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Europe isn’t a monolith and some countries are weird about cards. Here’s two examples. In Germany, cash is strongly preferred or was the last time I was there

by mint5 19d ago

Europe isn’t a monolith and some countries are weird about cards. Here’s two examples. In Germany, cash is strongly preferred or was the last time I was there a few years ago. In Norway, cash is nigh nonexistent. Don’t mistake Germany as representative of the median European country when it comes to card transactions.

wewxjfq 19d ago
Trite comment. Debit/credit cards never took off in Germany because everyone had a Giro card that worked perfectly well for cashless payments. And for online payments, PayPal filled the gap quick enough. The average German saw no reason to request a Visa/MasterCard from their bank for a heavy fee when PayPal did the job. That's also the difference: Germany never had the "Here, have a free credit card" culture.
- Symbiote 19d ago
  A Giro card is a debit card.
  - wewxjfq 18d ago
    With a more benevolent reading of my comment you could have seen that I do consider them equivalent for cashless local payments. My first sentence was meant as "[American] debit/credit cards". This doesn't invalidate anything I said.