> Between European bank accounts in the same country. Also, not every European country, unfortunately.

Currently there are 34 countries in the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

SEPA rules specify that you cannot charge more for transfers between different countries than you would for a local transfer.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...

"If the payment is in euros or Swedish krona, they should not charge you more than they would for a national transaction of the same value in euros.

Note that this rule doesn't apply to the whole SEPA area. Switzerland is a notorious exception, Euro SEPA transfers to there often incur a charge.

Euro SEPA transfers between Switzerland and EU are typically free. At least the major Swiss banks don't charge anything extra. International transfers in other currencies (e.g., CHF, GBP) still incur a fee, though.

The same applies to most German banks in the other direction but this is by business decision and not by law. Thus some banks do charge a fee for that.

You should use another bank. I've never heard of anything like that when I was living in Germany (I used Comdirect and N26, lots of my coworkers recommended DKB and ING DiBa also).

> Between European bank accounts in the same country. Also, not every European country, unfortunately.

Unless I'm mistaken, transfers in Europe are by law required to cost the same inside and out of the country. My Greek bank charges 1 euro for a transfer, no matter if the bank is in Greece or anywhere else in the EU. My German bank doesn't charge anything, and I pay my rent from my German account.

> They're very rarely used, but they can be useful for cases where you want to buy something like a car without changing the card limits.

None of the banks I have accounts with ever gave me a chequebook. If I want to buy a car, I will transfer the money through SEPA, as normal, for free.

Interestingly, car dealers in Germany usually require you to pay in cash.

I think this is because getting ownership of a car (the keys and papers) has legal implications and so you need an atomic transaction.

They don’t have cashier’s checks or banker’s drafts in Germany?

Germany is a very cash-oriented society. Many independent businesses don't take credit cards and most consumers prefer to pay in cash. Germans are very privacy-conscious, and there's a latent suspicion of debt and intangible money because of Weimar-era hyperinflation.

https://www.german-way.com/germanys-cash-culture-geld-stinkt...

Which is slightly odd, considering that in hyperinflation, paper cash was losing value just as fast as intangible money.

However, the privacy aspect makes cash usage understandable. But it is somewhat inconvenient sometimes - for example, you generally have to be prepared to pay taxis by cash, not bank/credit card as in Nordics.

And there is a culture of hiding assets from the state. I remember a while back the German police where regularly catching pensioners driving to Luxembourg to smuggle large amounts of euros which they did not want to pay tax on.

A cashier's check is effectively a cash equivalent - it's a check guaranteed by the bank, wherein they basically freeze the funds in your account at the time you write the check. The only real purpose of it is to save people from carrying around huge amounts of cash. So that doesn't really answer his question.

Very very very rarely. I've never seen or heard of anyone using either personally and I'm not even sure where I would get a check book or cash in a check.

Germany is very cash. You pay taxi in cash, you pay the restaurant in cash and you pay the train in cash. Credit Cards exist but largely the EC system is prefered since it's not credit based and pulls from your bank account instead. And I only really fall back to EC when I run out of cash and I know I'm going to be at a place that has a card reader.

> None of the banks I have accounts with ever gave me a chequebook.

We have to request them and pay a small fee for them. They aren’t typically issued when you open the account. You just receive a debit card.

Exceptions may exist. This is only my experience.

Oh, I'm sure you can get them somehow, I'm just saying that they're so rare that no bank gives them out by default (nor have I ever seen one or know what to do with it).

Is there still a universal system of acceptance of checks, though, like there was Eurocheques before 2001? Any bank can presumably issue checks, but if no car dealerships take them...?

Banks still take them. I remember shops in my area starting to refuse them about 2000.

You can write a cheque on anything as it's just a written instruction. Sadly the story of the farmer who wrote one on the side of a cow turns out to be false.

Interesting. Is this a recent change? I paid £10 for transfer from Lloyds 5y ago.

I think that was because it cost money to transfer between SWIFT and SEPA. SEPA to SEPA is very cheap/free, and so is SWIFT to SWIFT, AFAIK. I haven't tried to send money between the two systems for a long time.

> Between European bank accounts in the same country. Also, not every European country, unfortunately.

As far as I know, it's free between all Eurozone countries. At least I regularly do transactions between countries, and I've never heard it costing a cent.

Transfers can be charged, and often are even within the same country. In Spain it is common to have "up to n monthly transfers for free, then you get charged x%".

Also, I've received wrong payments on a German account from French people many times, and they claim it's because their bank charges the transaction and I receive the sent amount minus fees, with no possibilities for them to specify otherwise (that's happened with dozens of different clients, so I'm very inclined to believe them).

> bank charges the transaction and I receive the sent amount minus fees

Sounds like horrible UX -- how would people be able to pay their bills correctly if the sent value doesn't equal the received value?

It is really terrible. We currently solve it by charging them the missing amount via credit card when this happens.

I agree

Some banks allow you to specify it it's the receiver, the sender or if the fee should be split

At least both of my banks in France don't charge me anything when doing wire transfer to other European countries. So, I'm not sure how prevalent that is.