[2ion]

- direct bank transfer = debit. When you send money using SEPA you have no right at all to charge the money back, as it's always a voluntary authorized transaction. The marchant got you by the balls.

- In DE at there are fast "instant" payments called paydirekt or giropay, which make "checkout" using your giro account fast and simply. However, it's debit again. Balls grabbed.

- Your checking account usually receives your salary, and you have to monitor it for fraudulent charges, which can just "happen" if somebody knows your IBAN. Therefore, entering my IBAN on any site that is not 100% trustworthy and liable is a no-go.

Debit is really bad for buyer's protection, and even when using "reverse debit" which means authorizing a party to draw money from your giro account, you in theory can reverse such charges, but the reversals are handled by your home bank and in many cases the reversal is getting rejected based on intransparent reasons or takes _very_ long. Customer service is simply bad at banks.

So what about credit card processors like Stripe?

- German credit cards are issued largely by banks in the visa/mastercard system. That means the banks themselves are responsible for accepting or rejecting chargebacks. Bad customer service by banks again, very high burden of proof => high chance of chargeback not going through, paper tiger wars.

- Most merchants have really shitty payment gateways in place or even store credit card information on site. The smaller the business, the shittier the storage and you can basically guarantee that data protection is effectively handled at most SMB like trash. => I do not enter my main credit card info on random sites.

So what does Paypal offer?

- almost no questions asked chargeback of any amount if you return the goods (proof = shipping label) - masks credit card number IBAN and other information from merchant

That's it. I'm ok paying small amounts using direct debit but expensive purchases, like electronics, gardening equipment and so on, go through either (a) Amazon w/ its no-fullshit refund policy (b) a merchant offering PayPal. PayPal is expensive, but customer friendly. Germany has _no_ true competitor to PayPal's service except notarized escrow, and I don't want to lawyer up just to buy a lawn mower.

[doikor]

About the charge backs if one is mainly shopping from local companies there is really strong consumer protection laws instead.

Basically you can demand a refund and if they don't give it to you it is a really simple process of just sending a bill to that company for your money and initiate bankruptcy process if they fail to pay.

[2ion]

Yes, but in this context, everything depends on the interaction with the merchant. While most merchants are not pricks, they are businesspeople and won't unconditionally accommodate any claim even if it is reasonable. Based on my experience, the worst are not necessarily the small merchants unless they are just fraudsters but the semi-large online stores like Otto/Saturn/MediaMarkt which will do everything to make a return and refund as impossible as possible.

[doikor]

In Finland consumers have the right to return the product for 7, 14 or 21 days (depending on product category and if online/offline store). The merchant has very little control over this with the main exceptions being stuff like underwear etc that can not be returned due to hygiene reasons.

The product when returned still has to be in a state that it can be sold.

This also means that lot of people pointing out Amazons very liberal return policy being a good reason to shop there makes no sense here. We got roughly the same return policy for all online shopping. And as others pointed out EU regulations give 14day return policy for all online shopping.

[evandijk70]

In the EU, the law is that merchants have to allow a return and refund for any online purchase unconditionally, provided that it was initiated within two weeks of purchase. I have never had any problems with this.