What I don't understand is your banking. As a Czech person, I strongly felt like German banking is 20 years in the past. Why the heck would you have ATMs with opening hours, and not accepting all cards? Why does it cost so much (or anything?) to withdraw? Why are your businesses not accepting cards, or only accepting some cards with weird details like "CCs only German, other cards only EU"?
>As a Czech person, I strongly felt like German banking is 20 years in the past. Why the heck would you have ATMs with opening hours, and not accepting all cards?
Never seen an ATM with opening hours, other than ones located inside shopping malls where the entire mall completely closes during the nights.
I never had an ATM refuse my card, tho. The worst was some steep fees (see below).
>Why does it cost so much (or anything?) to withdraw?
Because banks are in the business of making money ;) Seriously tho, most Germans do not pay for withdrawals, you "just" have to remember to go to an ATM of your bank or one of their partners, which admittedly you have to know about and then it's a bit of a hassle.
>Why are your businesses not accepting cards, or only accepting some cards with weird details like "CCs only German, other cards only EU"?
Now that's actually more of an issue, indeed. I think it's a combination of
- Germans still really loving their cash, so everybody usually has at least a few bucks in cash with them,
- Germans always being a bit conservative about new tech (that can lose them money or get their persoanl and/or banking data into the wrong hands),
- Germans really despising when somebody in front of them wants to pay for small purchases slowly with a card (insert into reader, type PIN and/or sign) instead of quickly with some cash
- and small shops not wanting to go through the hassle of setting up this stuff. Both legal and also the tech aspects are a burden; there is a lot of red tape to get accepted by upstream processors and CC companies; and the system isn't exactly unified either. Especially small independent shops that usually sell stuff at a few bucks per customer do not really seem to see the point in offering card payments. And from what I heard, purely anecdotal and second hand, it's far more of a hassle to get set up to accept credit cards, especially issued by foreign banks, than German bank cards, so that may explain why some shops will accept some card but not others.
Then again, everything that's part of a chain or franchise usually accepts cards, and most actual restaurants do too (but some still don't, which can lead to a lot of awkwardness once you try to pay), as do virtually all gas stations, and so on.
As a German, that's just something you're used to and expect: The people in the doner shop or asian food truck or Kiosk (newsagent/corner shop) will stare blankly at you if you want to pay your less than 10 bucks with a card, even when they accept cards.
Anyway, banks been rolling out contactless payment systems recently, which might change things for small item purchases finally (or rather eventually). Which, of course, is an area where Germany lacked behind.
> Never seen an ATM with opening hours, other than ones located inside shopping malls where the entire mall completely closes during the nights.
Yeah. In Czechia we can use the card to open the enclosed area and use the ATM.
> I never had an ATM refuse my card, tho. The worst was some steep fees (see below).
I have never seen a Czech ATM that can't handle literally any card from planet Earth, meanwhile the first German ATM I saw has been MasterCard only. And then the second and the third one as well, I was not amused.
> Never seen an ATM with opening hours, other than ones located inside shopping malls where the entire mall completely closes during the nights.
True for pure ATMs, but here (Lübeck, SH) all the ATMs (besides those fee scalping machines) are inside the bank areas, and they all close between 22 and 23 until the next morning. And when you find one that is open, good luck at getting smaller bills.
huh? Every branch of my banks have card readers at the entrance that allow me to enter the area in the front with the ATMs and self-service machines 24/7. Every other bank I know has the same thing. Has been that way since at least 2 decades.
I've seen that during my roadtrip circle around Germany in Frankfurt, Koln, Hamburg and cities like that, but not in other parts of the country, especially not rural.
Here they do, as they are inside the bank’s self-service area. Once had to skip on a cab fee (I offered to wire the money, driver wasn’t interested) because there was literally no place I could get money from.
I can see the sarcasm in your post, but as someone who's just moved to Germany from a more ... bureaucratically modern ... country, it is enough to make one cry. The only digital part of my tasks so far has been that I had to send a document by email after travelling 800 km to perform a needlessly face-to-face task which required a followup.
Welcome to Germany (in all seriousness, if nobody rold you yet, welcome!)! I still remember when the local admin office was so proud to to go digital by offering online reservations for appointments. After at least two years of discussions. Portal looked already old in the early 2000s.
When I first heard a politician announce that at a start-up conference, I had to double check that really talked about the implementation and not the law to be in force. And the guy was the (deputy-) head of parliament's digitalization council. Not sure just how the German government, and society, think a digital world is going to look like.