Not in my experience in the least bit. Germany was the only place that I’ve been where there were so many non-credit card restaurants etc. I was traveling for work in Bavaria and baden-württemberg. It was an issue and we had to make sure I selected the right place to use my work cc.
I took some personal time in Munich and most of the places I went were cash only. 2 students, one from Finland another from the Netherlands complained about the cash issue and forgetting it multiple times. Leading to interesting situations.
Sure, the ice cream stand at the swimming pool only accepts cash, as does the local discotheque, but restaurants? Never a problem.
Even the cab to the Munch airport would only accept cash. I had to walk across the airport to get it. His payment app was “not working”.
In Stuttgart it was only the smaller places. Although we made sure find places that took corporate Amex using a website.
By contrast, in New Zealand even most farmer’s market stalls and pop-up espresso carts presume that contactless will be the main means of payment.
This is just my personal observation. Among the western European countries, German has the smallest level of adoption of credit cards. The French, the Dutch, the Swedes etc love their cashless nature of credit cards, the Germans not so much.
Furthermore most of the credit cards offered by the German banks are actually debit cards.
It boggles my mind, but "majority" of the German population has a preference to Currywurst ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst ) - is this also "beyond a personal decision" ?
If you have a reference to German government pursuing an anti credit cards policy - please provide it here.
This paper (0) is a good write-up on how the card systems works in Germany.
(0) - https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/fub188/22957/...
edit:updated the link
Hotels or car rentals which want to block a certain amount on my card as guarantee are one. Other than that I never needed a credit card.
In case of an emergency most bank accounts in Germany can go into the negatives, I guess making minimum payments on a credit card is cheaper but that style of life isn't at all common in Germany.
But let me just say that, when I was at Square this was common knowledge and why that wasn't the first market we looked at.
With a Girocard, you have to go to a specific brand of bank or hope they are in your "cash group" or else you will pay a hefty fee.
But some banks offer to withdraw from any ATM using their VISA CC with no fees at all.
For years I've been using this to get cash without much of a hassle and pay for stuff I'd otherwise probably pay for with my Girocard.
Makes me wonder if my cash withdrawals are counted as CC transactions?
You might mean that some Germans don't like CC and prefer cash for privacy reasons. But that is a personal decision.