[Blikkentrekker]

Japanese business culture is quite inefficient and stuck on archaic social protocol observance, but many modern technological advancements are quite efficient.

Conversely, German culture is known for it's irrational clinging to cash opposed to electronic payment, obviously Corona is making it reconsider a bit.

In Germany, there is a large line where products are manually scanned, paid for in cash, return calculated, and handed back, and before this cash had to be acquired from the a.t.m.; only slightly to the west in the Netherlands, products are chipped and all automatically scanned when passing through a gate, and paying is quickly done with a no contact card.

[allendoerfer]

You picked the one example of actual German efficiency: Stationary retail. Competition is so hard that prices are Eastern European while incomes are Western European. Those chains are also expanding world-wide. It is one of the few segments where American companies could not succeed in the German market, even though they have tried to (e.g. Walmart).

[suction]

Not true whatsoever. Everybody in Germany (well I reckon more than 90% of people) use cash / debit cards ("EC-Karte") to pay at shops and for tickets / parking meters. Just because Germans don't always use credit cards for small payments, it doesn't mean they are paying cash that they get out of an ATM beforehand. And the millennial generation and younger use Apple Pay and similar systems on the same level as other countries. The "Germans refuse to pay with anything other than cash" myth / meme isn't true anymore since about the early 1990s.

[asutekku]

Before covid-19 most places in japan accepted only cash. Pretty much only major chains were guaranteed to support electronic payments.

[m4rtink]

But the major places apparently really liked to accept cards - the only place I ever got to pay less (6% off!) by paying with card was in Yodobashi Camera in 2017.

In comparison here in Europe many smaller shops still refuse to take cards or you used to be charged extra when paying with card.

[nehalem501]

Depends on the country, in France you can pay anywhere by card, including at outdoor market stalls...