Using an EC card in Germany

does anyone have any idea where i can use my ec card in germany ? or even better frankfurt ? seems like everywhere refuses it. also i need to sign as I do not have my pin yet.
i read the other post about this topic, but ikea is not on my list !

Is it a German EC card? Why did the stores say they refuse it? Did they want you to pay with PIN? What kind of store are you asking about? Grocery store? Clothes?

Germany is still very heavily cash based, slowly they're coming around to EC cards

Timmeh, that is not true (that Germany is slowly coming around to EC cards... though I do agree a lot of people still pay with cash, maybe even the majority), with the exception of the occasional (really really) small store, all accept EC cards. Sounds to me more like in this case something is wrong with the person's EC card, not that the stores in general did not accept it.
If it is not a German card it is possible some don't accept them. My German maestro card does not work at most stores in Spain either, so I don't even bother.

You are joking, just about everywhere takes EC cards. Credit cards, now that's a completely different matter.

I'm afraid it is true. I have been a banker most of my working life and Europe, in particular Germany has been slow to move to cashless payment options.

Sorry when I say EC cards, I'm referring to both debit & credit cards

I cannot even think of a store that does not accept EC cards, with the exception of maybe the newspaper agent. Please list some that don't...

Edit: Well an EC card in Germany is what the debit card is called, so maybe you should talk about them separately. Credit cards is a whole other story, but not what this topic is about, unless the OP uses the term EC card the way you do.

(And the EC stands for eurocheque, not electronic cash in the case of the German EC card.)

Visa is the way to go. What's their motto "Visa, it's everywhere you want to be" or something like that. Cash is inefficient. I haven't had any problems using my Visa check card here in Europe and it's even attached to an American bank.

I was in Tegut yesterday and a young man was trying to pay with a Mastercard and it had EC on it and they refused to accept it. He had loaded all his groceries into his rucksack already when he was refused.

If I do my shopping in the small stores, not the chain supermarkets, I need cash as the majority of them do not accept any electronic payment.
If you compare Germany against most peoples home countries, it's still heavily cash based

Since I avoid supermarkets, virtually NONE of the places I shop at accept EC cards. None of the butcher's, baker's, cheese shops, greengrocer's, market stalls etc etc accept EC card. Is this a problem? Not in the slightest. It takes 20 seconds to take some cash out of the ATM.

Edit: Snap with Timmeh. I agree with him that Germany is still very cash-based. I'm reminded of this when I go back to the UK and people are buying their sandwiches on plastic.

I disagree with LR that cash is inefficient. Although more effort is involved with cashing up etc., cash is a lot quicker than card, so a large store would have fewer check-out staff if everyone paid by cash. It would also make life quicker for the customer...

I also agree that Germany is to a large part still very cash-based but it is not true that they are slowly coming around to accepting EC cards. Granted, the stores you mentioned are exceptions, in which case, exactly, you go to the ATM and get cash. I would say that the majority of people actually do their grocery shopping in a grocery store and they do accept EC (debit) cards there. I personally only shop for myself so in the case that I do go to a bakery or whatever, my bills are usually an amount that I would never use an EC card anyway (less than €5).

So you'd refute a statement that claimed more places accept EC card now than they did ten years ago in 1997?

Of course more places accept them now than 10 years ago, but what does 10 years ago matter in answering the OP's question? It hardly matters for someone who wants to use their EC card now what was 10 years ago, and whether a store accepted it or not, just as it does not matter how stores in the US or NZ or wherever accept them or not. Yes, they came about more slowly than in the US (and probably some other countries too), but in the end what it all comes to is that virtually all stores (bar some exceptions which have been named) accept them now, so your reply to the OP's post that Germany is "slowly [...] coming around to EC cards" is misleading. Would be a different thing if you had said said "slowly they have come around to EC cards", because nowadays virtually everywhere does accept them (with the exception of small stores, and some Einzelhandel like STB mentioned which I think fall under the category small stores).

Anyway, there are already plenty of topics discussing this matter and it is not in the least helpful for the OP, so I'm out.

If there are more places now that accept than 10 years ago, they are coming around to EC, albeit slowly as these systems have been adopted and embraced decades ago by other nations. The OP may be used to wherever they come from where anything and everything is payable by EC. Over here, one must get used to numerous places that do not accept EC. Eventually these small stores will accept EC payments too, so, no my comments of it coming around slowly are not misleading, in fact they're spot on.

