Germany actually uses their own card system .. or cash. They are very much against visa/mastercard due to their “high commission fees” and “privacy concerns”
Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3%
Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3%
"Privacy concerns" won't hold out long against relentless pushes for more deregulation of privacy laws for AI/other tech/"the economy"/etc and removal of data access hurdles for police/security services/etc coming from certain political spectrum - whose voters generally don't have high concern for such fundamental rights issues when at the ballot box.
It's not enough to simply have an alternative to the credit cards, that alternative has to be in the pockets of 90% of your user base before you'd be willing to lose the method of transaction they currently rely on.
AFAIK all credit cards in the EU have similarly low interchange rates because of EU regulation.
> Payment service providers shall not offer or request a per transaction interchange fee of more than 0,2 % of the value of the transaction for any debit card transaction.