really fast. Whereas with a credit card you put the card in, wait until the remote system decides if you should use your PIN or signature, th…

You forget that American cashiers are incapable of arithmetic.
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