I mainly use credit card and paypal for one reason:
Give me 2% discount and I pay cash, or I pay in the US way, and you lose 3%.
This of course works best in countries like Germany, where credit cards and paypal are not widely accepted.
Give me 2% discount and I pay cash, or I pay in the US way, and you lose 3%.
This of course works best in countries like Germany, where credit cards and paypal are not widely accepted.
The law was intended to encourage credit card payments, because the paper trail makes it more difficult for merchants to under-report their tax obligations. (And the card companies lobbied hard, of course.)
In practice, merchants have found workarounds, such as offering more loyalty points for cash payments. Some of these workarounds are legal, some are not, but in any case the government is changing its stance on credit card payments due to soaring consumer debt. Now they're trying to encourage debit card payments . . .
I like the fact that in Germany people don't use credit cards at all, and EC cards rarely, or only for purchases they deem are worth to be tracked, like utility bills or similar. Then, if my landlord complains that I didn't pay on time, I have my bank on my side to happily provide transaction id of the payment as an evidence.
In Germany Skonto (discount) for paying within 7 days is common business practice. But credit cards of course don't like it, if you use ask for discount for not using CC.
So far, yes.
Things are beginning to change because Chinese consumers are crowding into Korean stores, both online and offline. Even the President is concerned that the old system hurts the economy by turning away potential buyers. Guess what, one of the perks of being a semi-authoritarian culture is that if the President complains about something, everyone rushes to find an alternative ;)
In any case, I wish there were more competition in the payment processing scene of my country as well. Most people haven't even heard of PayPal here, let alone newer and better alternatives. Perhaps once we get rid of the ActiveX dependence, more startups will be able to enter the market.
As far as purchasing is concerned, PayPal is just another foreign merchant that accepts Visa and MasterCard. A withdrawal is just another international wire transfer. But since both transactions are international, if you combine them you get two currency exchanges and so you lose a lot of money. That, along with the fact that the whole process can easily take 2-3 weeks, is probably why nobody even bothers.
Besides, Korean banks already have a system that allows anyone to send money to anyone else, instantly, often for free. Nobody ever mails checks in Korea. This works perfectly well in our own walled garden. PayPal will probably never be able to compete with that, even when the other side is burdened with ActiveX crapware.
And oddly enough, the first and last item on that list are not too far apart.
Banks / payment companies charge fees to count cash deposits, and they sell the currency back (coin rolls in particular) with a premium.
Skimming - coming and going.