Those proprietary cards in most of the European countries have definitely advantages, but are also a big problem: In lots of European countries merchants often only accept the country's own proprietary debit card, but no debit/credit cards from other European countries.

For example in Denmark: "Due to the higher fees charged by banks for the use of non-Danish issued cards (that consist of foreign card network interchange fees plus Danish banks own fees), many Danish merchants only accept Dankort and Danish-issued credit cards, but not foreign cards." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort)

I really hope that the EU adds some regulation that forces merchants to accept debit/card cards from other EU member states on an equal basis. Especially in combination with the fact that in some cases only electronic payments are accepted, which makes it pretty much impossible for anyone to pay without a national bank account.

The EU already solved (or at least mitigated) the issues with roaming in mobile networks. Doing the same for payments is the next logical step.

And in Germany it's Girocard[1]. You couldn't even buy a metro ticket with a Visa / MasterCard in Berlin a few years ago. And maybe you still can't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard

You actually can buy tickets with credit cards since summer 2017! (it positively surprised me when I checked for visiting friends a while back)

Thanks, that's great news. My last visit was in May 2017. And for 10 years between 2007-2017 I pretty much carried only cash in Berlin.

The cardless life was very strange in the beginning, but I learnt to love the absolute sense of freedom and privacy the lack of any digital records of my day-to-day life provided me.

I even stopped carrying my smartphone when I didn't need it. It was like back to 1990s.

German supermarket chain Aldi was, until not too many years ago, one of the last places in Denmark which didn't take Visa or Mastercard, only the above mentioned Dankort (which I personally abhor, like everything else coming out of its controlling company, Nets).

I was astonished when I was in Berlin couple of years ago how many places wouldn't accept credit cards. I was used to the US where I could get around for months without carrying any cash, and there everybody was refusing to deal with CCs. And I arrived on week-end, means I couldn't just go to a bank to change cash (there were probably still places to do it, but I didn't know where they were...). Had to borrow cash from local friends to get by until the workweek started. No idea why Berlin is so reluctant to deal with credit cards.

If I recall there is an ATM in Alexanderplatz station that accepts foreign debit cards (used a Canadian card) and also a currency exchange business. You should always bring some local currency with you if you travel internationally. Your bank will likely get you a better exchange rate than the money changers at your destination.

> No idea why Berlin is so reluctant to deal with credit cards.

https://qz.com/262595/why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost-everyt...

A short answer: because of history.

I can answer this :) Because in Germany, everyone uses Girocard. It has a lower fee, so it is preferred over credit cards. We also don't need the consumer protections that credit cards offer because most of them are law here.

But if you already accept Girocard marginal cost of accepting Visa/MC (with which they are co-branded frequently, as I understand) should be extremely low. But what I encountered is a lot of cash-only places, from fast food & restaurants to museums. In US, where I live, I know maybe one or two cash-only restaurant out of a thousand. In Berlin, it felt like the majority is. And the delta in fees can't be that big...

Same in Italy, actually. Every POS accepts Bancomat[1], which is the standard debit circuit over here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancomat_(debit_card)

Same in Norway (Bank axept)

The individual banks seems to set the fees (card owner is charged) Most banks charge a yearly fee (~25$) (free transactions), though some banks charge as much as 1NOK ($0.12) per transaction on top of that.

It’s similar in Switzerland, almost every shop accepts PostCard

Are there any consumer benefits, ala rewards, for using this card?

Who pays for these "consumer benefits"? Something tells me the consumer.

Actually, it's merchants.

EU drastically capped interchange fees a few years ago. The premise was that it will lower costs for merchants and effectively lower costs for consumers. However, most of the savings were kept by merchants, especially larger ones.

Some EU study confirming that: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/news-insights/insight...

Merchants pass-through the fees to consumers. If they charge the same price to consumers using rewards cards and cash (common in the US), consumers using cash or debit cards subsidize credit cards.

I'm pretty sure you're subsidizing the debit card users if using cash, too. They use the same networks as credit cards (visa/mastercard networks).

I remember when debit cards first came out in the US. There was actually a 1-2% surcharge that most merchants were charging (especially smaller mom/pop type stores) to use debits - because it cost them to use the payment system just like credit cards. Eventually the merchants just baked the processing fees into the prices of all goods because most transactions are done with cards. Even checks now are converted to an "ACH debit" at the checkstand and the funds come out of your account immediately. You can't float checks anymore, not that that was ever a good idea anyway.

> I'm pretty sure you're subsidizing the debit card users if using cash, too.

Correct.

> Even checks now are converted to an "ACH debit" at the checkstand and the funds come out of your account immediately. You can't float checks anymore, not that that was ever a good idea anyway.

I don't know what checkstands are but I've never seen a check immediately pull from my account. (Just for example, I wrote a check Saturday and I'm sure the vendor deposited it immediately and it still hasn't posted to my account three days later.) In fact, that would be great, IMO. Instead anyone who wants immediate payment without the risk of a check not clearing (landlord first month's rent, or mortgage, or like a car) will demand a cashier's check or money order or wire, all of which are associated with an additional fee of $10-25. (Or will pull your credit to cover the float.)

How are the merchants paying benefits to credit card owners? Either way you would be fool to believe the merchants pay anything with their own money. It's just like saying that the lottery owner pays the winners.

Paid through interchange fees. Cards with the most rewards are most likely heavily supported by interchange.

Fees are higher for those cards than cards without rewards.

Sure. The consumers do (at the end of the day), hence the fees. We also pay for the costs borne by them to resolve disputes, handle those that don't pay back, etc. Also hence the fees.

In Europe, most cards are debit cards, not credit cards.

In some countries and places, credit cards are not even accepted because of the possibility of a chargeback and much higher processing fees.

