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Agree, such a pain. Especially in restaurants if you take a large group out and want to pick the bill up. It has got better but I have been totally caught out w

Agree, such a pain. Especially in restaurants if you take a large group out and want to pick the bill up. It has got better but I have been totally caught out with this on one of my first visits to Berlin with a fairly pricey group dinner and I physically cannot take more than €250 out of the ATM a day without taking cash out on CC which involves horrendous cash advance fees. I also don't buy this cc fee argument. It's regulated (and low) in the EU, perhaps 1-2%. This must be lower than the cost of storing cash, counting cash, paying it in to the bank, transporting it, getting fraudulent notes, people giving wrong change, etc etc. The other annoying thing is DB machines not taking visa/mastercard and no notes over €10 (though this may have changed recently), which is all you get out of an ATM when you land at the airport. Such a hassle. I hope Berlin can fix this and the BER airport situation one day.

kuschku 9y ago
EC cards have 0.125% fees. That’s an entire order of magnitude cheaper than CC. Of course no one is going to support CC if they can save that much money.
- martinald 9y ago
  If your gross profit (not including rent and other fixed costs) at a restaurant is, say, 80%, do you still think 1% CC fees are silly? To me this seems like ridiculous premature optimisation. If I go to Germany and I'm having a meal with clients I'll phone ahead and see if they accept CC and won't visit if they don't.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    > If your gross profit (not including rent and other fixed costs) at a restaurant is, say, 80%, do you still think 1% CC fees are silly? That's a question, but that's not what things look like. Many German businesses are operating at razor-thin margins, or even at losses. From farmers (which lose around 13ct for every liter milk sold) to small restaurants (often making losses on all of the food, and only minor profit on the drinks) to any other kind of business. If you are a 4 people company and you're trying to compete (and do so successfully) with american multinational chains, then you don't have enough profits to pay 7% CC fees. You'll be lucky if you can afford the 30€/month + 0.125% EC fees, and many businesses can't even do that. > If I go to Germany and I'm having a meal with clients I'll phone ahead and see if they accept CC and won't visit if they don't. Trust me, these businesses prefer not having your business. You'd only make losses for them.
    - martinald 9y ago
      7% CC fees? Are you crazy? The EU regulated it at less than 1%.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        The EU regulated VISA and MasterCard, and only since a year ago. AMEX still takes 7% fees, even today, and even MasterCard and VISA could take those fees in 2015 still.
        martinald 9y ago
        Ok, don't accept AMEX then (that's common for a lot of shops to not accept in the UK). It's definitely not 7% though, considering Stripe offers AMEX processing for 1.4% in the EU. Can't see any reason not to accept MC/Visa now though.
        kuschku 9y ago
        > Can't see any reason not to accept MC/Visa now though. Still 10 times higher fees than with the German card systems. If your profit margin is 1.4%, you can't afford 2.2% credit card fees. And if you increase the price, all customers go to the cheaper competitor. German stores are in a reaaaaal close competition with these things.
- germanier 9y ago
  Where can I get those magical 30€/0.125% fees? Girocard is cheap (though less than an order of magnitude compared to CC) but I'm not aware of an offer that cheap, especially for low volume.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Those were the prices offered by EC (the original EC back in the day, before MasterCard bought it: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Cash https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Cash) back when a local business wanted to start supporting EC, and made an inquiry to several payment processors. I'm not sure about values today, but they don't seem to be much higher if you exclude costs for the actual readers and the connection. Currently I seem to find for low volume situations only contracts from iZettle and co for 0.95% fees. EDIT: Just found this Verordnung setting the maximum fee for EC at 0.2%: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32015R0751&from=DE http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... > das Interbankenentgelt, das Zahlungsdienstleister bei Debitkartentransaktionen pro Zahlungsvorgang bieten oder verlangen dürfen, beträgt höchstens 0,2 % des Transaktionswerts.

kuschku 9y ago

EC cards have 0.125% fees. That’s an entire order of magnitude cheaper than CC. Of course no one is going to support CC if they can save that much money.

martinald 9y ago
If your gross profit (not including rent and other fixed costs) at a restaurant is, say, 80%, do you still think 1% CC fees are silly? To me this seems like ridiculous premature optimisation. If I go to Germany and I'm having a meal with clients I'll phone ahead and see if they accept CC and won't visit if they don't.
- kuschku 9y ago
  > If your gross profit (not including rent and other fixed costs) at a restaurant is, say, 80%, do you still think 1% CC fees are silly? That's a question, but that's not what things look like. Many German businesses are operating at razor-thin margins, or even at losses. From farmers (which lose around 13ct for every liter milk sold) to small restaurants (often making losses on all of the food, and only minor profit on the drinks) to any other kind of business. If you are a 4 people company and you're trying to compete (and do so successfully) with american multinational chains, then you don't have enough profits to pay 7% CC fees. You'll be lucky if you can afford the 30€/month + 0.125% EC fees, and many businesses can't even do that. > If I go to Germany and I'm having a meal with clients I'll phone ahead and see if they accept CC and won't visit if they don't. Trust me, these businesses prefer not having your business. You'd only make losses for them.
  - martinald 9y ago
    7% CC fees? Are you crazy? The EU regulated it at less than 1%.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      The EU regulated VISA and MasterCard, and only since a year ago. AMEX still takes 7% fees, even today, and even MasterCard and VISA could take those fees in 2015 still.
      - martinald 9y ago
        Ok, don't accept AMEX then (that's common for a lot of shops to not accept in the UK). It's definitely not 7% though, considering Stripe offers AMEX processing for 1.4% in the EU. Can't see any reason not to accept MC/Visa now though.
        kuschku 9y ago
        > Can't see any reason not to accept MC/Visa now though. Still 10 times higher fees than with the German card systems. If your profit margin is 1.4%, you can't afford 2.2% credit card fees. And if you increase the price, all customers go to the cheaper competitor. German stores are in a reaaaaal close competition with these things.
germanier 9y ago
Where can I get those magical 30€/0.125% fees? Girocard is cheap (though less than an order of magnitude compared to CC) but I'm not aware of an offer that cheap, especially for low volume.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Those were the prices offered by EC (the original EC back in the day, before MasterCard bought it: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Cash https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Cash) back when a local business wanted to start supporting EC, and made an inquiry to several payment processors. I'm not sure about values today, but they don't seem to be much higher if you exclude costs for the actual readers and the connection. Currently I seem to find for low volume situations only contracts from iZettle and co for 0.95% fees. EDIT: Just found this Verordnung setting the maximum fee for EC at 0.2%: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32015R0751&from=DE http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... > das Interbankenentgelt, das Zahlungsdienstleister bei Debitkartentransaktionen pro Zahlungsvorgang bieten oder verlangen dürfen, beträgt höchstens 0,2 % des Transaktionswerts.