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Critical mass? I had to start using it after moving to Germany, because everyone else expects you to use it. One of the ladies at daycare is leaving? Here's a

• iammrpayments 1mo ago
  Thought they use Sepa
  • netsharc 1mo ago
    SEPA uses your IBAN (account number), and one can also enter this account number for payment, implicitly allowing the store to withdraw money from it...
    • fuzzy2 1mo ago
      Well yes. But just in case this wasn't clear: this is a crime, and you will get your money back in most cases. It's on the merchant to ensure a Direct Debit Mandate is actually valid.
    • master-lincoln 1mo ago
      I do not think it is possible to withdraw money having only an IBAN. It would need a SEPA direct debit mandate for my bank to accept the transfer request.
    • crote 1mo ago
      IBANs aren't secret, they have the same level of confidentiality as your address or birth date. One-off SEPA Direct Debit is virtually unheard of, recurring payments are a bit more common but usually involve a €0,01 payment to prove ownership of the account. The transactions are also trivial to undo, and can only be initiated by companies. So no, "IBAN fraud" isn't a thing in practice. You can safely share your IBAN with your friends for instant free wire transfers.
    • c7b 1mo ago
      You must be referring to SEPA Direct Debit, which would be very risky to use to siphon funds. There's an 8 week no-questions-asked refund policy, 13 months for unauthorized transactions, if the payment fails (eg due to insufficient balance), the payee is charged a non-refundable cancelation fee. [0] And that's all separate from any legal troubles for fraudulent charges. I don't know why Germans use PayPal over SEPA, but I'd be surprised if SEPA Direct Debit was the reason. [0] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-direct-debit https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-direc...
    • skinfaxi 1mo ago
      That sounds like the same info on a check, which people hand out freely. I'm probably misunderstanding.
  • rciorba 1mo ago
    Sepa is how my kid's daycare debits me each month, or how I transfer money to other accounts (most bills are direct-debit, but sometimes I get a one-off invoice and I have to transfer the money myself). But for the small person-to-person type thing, paypal is the defacto here (sadly).
  • mr_mitm 1mo ago
    I wish. The small inconvenience of putting in an IBAN and a matching name instead of just an email address is already enough for many people to default to paypal. Just happened to me again yesterday, the guy preferred to bring cash next time we see each other instead of just receiving my info via text.
    • carlosjobim 1mo ago
      "The guy" probably let you know in a polite way that you were behaving immaturely. You're not supposed to ask your friends for money to split bills etc. The way grown ups do it is "I pay this time, you pay next time".
      • socksy 1mo ago
        This is not how German culture works.
      • mr_mitm 1mo ago
        No, he didn't. He offered to cover a case of beer for after our game at the park, but he didn't have a car, so he asked me to bring it and he'll pay for it. Afterwards he came to me (I never brought up the topic of money) and asked for my Paypal details. How am I in the wrong here? The whole "I pay this time you pay next time" is already covered by "everybody brings a case once in a while", but if the guys without cars just ask someone else to pay for it when it's their turn it won't add up. If you're going to make assumptions, perhaps start with those that don't paint me in a bad light.
        • carlosjobim 1mo ago
          You weren't in the wrong, he was. He shouldn't have asked somebody to pay for something and bring it if he didn't have the money at hand to cover for it. PayPal isn't real money in this case. If this was a long time friend, I'd let it slide. It's just a case of beer, and in Germany beer is dirt cheap. If this was a new acquaintance, I'd let it slide and take note that it's not a person to make friends with. > If you're going to make assumptions, perhaps start with those that don't paint me in a bad light. Good point. But all of this isn't a problem of payment systems, but of people's behaviour.
• cloudie78 1mo ago
  Time to start heralding change you want to see. Offer Wero instead. It’s really simple.
• OroPla 1mo ago
  As a German that never has encountered PayPal in the wild and doesn't have a Paypal account either, your narration requires elaboration to be believable.
  • dewey 1mo ago
    I'm not doubting you but I have a hard time believing that, as I see it all the time. Sometimes restaurants even accept it if they don't take card and then ask you to send to their private PayPal account as a fallback. It's even part of many German memes around the German way of always splitting the bills, even if it's just < 5 euros.
    • OroPla 1mo ago
      What you are describing sounds like a weird alternative reality. I never heard of always splitting bills, either. But it's not exactly a homogeneous country. To the point everyone jokes that Bavaria isn't even German, for example. Depending on which state you are in, your experience can be vastly different. All the states used to be kinda independent two hundred years ago. Including having different currencies. Unification happened 1871. Bismarck and later Hitler kinda brought the nation together, but after losing two world wars national pride got frowned upon and having the iron curtain cut through the country didn't help in fostering a German identity, either. Reunification was only 36 years ago. Though, about a third to maybe half of the German territory remains lost after losing the wars. Instead we got the EU. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It's always funny to see foreigners make fun of German supposed clichés that I never had any exposure to whatsoever, like Lederhosen, which is only a thing in Southern Germany.
• drdexebtjl 1mo ago
  “I don’t use paypal, here’s cash”