[abc123abc123]

Not for the masses. They cannot be bothered and most likely don't care until it is too late.

For the technologist, it is easy to circumvent in the private sphere of life at least.

I foresee however, a digital ID that will be tied to all your essential services, that you will be required to have in order to live, and that's the tracking and communication point that will be used to get a hold of you.

Kind of like the chinese social credit score, but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services.

[ben_w]

> but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services.

I won't say that future will never happen only because "never" is a long time, but that's not happening in the foreseeable future.

I'm in Germany right now, and theoretically my ID card can be used online.

In practice, "Digitalisierung" is kinda a joke here, much like "paperless office".

For example, I have to visit an office to activate that feature of my ID card, and another to tell them I've moved.

During the pandemic, they briefly realised they didn't need to do that, then they forgot.

Likewise with health, there's more than one health insurance provider just in Germany, let alone the whole EU, and if I move country (not just travel, move) my previous insurance isn't likely to work in the new place anyway — it would take substantial improvements before it would even be possible for someone to corrut it the way you're afraid of.

[Sander_Marechal]

Germany is a lot less digital than the rest of Europe though. Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip). It's so strange visiting Germany as a tourist and not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example.

[nebalee]

Germany has a very well established electronic cash system in the form of Girocard because the overwhelming majority has a Girokonto and thus no need for a separate payment method. So why should any business in Germany go through the trouble to offer additional payment options for the extremely few cases where a customer cannot pay via Girocard or with cash? If you are frustrated that you cannot use your card you should blame whoever issued it to you. It's their responsibility to convince businesses to offer their payment method.

[Semaphor]

> Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip)

I’d call that a minority, especially since Covid.

> not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example

An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes.

I don’t carry cash with me and pay almost everything with my MC debit or AMEX credit card, even in cases I can’t do that, I’d be able to pay with girocard (non-MC/Visa debit card, a widespread local system) if I had one.

[gambiting]

>>An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes.

Personal anecdote, but I've been travelling through Germany this winter and outside of motorway petrol stations and big supermarkets pretty much no one would accept my Visa/MasterCard cards - "EC Karten" only everywhere. We went to a big restaurant which I assumed would be ok because I could see the card terminal at the till, and at the end they told me it's EC Karten only - had to drive around at 11pm to find a working ATM just to withdraw some euro to pay them, while my wife and son waited at the restaurant - absolute nonsense.

[Semaphor]

Weird, I wonder if that’s the south? Up here in Lübeck, even the small stores now almost always accept everything thanks to the small SumUp terminals.

[vidarh]

Are you sure it's not just that your card has both EC and Visa Electron/Mastercard Meastro or similar, and that it's the EC part they accept?

It's been a few years since I've been to Germany, but for comparison, in Norway - while it's nearly unheard of now - you also used to be able to find places that'd take "BankAxept" bank cards, which would be pretty much every domestic debit card, and is similar to EC Karten, but not Visa Electron/Mastercard Maestro debit cards.

If you had a domestic debit card, you'd almost certainly have a Visa/Maestro logo on it as well and so it'd be easy for people to assume that was what they were paying with.

[l33tman]

Was travelling through Sassnitz / Rugen last year and the restaurants we visited didn't accept cards. We had to run around late trying to find an ATM the first evening. And that is a tourist region even..

[aniviacat]

I live in the northern half of Germany and not even the postal office near me accepts Visa. (Let alone the many non-chain shops around me.)

[ben_w]

I work in Mitte in Berlin, 30 minutes walk from Brandenburger Tor, and just got lunch from a pizza takeaway in a building that didn't exist 5 years ago.

They only took cash.

Overall it seems more common than when I first moved here, but that's starting from a low bar, I'd guess going from 1/6th to 1/2 of the cafes and restaurants.

[CalRobert]

The future is here in the Netherlands though. Your driver's licence is tapped to your phone so your banking app can read it via NFC, etc. - would not be surprised if other apps require the same (after all, we need to vet who is on social media - it could be kids!)