[stingraycharles]

Do people have to pay transaction fees for using their bank cards in the US? At least over here in .nl there are none of these fees (as a consumer) and we have free NFC payments with your regular bank cards or Apple Pay etc.

[dijit]

EU caps the transaction fee of banks to like 1%. (which is paid by the seller).

NL is a bit of a special cookie here, companies in NL don't like paying 1% transaction fees, so most companies only accept MAESTRO. Because Maestro has lower tx fees.

Every time I visit I can't pay for anything with my VISA or Mastercard. It's rather frustrating.

[stingraycharles]

Yeah nobody uses credit cards because of these fees. However, I have never heard of a 1% fee on regular bank card transactions. I know there used to be a 25 cents fee for consumers when they wanted to pay small amounts by cards, but nowadays shops promote payments for this as well and it’s free everywhere. I think it’s a few cents per transaction for the seller.

[pjmlp]

Put Germany on the same cookie jar, while it has largely improved since I arrived here, plenty of restaurants are still only accepting cash payments.

This was really strange to me, being used to pay with debit card almost everything in Portugal.

[kohtatsu]

In Germany I thought it was due to being privacy conscious?

[pjmlp]

On the contrary, it is due to the operating taxes.

[free652]

In 99% of cases no fees for consumers. I know only 1 store that has a credit card surcharge.

Contactless payments can be found where is a card terminal, but not everywhere.

NYC has contactless bus payments now.