[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.

[Semaphor]

Yes, I am, N26 only gives you a Maestro card if you pay extra, and even that (which I don’t have) doesn’t support girocard. The one I have is MC only.

[vidarh]

Wow, it's really bizarre to have a bank issuing debit cards not linked to the dominant local bank network...

[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.