A bank debit card strapped to the back of your phone. SEPA
SEPA and Iban. It’s as simple as it gets. Also much more secure considering it’s a push payment instead of a pull one.
For easy payments, there is this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code
Just out of curiosity, what purchase taxes are you talking about ? Aside from the yearly fee and the occasional (quite steep though) tax when I withdraw money too many times from non-VISA ATMs I don’t think I have many extra fees with mine.
Maybe you dont have too many extra fees, but when you use your visa card or MasterCard to buy from a merchant, 3% of the purchase price is paid by the merchant to visa/MasterCard. In the long run that puts prices up because the vendor is passing on those costs to you, the buyer. Its a tricky issue because if you pay cash, the shop has to store, transport securely, and pay to deposit the cash into a business bank account. That might cost around 3% of their takings too. The feeling here is that if you buy 100 pounds worth of shopping, it doesn’t cost visa/MasterCard anything like 3 pounds to process that payment, more like a few pence. So perhaps we are being taken advantage of?
Portugal has the Multibanco (MB).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multibanco
It handles online payments, QR code and NFC payments in virtually every point of sales that support card payments, phone number money transference and operations in all the Portuguese banks ATMs.
If you’re in France there’s the Carte Bancaire.
Edit: I’ve just looked into Revolut and they’re UK based with operations throughout Europe, so they might be an alternative for online payments across borders.
Revolut is Lithuanian I think.
They are based in the UK as stated by OP, but European clients go through a Lithuanian subsidiary
Ok, but they were founded in Lithuania right? Its not really important all is Europe I just thought there is more to it than just EU liaison.
Wiki says it was founded in the UK. Founders have very Slavic names but it doesn’t specify their origin
ok, thank you :) And I know I could have found it myself, but sometimes internet just takes fun out of conversations 😀 (I mean internet search and stuff, because lol this is also internet :)
Yes,
After World War II and through recent times (well after the DM to € switch), Germany was one of the most cash-happy countries. If you didn’t carry cash on you, there was a good chance you’d end up stuck and unable to pay for something. Even today, many businesses don’t take credit cards compared to the US.
Using a card demands that you trust Visa, MC, etc. with your data as well as pay a fee.
The last time I was there (Christmas time) I was horrified to see the inroads these bloodsucking leeches made into Germany. People around the world are selling themselves and future generations into economic servitude and making themselves targets for corporate surveillance based advertising at an alarming rate.
Now would be a great time for a worldwide cash-based movement to spring up.
I ran a cash-based business for a decade and it wasn’t so I could cheat on taxes (I paid those every year). It was so I could deny the CC companies their undeserved cut and remain congruent with my values.
Convenience or Freedom
Choose one.
Some businesses in Germany only accept cards like giro and ec, so that’s another possibility. In Portugal some businesses only accept MB cards. In Denmark some places only use Mobile Pay. It’s definitely becoming more common for Mastercard and Visa to be accepted in all 3, but alternatives did exist.
True, even before Visa and MC started making inroads, I was seeing EC cards commonly in Germany, but usually only for certain uses. The fact that some businesses now operate in a cash exclusionary way frightens me a little. We’re headed for sci-fi dystopia.
Interestingly, I just (10 minutes ago) learned about
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
which seems to be in a fledgling stage but still further along than
Danmark (and Finnland apparently, I think I’ve also seen it in Sweden?) also have
Here in Sweden most people use Swish
Currently there are only alternatives online like Klarna (and iDeal in the Netherlands). The only way to do it in store is paying cash sadly
Klarna has american connections. One of the biggest shareholders are “sequoia capital” 'merican
What’s so “sadly” about it? It’s a solution to a problem, it’s easy, and it’s simple.
Cash is insanely inconvenient, cannot be used at self checkout (which is the only reason I don’t despise doing groceries), is more risk carrying big amounts and not even accepted above a certain amount in most stores.
We just need an actual Visa/Mastercard EU edition.
If you are building a CC network, look at blockchain as the method, specifically Monero or XMR. It is anonymous and so far had been unbroken so is currently untraceable. If EU supports anonymous purchases then even better, just feed cash into the ATM to load your XMR-backed account.
I would rather use cash than ever touch something using blockchain technology
in Poland we have blik, and it’s really popular
I make all my purchases online with blik, you can also use it in shops but it’s a bit less convenient than paying with card
Im pretty sure blik still uses mastercard something in backend for contacless payments in shops.
Cash.
