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Cash only in Berlin

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: Cash only in Berlin

#61

Post by orwin »

itsyaboi wrote: post #44
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 a weak interpretation. > 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…

Germany is probably the european country i know the less, despite learning german in school and working at a franco-german company for my second internship. So i won't talk about the traditionnal restaurant in germany, but just so you know: In France, Spain and Portugal, traditional restaurants don't stand out much (With the exception of French Bouillons like Chartier maybe?).

So maybe you have some points in your comment, but considering you're obviously totally wrong on the private payment processors (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...), i'd think your interpretation might be weaker.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#62

Post by gambiting »

Quick rant about paying for things in Germany - last week I was driving with my family through Germany, after 12 hours in the car we stopped for the night in a random village near Magdeburg, but it was already 9pm and we haven't eaten. We were pointed to a local greek restaurant, which turned out to be fantastic, really good food, but when the time to pay came, I was told they don't accept Visa or MasterCard. Only "EC-Karten". I said I don't have one, I don't have any euros, so what now. "Oh there's a cash machine at a bank in a town nearby" - so I had to leave my crying toddler with my wife and go and hunt this cash machine in the middle of nowhere, because the owner doesn't want to pay the Visa/MasterCard fees. I was since told that this is very common in Germany, and outside of the motorway petrol stations your Visa/MasterCard might not be accepted.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#63

Post by jeroenhd »

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.

Cash brings an inherent risk to the business that digital payments don't. There's no getting robbed at 10PM while bringing the day's revenue to the bank if the transfers are all digital, there's no emptying the cash registers when you can get a hundred or so euros at most. Insurance companies certainly don't lower their prices if you decide to keep a few thousand euros in the registers all day.

In supermarkets here, the cash in the registers need to be counted every so often to make sure nobody is stealing from the company (because that has happened and will always happen). This burden and the cost of labour associated with it also generally disappears when customers pay digitally only.

Don't get me wrong, though I myself pay almost exclusively digitally these days, I'm definitely anti digital-only payments. An internet or power outage could take out the ability to pay for anything for hours or days if society goes full-digital. However, the fact that cash has many downsides to the business owners is often forgotten in these discussions.

I can imagine a future in which the risk of paying by cash is compounded by higher prices. Payment by card is already free (well, the 25 cents transaction fee is worked into the product price) but I can see the reverse happening, like a ±€2 charge for every payment for making the business run the risk of getting robbed or losing money. Kind of like how postage stamps are getting more and more expensive because nobody ever mails anything any more and the postal service needs to earn its costs back.

I bet many people will very quickly lose interest in keeping cash around when the additional cost of businesses accepting cash hits them in their wallets.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#64

Post by polotics »

anonymoose33282 wrote: post #54
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 article seemed really disjointed to me as well, as a person who's spent plenty of time both living in Berlin and out of Berlin. Jumps to gentrification, dabbles in "centralized currency", covers some social programs, all to wrap it up with immigration, "kids these days" and slips in the surveillance state before signing off. Berlin's cash-only culture is definitely a shock to most tourists who come there from the…

So lovely to read the word "Späti", as if everyone of course would know it's Berliner lingo for a late-hours convenience store... Any other Berlinism to report?

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#65

Post by jeroenhd »

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 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 leaving the card on the bill in the US and having it disappear for a moment while they ring you up at the central POS (still the standard practice in the US places I live near).

Perhaps offtopic, but that's such a ridiculously scary concept to me. I was already nervous when in another country the person behind the register took my card to swipe it for me, I don't think I would ever let them just take my card!

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#66

Post by jeroenhd »

conanbatt wrote: post #12
numlock86 wrote: post #10

If a merchant, especially in Germany, asks for cash, it's for tax evasion. It's as simple as that. And no, I don't care about your anecdotes how that is not true for your particular case. A small number of exceptions exist of course.

That is the best reason to use cash. Isn't it scary that debit money guarantees you pay more taxes, and it is also used as evidence against you, and to violate your privacy? Cash doesn't have any of those issues, its amazing. That's why governments hate it! (literally!)

How are you paying "more taxes"? Those are the types of taxes you're obliged to pay already. Someone needs to pay for schools and roads!

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#67

Post by yladiz »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #21
flohofwoe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then people should be free to use cash, but there's no need to lock out people who prefer card payment (I also prefer cash, but mainly because I'm old-fashioned). But if a restaurant has a sign in the door "no card payment due to technical problems" for years, it's probably neither a technical nor a cultural/ideological issue ;)

Card payment involves fees, and buying an ePoS system, etc. There's also the parallel EC Card system in Germany, most ePoS terminals only support normal cards, or EC card. Its easier to just accept cash. Everyone who lives there knows cash is king, and the tourists figure it out within a short span of time.

Card payment does involve fees but they’re not as impactful on business as it may otherwise seem. As many others have mentioned places taking only cash, especially restaurants, do so generally for tax avoidance rather than less fees from the payment processor.

As someone who does live in Germany, things changed dramatically during Covid. So many more places accept cards now and I find myself needing to withdrawal cash a lot less frequently than I did pre-Covid. There are still a ton of places that don’t take cards but a lot converted to taking cards, and some even switched to card only after seeing the lower cost of having cash (less risk of break in, less to move around, etc.)

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#68

Post by ch4s3 »

jeltz wrote: post #55
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.

Not necessarily. Some small business use their cash to buy stolen goods. For example it used to be quite common for restaurants to buy stolen meat using their cash. You can also pay your staff in cash for some of their hours. Both of these are hard to catch unless you actively have people on location tracking the business. Plus removing cash can make other crimes less appealing (like buying stolen meat).

It seems to me like one should police meat theft rather than cash use.

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#69

Post by s9w »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #25
numlock86 wrote: post #10

If a merchant, especially in Germany, asks for cash, it's for tax evasion. It's as simple as that. And no, I don't care about your anecdotes how that is not true for your particular case. A small number of exceptions exist of course.

Any evidence behind that wild claim?

[dead]

Re: Cash only in Berlin

#70

Post by conanbatt »

jeroenhd wrote: post #66
conanbatt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the best reason to use cash. Isn't it scary that debit money guarantees you pay more taxes, and it is also used as evidence against you, and to violate your privacy? Cash doesn't have any of those issues, its amazing. That's why governments hate it! (literally!)

How are you paying "more taxes"? Those are the types of taxes you're obliged to pay already. Someone needs to pay for schools and roads!

Because it doesn't get reported as income, there's no record of it. Thats why central banks are purposefully hindering it - it takes away their capacity to confiscate and control with it.

The capacity to not pay taxes is a very important tool of civil disobedience, just like protesting in a public street.

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