Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

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Being a foreigner in Germany, all the same problems here. The number of places I cannot pay with my International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is staggering. "Sorry, the IBAN has to start with DE, else we cannot process your payment". E.g. I use the free version of Deepl.com a lot (another effect of being a foreigner), so I tried getting the pro version of deepl (despite it having only downsides, I don't want to freeload). The system, based on Stripe, gave some "try again later" generic error. Undeterred, I contacted support but after some internal investigation they discovered I was trying to use a Dutch bank account and that's not allowed.

Or a regular Dutch bank card, same EMV chip same everything as a German "EC-Karte", doesn't work in most places such as supermarkets and apothecaries. They keep (often angrily if I'm not the only person in line) asking if it's a credit card that I'm trying to pay with.

No, I don't have a credit card, that's another problem. So I tried to solve both problems at once by getting a bank account in Germany (most come with a CC), but because I haven't taken loans before, the local credit scoring agency can't give me a positive score and so I can't get a card number allocated. This system doesn't exist in the Netherlands where I'm from, I thought Germany was all about privacy, but the Schufa is apparently supposed to know everyone and you're encouraged to keep an eye on your score and be mindful of how things will impact it. Blows my mind. Not being known is enough of a problem that there's a legal requirement for some banks to offer Schufa-free services, except then you pay excessive fees (someone once said: it's expensive to be poor) and obviously you still won't get that credit card number. I don't want any credit, I can pay up front just fine, or e.g. for car rental I could put tens of thousands in some escrow if you want to cover all risk. I just want to pay for services just like everyone else.

I don't think PoW-based e-gold is the solution either, but there are a lot of hurdles still with simply paying for things in 2022.

What you are describing is iBan discrimination [0] and it is illegal. You can report this to authorities. Many international fintechs wrestle with this (N26, bunq) some started offering local iBans. Really annoying.

In the Netherlands we have iDeal, really nice, but only here. What do most banks not support? Instant transfer. We Dutch build our own system next to the EU one :s. It is getting better though (IE, Rabo to N26 is now finally instant).

[0]: https://www.monito.com/en/wiki/iban-discrimination

Thanks for that tip! I was already wondering if there wouldn't be some requirement to treat all ibans equally in the European single market thing (SEPA), but didn't have time (and later forgot) to look into it.

A tip - in India, if you have a low credit score, you can still get a credit card if you ask for a "Fixed Deposit" linked credit card. With this option, you have to deposit some amount with the bank in an FD account (FD accounts are fixed term accounts, where you cannot withdraw money till the term is over, and also earn some minimal interest on the money deposited) , and that amount becomes your collateral for the card, and also acts as the credit limit of your card. If you are diligent and a financially prudent individual, the credit company often increases the credit limit later. Ask around if German banks have a similar thing.

In the US at least there's the concept of a prepaid credit card, basically you give the bank a deposit and then that becomes the limit on the card. You can close the card and get your deposit back. It's a way for people with awful or no credit to build up a credit history of on time payments. I had mine as a teen for about a year before the bank decided I was trustworthy and mailed me my deposit back and turned the prepaid credit card into a normal credit card. Might be a good option for you if Germany has something like that?

I thought prepaid credit cards were literally where you have to pre-pay: charge it with money. They're not accepted because of course if you load up exactly the 200 euros for the car rental and then drive the thing off a cliff, there is no point having your card on file to charge because it'll be empty. At least that's what I've heard, I'm no payment lawyer. At any rate also in OP the error says that the reason for the rejection might be that they tried to use a prepaid card.

Having a collateral like you describe sounds like a much better system than collecting data on entire countries' worth of people and make guesses about the odds they'll go bankrupt based on some super secret formula before you give them monthly loans they never knew they wanted.

No, people use "prepaid debit card" and "prepaid credit card" interchangeably for some reason(even me lol). This would be known as a secured credit card, because you are putting up collateral for it. That scheme would not work here because opening and closing real credit cards with security deposits (as opposed to virtual card numbers or prepaid debit cards) has a effect on your credit score. You couldn't do this more than a few times before banks start denying you based on your credit history. You don't really want these cards, as they make no sense financially. Essentially, you are loaning the bank your own money, and then the bank will charge you interest at standard credit card rates to use the money you have lent them. They are only for building a credit history then you get rid of them. This is actually the one I used to have https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/secured/

> Essentially, you are loaning the bank your own money, and then the bank will charge you interest at standard credit card rates to use the money you have lent them.

I have no words.

The credit card that I now managed to get by opening an account shared with my partner doesn't charge interest. It's a normal bank card except it has this non-IBAN number that I needed to pay for certain things. I expected those secured cards to work the same.

Is it normal to pay interest on what people in the USA afaik pay most things, like their groceries, with? I thought that only came into play when you overdraw or don't settle the bill at the end of the month.

I'm not sure if the one I've got now allows overdrawing (probably) but it's settled automatically and within a few days so interest beyond the hefty transaction fees already levied on the merchant doesn't make much sense to me, especially if I would put up the collateral on such a secured card.

You are correct, you don't pay interest if you completely settle the bill at the end of the month. Same with the secured card. In fact, the secured card I linked actually offers 2% cash back, so you get paid to use it in some sense as long as you pay it back in full every month. that is very normal with us credit cards. It's really just a method for the bank to see if you can handle paying your bill every month without risking their own money, I suppose. The minimum amount to open the card is just a 200$ deposit so it's not exactly high stakes. When I had mine the bank took initiative on its own after 6 months and sent me my deposit money back unprompted to turn it into a normal credit card. It's really not a thing that's expected to see normal day to day use for extended periods. To answer your question I would imagine most people pay for groceries with debit cards that are just tied to their bank account directly, not credit cards.

IME (lived 3 years in Germany) most Germans seem to think there is only one country in the world, that country being "Federal Republic of Germany around the 1970s or so".

Hungary doesn't have a credit score system either. You should ask around if Hungarian IBAN is accepted.

Thanks for the tip, though they're two different systems: the credit score thing blocks a credit card which blocks various online and offline (mainly international) payments; the IBAN is more used for domestic payments and I expect Hungarian will be as often accepted as my Dutch IBAN. Maybe even less because NL presumably has less fraud and is geographically closer (NL is 15 minutes driving from where I live, which makes it even more mind-blowing that their regular bank cards are not accepted here).

I've got a credit card in the meantime via my partner who is German, but that means that the money on it isn't only mine so I avoid using it for things that aren't shared expenses in the first place.

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