In essence, many people here treat Visa / MasterCard as just "electronic cash", and therefore spend only the money they actually have.

In my own EU country, only about 1% of private bank customers own a credit card. These are usually the wealthiest people in the country, who have no problems paying the balance back on time.

The credit cards themselves provide very few benefits apart from the international health insurance for the entire family, and 0% fee for up to 45 days.

The reward programs are almost non-existent. Just like the general idea of spending the money one doesn't have.

It might sound like a very conservative society, but people here are a way more relaxed about their personal finances than in the US.

Instead of trying to earn reward points, they try to plan their expenses upfront, and focus on staying debt-free as much as they can.

That's because most Europeans have stable jobs with stable salaries which can neither grow, nor decline by a lot. Therefore, almost nobody expects to become very rich or very poor, and lives accordingly.

I exclusively use my credit card (in the US) for all payments that I am allowed to, which is most. I also pay the balance off in full each month. I pay $0 in fees and $0 in interest charges, and the bank pays me about $1,500/year with a cash rewards program, so I end up making $1,500/year by using it. I just wish I could pay my mortgage with it. I did buy a car for my daughter on it (and went home and paid it off a week later). That was a nice chunk of change. The only actual debt I have is my mortgage.

I don't claim to be a typical credit card user, but I do like to game their system and make money off of them (paid for by people NOT paying their balances off monthly and racking up dumb fees). I don't see a downside to it. It's not like they're getting more data on me by using a rewards card. They already know all of the purchases I make with them.

I would probably do the same, if I lived in the US, because that's how the entire country is optimized to operate.

At the same time, I am glad that the EU provides a more conservative alternative and style of living.

I think the US is more about getting rich, and the EU is more about not becoming poor.

And for a money-savvy person the US might provide much more opportunities than the EU can.

Yet, the majority of people are not money-savvy, and the "high risks, high rewards" game inevitably produces more losers than winners.

Hrmm, many people in other areas only spend money on credit cards they actually have too. I was also curious about the dispute resolution feature of the card itself. It is my primary reason for a CC (rewards are just a perk) so I don't have to rely on government institutions with limited incentive to go to bat for me when the card acceptor did me wrong.

I never heard of anyone disputing his Visa / MasterCard payment in my country.

That's probably because people pay online only at a very limited number of places they trust, and it's easier to solve issues with the local merchants directly.

Another reason might be, that many online payments are made via direct bank tranfers / SEPA, which can be both, fee-free and instant, across the entire EU.

Essentially, everything is based on trust. Nobody puts his debit / credit card details into a form of a website he never heard before, and nobody risks his business reputation if he has managed to earn it.

It's pretty short sighted to think you can trust your "debit" card number with any online merchant nowadays. I wouldn't shop online, or even at physical stores for that matter without the safety net a credit card provides. I don't mind paying the extra bit on top for this protection (which is negligible due to rewards).

I definitely wouldn't use a debit card if I lived in the US, just because of the general atmosphere of "suing and disputing" everyone and everything, if something goes wrong. But debit cards work just fine in the EU, where governments take proactive steps to protect consumer rights, and an average consumer is rarely expected to fight for himself. I have personally never had to.

I can dispute a charge on my debit card just as I can dispute it on my credit card. Disputes get harder for payments made using my pin, but any charge from an internet payment is trivial. I can also dispute any SEPA-withdrawal. The best option for a merchant is pre-payment via SEPA transfer initiated from my side. That’s pretty hard to dispute.

You can dispute, but the big difference between credit card and debit card is that on credit card, each transaction is insured through the merchant fee. Mastercard and Visa's rules also specific require the card lender to repay a disputed charge in full, regardless if they can manage to reverse a transaction or not; the same is not the case for debit cards (even if they are branded with the Mastercard/Visa logo).

what??

what makes you think debit cards are less safe than credit cards? as far as I know here in EU all debit cards are smart cards with PIN code protection, what exactly is the unsafe part?

are you confusing debit cards with magstripe cards?

I know that with credit cards money lost is the credit card's company, and there's a fair number of protections to keep consumers from paying that bill in the case of fraud, but with a debit card money lost would be directly from a bank account, and there seems to be less. Is there more fraud protection for bank cards in the EU?

In France, for all banks I know, you can call, say "starting this date, all activity on my card is fraud", and you are refunded, no questions asked in the vast majority of cases. This seems quite enough for me.

Ah, so you do have those sorts of protections.

In my country, it's possible to get the money back if somebody charged your debit card without your knowledge, but not if you approved the payment yourself. In such case, you are expected to solve the issue with the merchant yourself. Just as you would be, if you had paid in cash. Which seems to be reasonable considering that the maximum allowed debit card fee in the EU is 0.2%.

Yeah, that was my interpretation. It sounds like the "low fees" is the consumer benefit. I'd rather everyone have lower rates than a select few being able to "game the system".

Using a debit card for any transaction is free, which is why cash is going the way of the dodo.

I don't use a CC in Europe so I can't comment on how expensive those are here.

As for who is paying for it? Once you have a payment system set up its really not that expensive to maintain it. Driving around armoured vans with money is actually more hassle.

Of course not. On the other hand, the costs are near-zero.

You can either have low fees and near-universal acceptance, or high fees and not-so-universal acceptance plus "consumer benefits". To me it seems fairly clear which one is preferable.

I am familiar w/ (relatively) high fees and near-universal acceptance so I'm not sure your dichotomy holds. Either way, I do appreciate the features my card providers offer me as a buffer between my bank and the merchant. Don't have to completely trust merchants or the government, can leverage the escrow the card provides to be on my side since I pay them and can leave them so easily. I agree, it is fairly clear which one is preferable.