Very good idea but too late mate. Already registered. Forgot that refering is possibleIf you want, I can refer you as a customer? I would scoop up some item and you'd be doing a good deed
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Pay is Set to Launch in Germany
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Why should they use credit cards? Especially since most of the debit cards offer nfc payments.
Really? I mean, I agree that there is still a huge gap with respect to even other European countries, but things are getting better. Actually, nowadays I mostly have problems in some restaurants. But supermarkets, shops...I usually pay with my "non girocard" card without issues.
[doublepost=1541417694][/doublepost]
Well the issue is not usually credit card vs debit card, but normal cards (either credit or debit) vs girocards.
Thanks anyway. I'm pretty happy with comdirect, hope you will be tooVery good idea but too late mate. Already registered. Forgot that refering is possible
It cant be more worse than Sparkasse, thank youThanks anyway. I'm pretty happy with comdirect, hope you will be too
For credit cards, merchants in Germany have to pay a processing fee between 2 and 4 percent. For debit cards, it’s less than 1%. Since pretty much every German bank account includes a debit card (while credit cards often come at an extra cost), offering the cheaper payment method should be enough for the majority of customers. (Unless the shop is in a very touristy area.)
You can see a similar thing the other way around with wire transfers: In the US, they’re usually expensive and thus rarely used, whereas in Germany they’re a free feature of the account and the most common way for sending money from one account to another.
BTW: Turkey has yet another quirk when it comes to plastic money. Apparently, the cards issued by different banks require different card terminals, which is why every checkout place has a collection of three or four branded card readers next to it, with the salesperson picking the right one for whichever card they’re being handed...
Last edited:
Well, credit cards can be used in major stores in Japan, but part of it is to do with the prevalence of IC (stored value) cards like Suica, PASMO, ICOCA, etc which have been providing widespread contactless payments for a lot longer than credit cards have in other countries. Contactless IC cards have been around for about 17 years, and their use for transit means a huge proportion of people in Japan have been using them for a long time. They have no barrier to entry (because they aren't a credit card), they're faster to use than credit cards, they're widely accepted for purchases in stores, vending machines, etc, and can be recharged via a credit card or bank account automatically anyway.
So the long term prevalence of IC cards means credit cards have been the ones trying to play catch up. Why would someone use a credit card in Japan when IC cards have been around longer and accepted in way more places? (the "credit" nature of credit cards was also probably a hard sell culturally by banks in Japan after the distrust created by the Japanese financial crisis of the 1990s)
And also years before the iPhone even existed, IC cards were already available on phones in Japan in the form of what's known as Osaifu-Keitai (i.e. mobile wallet) support. Japan was well ahead of other countries in mobile phone technology in the 1990s and early 2000s.
So basically, IC cards were there first and still provide superior convenience today. (edit: I should clarify that all of the above is talking about every day purchases like food, taxis, convenience stores, supermarkets, buses, trains, vendors, and so on - for expensive purchases like buying a TV or other electronics, paying for a hotel, etc, credit cards will almost always be accepted in those situations anyway)
If you visit Japan, do yourself a favour and pick up a Suica card, or if you have an iPhone 8 or Apple Watch Series 3 or above, you can just create one directly in Apple Pay using the Suica app. This is what I did a couple of weeks ago when I was lucky enough to be able to make another visit.
Suica has been available on Apple Pay for a few years (starting with the Japan-specific models of the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2), and it's proven incredibly popular there. Apple Pay also natively supports the recharge of Suica cards from any Apple Pay Visa, Mastercard or Amex card as well, making it particularly handy for inbound travellers.
Last edited:
I like my anonymous payments via some handy cash. Works flawlessly every time I tried.
Since your location is in Manchester, I suppose you have a card from a UK bank.
Apple Pay must be supported by your own bank, not by the terminal. If your UK bank supports Apple Pay, it will work everywhere in the world (although people in some places might be surprised). But any cards from the major German banks won't work. Not in Germany, not in the UK, not in the USA.
The list includes VISA and Mastercard, so everyone who has a VISA/Mastercard at their bank can use it for Apple Pay, right? If that's true, the "vast majority" of Germans will indeed be able to use Apple Pay.
Whats about Apple Pay in Austria?
Seems like nothing happend to the rumor earlier this year.
But hey, if it goes the usual way, Austria will adopt Apple Pay 10 years after Germany did.
Definite no. Your bank (which issues your MasterCard, Visa Card ..) has to support it.
Unfortunately not. The bank issuing the card has to support it.
Did you note that it will support Visa, Amex, Mastercard and Maestro (EC)? That should have more than most people covered.
Nope. Apart from American Express, that's not how it works.
Thats not true anymore, the merchants fee is limited to 0,2% for debit cards and 0,3% for credit cards issued in the EU as per EU law, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreditkarte#cite_note-33
Tap to pay using credit cards works at almost any store in Germany (granted. Not at many restaurants but having the waiter walk away with your card in the US seems even worse to me) and I couldn’t even use tap to pay in most American stores this year. Hell most of the people were even confused by a chip and asked me to sign a piece of paper in the place of PIN VERIFIED