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This is incorrect; 2.7% sounds like a US merchant fee. Most payment providers have considerably lower fees for EU merchants. Larger merchants can generally get lower fees by negotiating with their payment provider (this is the case for both EU and US merchants). Having direct agreement with a network _is_ somewhat a thing, but mostly in the US, where the network's fees are less regulated.

You’re talking about scheme or interchange fees? In any case, it’s much lower. I think only business cards are still an exception in Germany. Interchange fees are capped at .2 or .3% and scheme fees are much smaller.

I use a German bankcard and it will cost less to the merchant, that is the reason credit card were refused for such a long time. Covid broke this, as contactless was preferred and bankcard were not available for payment on smartphones at the time.

They might be talking about a girocard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard