[shortcake27]

I’m a huge fan of the Pasmo/Suica cards. They’re easy to obtain and easy to accept payments, so uptake is huge (if memory serves me correctly, literally accepted everywhere?). You get most of the benefits of card payments (fast, no fiddling with change, no “do you have a smaller note”), but you also maintain anonymity which is a common argument I hear against cards in Germany and why card payments are so rare there (at least in 2017, I don’t know if the situation has changed).

[leipert]

In Germany the pandemic had quite an impact. From 2019 to 2021 cash payments dropped by ~12%, down to 38% of transactions.

What’s more important, loads of shops eg bakeries have card terminals now.

Source: https://www.papershift.com/blog/die-kartenzahlung-ist-in-deu...

[netsharc]

Although the chances of formite transmission (i.e. through touch) is apparently quite low: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-r...

Disclaimer: Everyone seems to have their own level of risk tolerance/acceptance with Covid.

[iggldiggl]

Something like that (for general payments, not for public transport) used to exist in Germany ("Geldkarte"), but it never became a big success and is now being discontinued. And personally speaking – not being able to easily look up how much money is stored on that card is somewhat annoying, so I'd rather continue carrying cash in that case.

[totetsu]

They’re not quit accepted everywhere. Mostly in high convenience, small purchase places. You can get multiples of them for maximum privacy, but they’re 500yen each to purchase.