German credit card from The Royal Bank of Scotland

The Royal Bank of Scotland have brought out a new consumer friendly credit card in Germany.

0% for the first six months. Balance transfers allowed. Choose how much you want to pay off each month. No annual fee if you spend over €5,000, otherwise €25.

RBS X-ite

Hmm, Are they giving away free tickets to any 6 nations games if you sign up?

I think us brits will love RBS's new X-ITE card because we know this kind of thing from home.

Germans will shudder at the thought of carrying over debt from one month to another.

Ben

...and I think they're right to shudder. The attitude to credit cards is one of the saving graces of German Banks compared to British lenders. The British banks make you believe they're bending over backwards to help their customers but they are really bending their customers over backwards to give them a good rogering with fees and interest on outstanding loans.

Hey, everyone can get loans or credit cards if they want to be irresponsible and rack up debts on holiday and clothes.

However, one of the hindrances I have felt since moving over here is that I always have to be sure to have a cash float of €150 kicking around in my wallet because so few places take credit cards, or you end up running to the bank all the time - when you can find one that wont charge you of course.

Bring on sensible credit cards etc (such as this one!) that sensible people will use sensibly!

Then why don't you get an EC card, they're accepted virtually everywhere. Actually, I'm surprised you haven't got one anyway, most banks give you one automatically so you can use their ATMs for cash and bank statements.

Yes ,I do have one, but in the UK you can put EVERYTHING on a card, whether EC (ala switch) or credit card no matter whether you're buying a newspaper, clothes, food or just a beer

With the exception of Aldi North, virtually everywhere I know takes EC card and I regularly use it for 10€ or less. I rarely have more than 20€ cash on me and it usually lasts most of the month.

I'm not a credit card expert but here's my theory:
The only reason they don't accept credit cards is because the card companies demand too much. Why? Because vendor fees are more or less their only source of income. Most credit cards here are end-of-month debit cards so in theory it actually costs them (you don't pay interest while waiting for bill). Now if more cards functioned like RBS's then they have an additional source of income which would eventally reduce vendor fees.

The six months interest free credit with X-ite is a one-off - to get you to use the card. After that the interest rate is probably higher than your overdraft.

After six months you can change the card if the interest is high.

exactly

I went travelling for a year a couple of years ago and rather than pay out cash, I racked it all up on 0% interest credit cards in the UK which I then pushed and pulled around such that I've had up to 12 grand sterling interest free (now almost gone thankfully)

It is very useful for short term cash flow management!

Can anyone confirm that Balance Transfers are indeed allowed? I cant see it on the website/faq's.
I have a MINT(RBS) C/Card that I have from the UK (although now reg at my address here) and the interest is killing me, I want to try and xfer the balance here to
make it more managable.
Or anyone know of any other new UK style C/Cards here?

Cheers

You can get Barclaycards here, should you feel like selling your soul to the devil. If you have outstanding debts on a credit card then it is usually cheaper to take out a personal loan to pay them off.

There's also an amazon.de credit card, which is, like the Barclaycard, free in year1, 20euro after that, but...

you get 2 points per euro spent at amazon, 0.5 points per euro elsewhere, then 10euros off at amazon for 1000pts (ie 1000 amazon/euro/yr or 4000 other/euro/yr to cancel out the fee). This compares well with RBSs fee-free @ 5000 euro. You get a 20euro welcome voucher too, I suppose the usefulness depends on how much you spend on amazon...

0% for 6 months too. Repayment period is only 10 days though, or you pay interest, so not quite as good as the others.