I've been living here for 2 years. I am Polish. Poland is at the forefront of modern electronic payments. (BLIK – any Poles reading this will know how convinent this micropayment method is).
I can pay with a card or my phone literally everywhere. With a very few exceptions. It is the society expectation to be able to use modern financial tools.
Enter Germany. The biggest EU economy. A modern, arguably wealthy country.
The picture shown is from a popular, large restaurant, always packed. I assume huge turnover.
It is not an exption. Many restaurants won't even accept cards at all.
Kiosks, small shops, food tracks during events – forget about cards (or "you need to spend a min of xxx euro").
Last weekend in Heidelberg I wanted to pay for drinks (total of 11.2 Euro) by card only to be told: it would be 15 by card. Obviously a scam and a behaviour I cannot understand.
Or I try pay by card and it "doesn't work" – it happened to me so many times I don't believe in coincidences.
Why is Germany so stubborn in this respect?
The provisions nowadays are small enough that they cannot be used as an excuse.
by Guitar_maniac1900
30 comments
I would assume that this restaurant has an average check <30€ and is forcing cash not to pay taxes 😊
Much harder to bullshit with taxes if you have a traceable electronic payment record.
Its tax evasion unfortunately
Hey but at least you can now pay with card *
prior to 2020 you basically had way more cash only places (backeries that accept card let alone credit. that are not Backwerk?)
Don’t they have to accept card payments now, regardless of what amount?
Leave Poland, even poorer nations like Brazil and India have exemplary digital payment systems and exemplary penetration as well
Tbh I almost only paid with card the last few ~5 years. It heavily depends on where you go to. The only store I can remember of where it was cash only was the suspicious barber shop.
But I’ve noticed that the south has way less card payment than the west.
Far too few on site inspections by the taxmen, old contracts with the local bank, and – as there are no contributions due on tips payed by patrons – no social insurance keen on tearing them a second arsehole.
It’s complicated. The reasons are a mix of German Angst, tax evasion, financial illiteracy, and mentality (Das haben wir immer schon so gemacht. Nein, das geht nicht. Nein, DATENSCHUTZ – and the sorts)
Btw: Blik in Poland is great, something like that will never exist in Germany
If you think it’s bad now, you should have seen it pre-covid.
So technically forcing a minimum payment on a card is a violation of the agreement they signed with the processing company. You can report them to visa/mastercard or if you knew exactly which 3rd party processing company they are using. Now I have no idea if anything at all happens.
A lot of restaurants refuse to change their payment provider.
They often have old contracts where you pay a fee for every transaction. 1-3€ in some cases I have seen even more.
Easy solution. Change the payment provider. But… „das haben wir immer schon so gemacht“
So you can only pay by card if you pay enough. Kinda is a German thing to not change anything.
It’s almost all because of tax fraud. This saves them something like 50% of what you paid in taxes.
I don’t think that’s actually legal. While shops can refuse any type of not cash payment, if they accept it, they’re not allowed to attach it to a minimum spend.
Also, this is prohibited by the credit card companies’ TCs.
I know that in reality a lot of stores do it.
In Italy the situation used to be similar but now refusing electronic payment for any amount is illegal, you can just call the Finanzamt if this happens.
Germany NEEDS to implement something like this
I can not agree with this observation in general: I live in a midsize town in north-west Germany and can pay everywhere via card and almost everywhere without min-value limits. Even for one roll at the bakery or some onions on the farmer’s market
… while in Hungary every single business is obliged to accept cards. Try to propose card payment at some Christmas market in Germany…
My guess is: traders get upset about the fees they have to pay to the card companies. You see it quite frequently that these fees will literally be added to your total if you pay with a credit card for example. It’s only a few cents but there you go.
The other thing: it’s much easier to mess around with reporting and taxes if all transactions are cash. (I am speculating here but my speculation is at least somewhat based on personal experience with the subject which isn’t to say that I engage in or condone it but I have witnessed systematic activity of this manner on multiple occasions)
Tax evasion
That sign is evidence of a fundamental misunderstanding of payment cards that runs deep through German society. It says EC cards and credit, but what they mean is EC, debit, and credit. Many Germans have no clue that banks in Germany also offer Visa and MasterCard debit cards. I’ve had this conversation with many German shopkeepers who claim to accept debit and then try to tell me that my debit card is actually a credit card because it’s MasterCard. Sorry, but no, it says debit right on the card and it’s issued by a German bank.
Uhm… you have to pay the bank for every card payment as an handler. Depending on the card and contract it might be quite something. So for some places its not worth it to accept low card payments. And honestly the Banks are scamming us all.
In Italy, you can pay with card in small kiosks in mountain villages.
When someone tells you that it‘ll be more expensive when you pay with card in a restaurant, then insist on receiving a proper receipt (Bewirtungsbeleg) and then tell them that you want to pay cash. Also a lot of venues in Heidelberg are tourist traps and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were trying to rip you off while committing some tax fraud at the same time.
Where I live, some places only accept cash and some only accept card. You need to come prepared 😅
On a related note, this weekend I went on a bike ride and stopped at a biergarten situated by a lake in the middle of a forest. I already had some cash with me because I didn’t expect any of the places I’d come across to accept card at all, but it turns out that they did, and they didn’t even have some arbitrary minimum sum. Since I wasn’t just limited to the change in my wallet, we ended up having some food with our beers too – win-win situation imo.
Compared to ~10 years ago, Germany has come a long way in terms of adopting modern payment solutions. And the places that still don’t take cards are likely committing tax fraud, where the minimum limit they set is based on how big of a transaction they’re willing to not report.
NL and BE solved this with Bankcontact, Payconiq etc. It could simply be adopted in Germany, not sure whats the issue but here we are
I still find it unbelievable that in 21st century and many places are cash only. Most of the places I’ve seen that practice are in Friseur, Kebab, most of places owned by middle eastern (not all I have to specify but a great percentage) and I guess the reason is to avoid taxes.
Indeed. Coming from the UK it’s been a huge shock to have to carry cash in my wallet again. Neither my nearest bakery nor cafe accept card at all. And if I’m visiting any sort of fest or market it’s always a whole extra step to remember to go and withdraw cash.
We Germans are also extremely annoyed by this. Personally, I first check at the entrance to see if there are the famous VISA or other stickers before I decide whether or not to enter the store. I hate cash, and I hate small change even more.
also as a Polish guy that have actually been four times longer in Germany, after some time you start to realise that the same part of Germans that is responsible for this card payment issue ( and eg fax love) is also responsible for good things like for example lacking Google streetview coverage (until recently). and yes, it was a freaking good thing, because there is no sufficient justification for an American company to photograph your house and put it on the internet without your consent and it does violate your privacy. the fact that other countries, Poland among them, didn’t have any issues at all with it’s actually very strange.
so yeah, sometimes being like this it’s actually helpful.
but in most cases it’s not, I guess, and it’s a broader issue with lack of digitalisation in many places.
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