BigFlyer

Android Pay just became available in Germany within the last few weeks.

I think the American retail payment situation is crappy in two respects. First, almost no contactless cards, which really do make things go faster. Second, no rounding of cash transactions like the rest of the world. Canada, right next door to the US, has contactless cards and penny rounding for cash sales.

tmiw

Honestly, I'm surprised that cards are as much of a thing here as they are. If things happened a bit differently I could totally see the US being mostly cash based (with talk of a cashless society being close to nonexistent).

BigFlyer

Seems the trend is the other way. There is a fast food chicken sandwich place down the street from my office (San Francisco) which does not take cash, and I have seen some other places in the Bay Area that do not take cash.

Although not the US, I noticed in Amsterdam that the Marqt supermarket chain does not take cash.

tmiw

While there are a few merchants going cashless, I don't really see that as a trend yet. In fact, there seems to be a backlash brewing against it (to the point where laws are being considered to mandate cash acceptance). Not to mention that merchants in general seem to not be huge fans of Visa/MC judging by the multiple lawsuits over the years.

BigFlyer

In Canada the merchants are happy because a lot of the transactions are through Interac - a domestic debit card network. Interac - Home

tmiw

That's the thing--a lot of other countries either have their own very low cost/free debit networks and/or heavily cap interchange. Neither are really a thing in the US; though interchange is capped for some debit cards, there are still a significant number that aren't (and customers still can mostly override merchant routing decisions and have their transactions run over Visa/MC instead).

IMO, if we really want to go cashless, interchange will have to drop. And we'll have to find some sort of solution for the high number of unbanked/underbanked people (relative to other Western countries).

DYKWIA

There are a lot of places in the Netherlands that don't accept cash. My local Starbucks is one example

On the other had, lots of places only take Netherlands based debit cards - no Visa/Mastercard/Amex.

Fortunately, I've not yet hit the combination of both the above, which would be a bit awkward!

Marschel

DYKWIA

Maybe - but they normally just tell me it's "Local debit cards only".

der_saeufer

Dutch debit cards are Maestro; any Maestro card should work, but other networks' cards (debit MasterCard, CB, EC, etc.) won't. My Belgian Maestro card works at debit-only places across the border (and it's not a shared BE/NL system--Belgium has its own debit network called Bancontact). My German debit MC and my American Visa debit cards don't.

Don't get me started on places within 5 minutes of a border that take only debit cards unique to their own country. *shakes fist at EC-only German parking meters and Bancontact-only Belgian gas pumps*

The cap is 0.3% on (most) credit and 0.2% on debit in the EU, which makes the Dutch supermarkets' taking only debit seem pretty ridiculous at first glance, but the other effect of that is that credit card points and miles just aren't much of a thing over here... so a lot of people simply don't have them, and even people who do have them tend to use debit for everyday purchases like groceries and fuel.

The US could do it with a better separation of the credit/debit networks (so the average consumer could tell them apart, maybe?), but I don't see the US government capping credit interchange fees anytime soon.

tmiw

The government might not, but with surcharging and minimums becoming more of a thing I can see the networks reducing interchange on their own to try to prevent more merchants from imposing them. Of course, that reduction would probably not be nearly as much as it would have been with government intervention.