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Cash only in Berlin

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: Cash only in Berlin

#31

Post by whall6 »

vikingerik wrote: post #27
Febra33 wrote: post #11

The author of this article seems to make some very obscure points here. First and foremost: "You have to work pretty hard to find a bar serving traditional Germanic beverages and food." What does the author define as "Germanic" beverages and food? As a german that has lived for some time in Berlin I'm quite sure that there are more than enough places to grab "Germanic" beverages and food at. They just don't stand out…

What Americans think is German is often mostly the Bavarian stereotypes. Pretzels, sausage, lederhosen, Oktoberfest. It's common for Americans to be surprised when they find Berlin or Frankfurt isn't full of that stuff. The same happens in reverse: some Europeans think America is the land of cowboys and guns and fireworks, but that's really more like just Texas, and when they go to New York they're surprised by seein…

It’s funny that you say it’s just Texas because even as a Texan that’s not Texas to me.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#32

Post by teddyh »

browningstreet wrote: post #4

During this last summer in Europe, I used ApplePay literally everywhere I went, even for the smallest purchases. A few places in Berlin -- more than smaller cities -- held on to "cash only", particularly the cafe around the corner from my Airbnb where I got coffee every morning. But all the restaurants I visited have shifted to bringing the portable pay unit for tap-and-pay at the table, which I much prefer to leavin…

> But: complaining about the trackability of digital payments while ignoring the lack of tracking built into the prominent platforms, and also decrying the overreach of digital legislation in Europe ("GDPR made things worse") feels like wanting cake and eating it too.

1. Accusations of hypocrisy is not an argument.

2. How can you claim that “the prominent platforms” lack tracking? Nobody could say for sure, except a few people, whom the rest of us can’t really trust.

3. People in Europe are also complaining about the trackability of digital payments. And those people also tend to like the GDPR.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#33

Post by ch4s3 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #20
ch4s3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like avoiding credit card fees is a perfectly reasonable explanation, at least in the US where fees exceed 3%. It’s trivial for governments to catch businesses that hold a lot of inventory and are cheating on taxes by more than small amounts.

Usually this then says "No card payment under 10 Euros", but still offer card payment for bigger amounts where the fee doesn't matter as much (which IMHO is completely ok).

I'm ambivalent, about card vs. no at small businesses. Places that take cards are more likely to get my business, but beyond that I'm not concerned.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#34

Post by ttctciyf »

Febra33 wrote: post #11

The author of this article seems to make some very obscure points here. First and foremost: "You have to work pretty hard to find a bar serving traditional Germanic beverages and food." What does the author define as "Germanic" beverages and food? As a german that has lived for some time in Berlin I'm quite sure that there are more than enough places to grab "Germanic" beverages and food at. They just don't stand out…

Standard fare in "The Critic" - it's just another mouthpiece for excessive wealth and rightwing culture warfare, like "Spiked" and so on, the wealth in this case belonging to Jeremy Hosking, a Tory Party, Vote Leave and Brexit Party supporter to the tune of £millions, who topped off his contribution to the deterioration of UK politics by becoming the "founding donor to the Reclaim Party led by Laurence Fox"[0].

(Fox, in case you're lucky enough not to know, is a minor UK celebrity best known for his provocative behaviour around race, Covid vaccines and gender/sexuality. You can easily guess the sort of thing he gets excited about, I imagine.)

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hosking

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#35

Post by kbrannigan »

cammikebrown wrote: post #7

Kind of weird to see people so proud of never using cash. It’s fine to prefer a card but to stop people from using cash altogether scares me. And of course the argument here is that criminals use cash which is pretty hilarious.

Look at the comments on this post.

If you prefer cash you must be a criminal.

An ex girlfriend made me feel bad for paying cash at a restaurant, because people would think we're drug dealers.

A legal, government backed way to pay for good and services. Is culturally frowned upon or discouraged.

What a world

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#36

Post by jeltz »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #14
w-m wrote: post #6

There is probably a majority support for keeping cash as a privacy-friendly method of paying in Germany, as an addition to card-paying. But at least in my little bubble in Berlin, everybody hates the cash-only places. When I go to lunch with my colleagues, we might be hitting one of the restaurants that are cash-only, and every time at least one person of the group won't have any cash on them, and have to borrow some…

At least many smaller businesses will probably continue to prefer cash as it is easier to commit tax evasion when there is no record of the transaction stored...

It used to be like that at first here in Sweden but then small businesses became the main drivers of card only. They did not want to deal with the overhead of both handling cash and handling card payments. These days you can mostly use cash as big companies. The few small business who still accept cash are either old school or do tax evasion. Especially now with contactless payments which makes card payments fast.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#37

Post by Dries007 »

In Belgium since last summer you have to accept at least 1 form of digital payment system. Some places try to bypass it by only accepting some obscure creditcards. Most places that didn't accept card now also accept payment via the app Payconiq, which has lower fees than card payments, but uses the same network.

It also became illegal to add fees for using cards or refusing cards for small amounts. It's also still legally mandated to accept cash btw, although you're not obliged to offer change.

Our terminals have slowly evolved to support NFC cards and payment systems such as Apple/Google Pay, but those are rarely used here in my experience. I think it's because those systems are generally blocked here by credit card providers, plus we tend to prefer to use debit cards instead.

Source: https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/sales/payments/obligation...

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#38

Post by jeltz »

wolframhempel wrote: post #9

Berlin is right now in this strange in-between state where countless places are cash-only while plenty of others are no-cash-at-all - both of which equally hipsterish.

Stockholm used to be like that 10-15 years ago, but these days all places accept card.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#39

Post by ttepasse »

Febra33 wrote: post #11

The author of this article seems to make some very obscure points here. First and foremost: "You have to work pretty hard to find a bar serving traditional Germanic beverages and food." What does the author define as "Germanic" beverages and food? As a german that has lived for some time in Berlin I'm quite sure that there are more than enough places to grab "Germanic" beverages and food at. They just don't stand out…

The Critic is a slightly upmarket alt-right publication for establishing more culture war content and contrarianism in the British media landscape. Co-Founded by a strategist of the „European Research Group“, that far right Brexit group in the Tories, and funded by conservative millionaire donors as part of what some describe as pundit welfare strategy - financing enough weird cranks and their media projects to influence public opinion.

In general whenever such a publication is talking about a foreign locality, the aim is always to influence the local (here British) discourse, not taking something foreign on their own merits, but using it as a mirror for the authors’s pet peeve in their own locality.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#40

Post by lxgr »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #8
KingOfCoders wrote: post #3

Often this is for tax evasion. There has been a discussion for over a decade now with ever new proposals from the IRS to halt cash only tax evasion in shops and restaurants. Recently a famous cook was sentenced to years in prison as he took $5M from the cash register over several years. One criminal organization alone sold cash register software that lead to an estimated $500M in tax losses.

In Germany its a cultural thing. People just prefer the option of privacy.

Practically, it's just as often merchants that prefer the option of not paying tax on a given transaction.
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