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Comment by vstollen | Hacker News Reader

I think the confusion comes from there being lots of transportation providers where you can buy the ticket.

The different providers can differ in what payments they accept and how they send you the ticket. Some also include extra benefits.

According to their website, Mainz, for example seems to sell them in their app and accepts credit card, as well as PayPal payments.

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It has been discussed a lot in railway forums, it seems to be a fact that it's rather hard to buy the ticket if you do not live in Germany.

* the default payment method used by 99% of the sellers requires a German bank account

* most sellers request a German credit score (Schufa)

* many apps are not available in the app stores outside of Germany and of course none is available in a FOSS store

Haven't followed it recently, but I have still to see a success story that someone not residing in Germany has actually bought it successfully.

I bought mine via the HVV (Hamburg Transport Association) Switch app on an iPhone. I pay using Paypal.

Not familiar with Apple, but I guess they have country limits like Google. In what country is your phone registered?

I'm on Android rather than Apple, but I could install the HVV app on my UK phone and buy tickets using my UK card with no particular difficulty. Maybe other transport associations are more difficult, but I'm not sure why they'd want to make it hard for me to give them money.

Yes, that's a good question why they don't want our (not living in Germany) money.

I think the background is:

* Paypal is not very common/popular in Germany so most local transport agencies don't bother

* with SEPA direct debit which is the common payment in Germany you can easily initiate a chargeback after you have already used the ticket. Of course that's fraud, but if you live abroad, the effort to sue you would be tremendous

According to the Bundesbank, Paypal is the most used online payment type in Germany with almost every second transaction using it.

But the same publication says that only a bit over 50% of the population even own a credit card. And debit cards usable online are still a niche product.

So in Germany, can you pay your Paypal bills any other way than by credit card? Honest question, when I lived in Germany the last time, Paypal did not exist yet.

I assume you are talking about https://www.bundesbank.de/de/publikationen/berichte/studien/...

The usual method is by SEPA direct debit (initiated by Paypal) but you can use a SEPA transfer as well to top up your Paypal balance and pay with that.

Ah, I had no idea that Paypal would do SEPA direct debit . They don't offer it to me. (I don't have a German address, although I would have a German account.)

Many people use Paypal in Germany and one uses it with the typical bank account.

> But the same publication says that only a bit over 50% of the population even own a credit card

Because many cashless transactions are done with girocards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard

Germans are usually very aware of hidden costs and credit cards are usually more expensive per transaction.

Germans also usually are much less in debt than for example many US citizens - for example the University education costs much much less. Young adults have 1400 Euros (plus!) on their giro account and it is typical to pay from that account.

A long time ago there used to be a "Schones-Wochenende" ("have a good weekend") ticket that you could just buy from the machines, and would allow you unlimited use of regional and interregional (no intercity high speed) trains throughout Germany for one weekend, and upto 5 people on one ticket, for a stupidly low price of something like 30 euros, and you could also sell it to someone else for the remainder of the weekend.

I don't know if they do that anymore?

No, that doesn't exist anymore. (it also had gotten more expensive over the years, and only was for the full weekend until 2000 or so, only one day after that)

The closest is now the "Quer-durchs-Land" (~"across the country") ticket which is available for any day of the week and currently costs 44€ for the first person and 7€ each for up to 4 more people travelling on it.

That's 44€ per day railway only, whereas the discussed ticket is 49€ per month including all local buses, trams, subways.

... yes. why do you think you have to point this obvious fact out?

Just to inform random tourists that cheap travelling is not for them. You don't just go to the vending machine and pay a cheap price.

> the default payment method used by 99% of the sellers requires a German bank account

no SEPA compatible bank account AFIK, that means most EU bank accounts would work

SEPA discrimination is illegal but a fact. Many sellers don't even let you enter an account number that doesn't start with DE. At the latest the Schufa check will fail.

then just buy with one of the providers which don't have the issue... not all need schufa checks

Easier for those who sell themselves to Google or pay the Apple premium. For people who believe in freedom it means a chipcard. Which can be a real challenge because then the number of sellers gets very small and they might be very far from where you'd like to buy it.

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