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Comment by omd | Hacker News Reader

Going by the title of this post I was hoping it would give a solution to the segmented payment market here in Europe, but it doesn't. A more fitting title would've been "Taking payments in the UK" or Taking credit card payments in Europe".

The main problem we have here is that debit cards are a preferred payment method and each country has it's own system. From my experience and other reports I've seen up to 30% of the customers will use a debit card if that option is given. I don't know how many of them would cancel the sale if debit payment isn't possible.

Unless I'm mistaken only WorldPay offers some of the local debit cards, such as Carte Bleue in France, Bancontact in Belgium and iDeal in The Netherlands. Paymill seems to be the only one to offer ELV in Germany.

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Could you explain a little bit more about what's the problem with debit cards in Europe?

I have a MasterCard debit card with which I never, ever had problems making payments and I have made such payments, either direct or through PayPal, Google Wallet or iTunes. Before this I had a Visa debit card issued by the same bank (Groupe Société Générale). Before this I had another debit card issued by another bank.

All of them worked, all of them debit cards, as indeed credit cards are not really popular here. Should mention that I'm from Romania and this debit card is linked to my bank account (are you talking about anonymous debit cards or something?).

A mastercard debit card works much like a credit card. In germany for example, your standard "debit card" is your banks card and in online transactions, you just enter bank account and the banks identifier. It's a legacy way of paying that dates back to the eurocheques. It's comparable to the Card Bleue in France which is a system that exists pretty much in France only. This fragments the market.

OK, so you are talking about a different kind of debit card of which I have no knowledge. Romania was late in this world of online transactions and credit cards so we must have skipped this legacy somehow.

I also don't understand why VAT isn't the same everywhere in EU. So yeah, Europe is a mess.

Even worse: VAT is not the same depending on what you sell:

Foodstuff in general has lower VAT (7%) in germany, but that lower tax rate includes also hotel bills, but not the breakfast which is taxed at the regular 19%, taxi bills are reduced, etc. It's a mess. When you sell services in the EU and the service is rendered in another EU country and for a company with a valid Tax ID you don't have to pay VAT, which includes Switzerland (although they're not EU) and so on.

The Carte Bleue system is more or less deprecated/integrated now, AFAIK they can all be treated as Visa cards

You are correct. But they are several reasons why the situation might seem complex for a foreigner.

French people regularly use the term "carte bleue" to mean "debit card" (and most of the debit cards still feature the legacy "carte bleue" logo). Even worse, most of them say "carte de crédit" (credit card) when they really mean "debit card", because credit cards are very uncommon and people don't know the difference. I have no statistics, but from my personal experience, credit cards not linked to a bank account barely exist here.

On the other hand, we have a lot of companies offering short-term, small-amount credits easily — directly on your bank account, without a dedicated credit card. Maybe those play the same role as credit cards in the US?

The only true credit cards I see regularly in France are the Carte Pass (Carrefour hypermarkets) and Galeries Lafayette (department stores)

You mean Sofort, payment-network.com?

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