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Comment by jen729w | Hacker News Reader

But you have a Visa/Mastercard, surely? A thing with 16 digits that you can plug into the Stripe checkout screen?

I have, but never use, a 'credit card'. The thing I use every day is a 'debit card', where the money comes straight from my account. But it still has 16 digits and Visa written on the front.

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In 2019, only 20% of Germans had a Visa/Mastercard. The vast majority of Germans used the German GiroCard network, as many vendors refused Visa/Mastercard due to the higher fees (2-3% vs GiroCard's 0.125%), and there was no real need for it. Even 2019 you had to pay 30-50€/year fee just for a debit MasterCard/Visa, as Germans rarely used them and rarely went into overdraft, so there was little profit to be made.

Since then MasterCard has tried to force banks into dropping GiroCard, by refusing to work with smaller banks that still support GiroCard, and by offering better conditions to larger banks that drop GiroCard.

This has increased the number of Germans with Visa/MasterCard, but it's still below 50%.

Mind blown. Thanks. I'm British and I've had a debit card since I was 16 which is a loooooong time ago now, let me tell you.

In the UK, purchases made with a credit card are much more protected than a debit card.

If the supplier goes out of business / fails to deliver, the bank/credit card company is equally liable. A Section 75 claim is allowed for purchases between £100 and £30,000.

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/complaints-...

The equivalent in Britain would be a Switch card in the 1990s, the UK's native debit card system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(debit_card)

AFAIK, it's actually the "not-really-banks" that don't have Girocard: N26, Revolut, bunq, Vivid, Trade Republic, Wise, Tomorrow, Openbank.

All the traditional large ones seem to have AFAIK.

Off topic but I really hate N26 and its ilk. They don't really follow the German laws that say that German residents can have bank accounts, so they refuse people that are still on work visas, which is a pain in the fucking ass when you have a startup and the young employees are telling the immigrants "get N26" or something else, but the immigrants can't have it and only learn after submitting lots of docs to N26.

How did you get N26 to check your visa? I’ve never seen that situation. They only ask for an address in Germany. I know so many people with n26 on work visa

Careful: Work Visa is not the same as Residence Permit.

They check during the KYC process via mobile phone camera, and will reject people without a residence permit (Aufenthaltserlaubnis, Blue Card, etc), and they claim several things, from "we don't accept work visas" to "I never saw this document in my life".

Legally, a work visa is an Aufenthaltserlaubnis according to § 4 AufenthG, so N26 is classifying it wrongly here.

But it gets worse because they're breaking § 31 ZKG, which says they're obligated to provide an account for everyone here legally. We have formally complained to BAFIN about it.

Just copied the above law paragraphs from an HR discussion, btw, this is a recurring issue...

And I know this from helping several others, since I'm the startup ecosystem. I'm European, but not German.

Germany: Younger people yes, older people no. They wouldn't know the difference between credit and debit card and everything that looks like a credit card is an invention from hell and instant debt-spiral to them.

I do have a credit card for emergencies but I haven't used in years. It's in the drawer, I didn't even integrate it with Apple Pay.

My Girocard has Maestro integration, so I can use it overseas, but no number. Apparently this is gonna go away.

The Girocard naturally has ApplePay, which is what I use daily.

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