There are transportation services that allow you to sign up, download the ticket, print the QR code and use just that, so you don’t even need to use some app for that. Make sure to cancel before the 10th of a month because it automatically extends for another month if you don‘t.
Wandering Germany has a few more suggestions: https://www.wanderingermany.com/step-by-step-how-to-buy-the-...
But in exchange I’d really like to know what you did for DB to show you a 400 ticket, I don’t get such a result even going first class with the most flexible ticket available and only using ICE.
* How did you manage to buy a Hamburg to Berlin ticket for 400 EUR? The most expensive 1st-class high-speed rail ticket costs about 120.
generally it's the 49€-ticked designed as a long term plan (through cancel-able monthly) focused on residents and the most common way to handle this in Germany (and most other EU states) is through SEPA Direct Debit Mandates which requires you to have a bank account compatible with it, which _pretty much any bank in the EU does_! (SEPA == Single Euro Payments Area)
The reason this doesn't work with a credit system is that many EU citizens do not have credit cards, but pretty much all have a bank account which is SEPA.
Similar many places selling chip card require an address, so that they can send you new revisions of the card, billing info if needed etc. and at least in Germany any citizen is required to have one official address so not really any relevant limitation for the target customer audience.
But nothing of this is required to be done, e.g. if you buy through an app payments might go through google pay or apple pay.
Generally don't expect to be able to pay with a US credit card in the EU, it often does work but there is absolutely not guarantee it will work and card payment not accepting credit cards is common (might change in the near future). I mean it's a bit strange to say this because not always being able to use your home countries payment cards aboard is pretty much normal for pretty much most of the world.