The reason being a banking-sector that is deeply entangled with politics. When it comes to checking accounts co-op run banks have 26% marketshare in Germany, while statebanks and communal-run Sparkassen have 41% [0]
Needless to say, they are not the most efficient and are even less prone for innovation.
It's just that all co-op banks and Sparkassen have implemented SCT Inst (instant payment), while quite a few "commercial" banks have not (though the big two have). Though some of them do charge fees, some even outrageous fees, for the privilege of non-stone-age transfers (but then, others don't).
Almost all commercial banks offer SCT. And most of them for free while most co-op/sparkassen charge a fee (some of them even for receiving an instant payment which is rediculous).
Sparkassen failed at numerous attempts to come up with an online payment system that gets any traction and it took considerably longer for them to adopt apple pay.
I think it's also not good to paint commercial banks as one entity: There are old ones, large ones, cheap ones, upper-classy ones, spin-offs and startups. Sparkassen and co-ops are seldomly a startup e.g.. So depending on their clients and considering that SCT in DE has still low adoption amongst clients compared to direct debit mandates, a commercial bank or a startup may very rightfully choose to de-prioritize SCT adoption.
Of course they do. That's the normal, slow money transfer, aka "SEPA Credit Transfer". I suppose you mean SCT Inst?
Even of the bigger retail banks, Consors and ING do not offer SCT Inst.
> And most of them for free while most co-op/sparkassen charge a fee (some of them even for receiving an instant payment which is rediculous).
While it is included at Deutsche Bank proper, both Norisbank and Postbank charge between 0.50 and 1.00 EUR for outgoing SCT Inst, Commerzbank proper charges 1.50 EUR unless you are in one of their premium plans while comdirect (though technically not yet fully part of Commerzbank) is free, Hypovereinsbank is free for all non-business accounts except the cheapest ones, where it's 0.50 EUR.
So ... erm, no, not even close to "most of them for free"?
Also, on the other hand, there are co-op banks that offer free accounts with free SCT Inst nationally.
But who is charging for receiving SCT Inst payments? I hadn't heard of that before, that's indeed beyond ridiculous!
> Sparkassen failed at numerous attempts to come up with an online payment system that gets any traction and it took considerably longer for them to adopt apple pay.
> Needless to say, they are not the most efficient and are even less prone for innovation.
I think the main problem is that both co-ops and Sparkassen are very decentralized, you're looking at literally thousands of tiny and not-so-tiny-but-hardly-big banks that are all completely independant. That makes innovation very slow - of course they have pooled resources to have a somewhat centralized IT infrastructure, but the power to decide on innovations is ultimately still with the thousands of member banks.
Amazing how left leaning politicians don’t make this their battle cry. If they want to fight for government working, it has to work in these cases of obvious corruption. The same thing happens in the US
"Obvious corruption"? Based on this thread, it looks like "this would be hard for us, so we object to the requirement". There are a number of ways you could slam that... but corruption?
I wouldn't disagree. The fact that they can force the government to do their bidding is corruption in my eyes too.
The carmakers in Germany shut down various attempts to incentivize electronic cars and inquiries in their criminal behavior in the cheating scandals.
I think there is a fine line between lobbying and being downright criminal. I think most companies have actually crossed the line.
Deutsche Bahn after privatization let the train tracks in Hamburg rot for a long time. Now that they've passed the safety threshold they decided not to renew the tracks but instead move the train station somewhere else.
I've been involved in a government construction project and the way the contracts are handed out are on the surface to the highest bidder, but it's hard to call it anything but corrupt.
Lobbying is one thing, but threatening consultants and employees with repercussions and lawsuits for wanting to inform people about lies that led to these contracts is in fact criminal. I had a good lawyer, but nothing happened to the leadership on either side and nothing probably ever will.
The EU generally talks to the industry affected by some regulations, this is generally to prevent deploying a regulation or law that doesn't really work in practise and to find a reasonable compromise (of course, sometimes multiple industries end up at the table, some with more political power than others, which is how you get the EU copyright reform pushed by newspapers and yellow journalists)
The effect is more often, and I think more accurately, termed 'regulatory capture' than corruption. The other side of it is that the incumbents work to ensure that regulation presents a very high barrier to entry for any would-be competitor.
To be fair, I can remember when it was 3 days in the U.K. and it only changed because the government put its foot down and stipulated that 2 hours should be the limit for most transactions