Unless you are shopping in mom and pop corer stores where the bill is going to be quite small, you can pay for shopping by plastic anywhere in Germany.
Just look for the sign on the door as you go in. If you have a cip and PIN card though, you'll have to use the PIN.

But why is it still quicker?

All the talk when cards started coming in was that they would speed things up but they do seem to have done the opposite.

I now have a wallet full of card/debit/store cards and i can never find the one I want to use quickly. Then they always seem to take an age dialing through for authorisation. Finally I have the nonesense of a till reciept.

Why oh why can't we have one card linked through to everything with quick authorisation and all transactions stored centrally so I don't need to try and find a reciept 2 years later when something breaks. Speed things up, save paper and reduce the amount I have to carry with me.

There is...it's just not here yet!

Timmeh, you are wrong on this one, mate. The EC card is the ONE card that really is accepted virtually everywhere in Germany. I can't think of anywhere of hand where you can't use them, not counting kiosks etc. And they aren't slowly coming round to it. It has been widely accepted for many years.

Small mum and dad stores OG, as also stated by STB. Go and try and buy all your groceries on an EC card at those. Good luck.
Edit: OG, you've got your opinions on whether or not it's coming around slowly from a UK perspective which was also quite slow to adopt this system.

Yeah but if you choose to buy your groceries at mom and pop stores then you know they don't take cards.
Why should they for a 10 Euro bill or whatever?

Cash can be slower when you get someone who thinks they mights have such and such cents in small change and spends an age looking for it.

The use of cheques peaked in the UK around 1990 so it was in advance of Germany in moving over to cards and electronic payments.
Then again ermany never really had the cumbesome UK cheque system.

Anyhoo, today, in the here and now, there are few large retailers that don't take plastic.

Yeah of course MT, but the OP was asking why some places don't accept EC, I was giving a reason as to why. Eventually even the mum & dad stores will accept EC cards, it's happened in most other countries which have adopted this system. For eg, in NZ, many people will refuse to shop (me for one) in a store which doesn't accept cards. I couldn't name one store, mum & dad store or not, that doesn't take cards.

TBH expecting to go in a corner store, buy a newspaper and a juice and expect to pay with plastic is a bit of a joke really.
Stores are willing to use card systems (that they have to pay for) if it increases their sales and/or cuts their costs.
Which isn't the case with the smallest sotres.

Germany already has a card system for the tiniest transactions anyway, called Geldkarte on your EC Card but it hasn't taken off yet as people still prefer cash for those small transactions.

Why? Only because you're not used to it I'd guess.

Becasue in some cases I'd guess that the costs of processing the transaction are higher than the costs of handling the cash to the point where the entire transaction could be unproftable.

Which could be offset by the increase in sales due to better convenience and service to the customer perhaps?

That would depend on whether there were people who would switch from store A to store B to buy a juice and a newspaper if they could use a card there or indeed make apurchase they wouldn't have otherwise made. You say you made your choices in NZ based on that but i a not sure that currently that is widely appllicable in Germany.

thanks for all replies. 26 of them so far !
anyway, my whole point was I set out today to do some shopping and could not find anywhere that accepted my deutsche bank ec card with signature only. i do not have pin yet so i instantly had a handicap. i did of course find some places that would only do it with pin, although i was in "c and a" last week and they accepted with sign only.
so can anyone think of anywhere in frankfurt where i can use my card and sign only ?

thanks.

It seems to me that some shops base it on the amount (e.g. Media Markt does small purchases on signature, larger ones with PIN), and some have a randomized system (usually you only sign, but sometimes they want you to insert a PIN, e.g. Penny Markt). Some shops that usually accept signature only (in Munich, but presumably also in Frankfurt): Hugendubel, Tengelmann.

It depends on their set up.
Some stores still have a set up to sign but when stroes get new equipment it is PIN.
But when you get a new bank card the PIN should be issued sperately but within a couple of days so it will be a moot point by tomorrow.

i am assuming that national chains will have the same system accross the board. ok, tenglmann will try, not heard of other one. so come on people give me names of shops !!

thanks !

ALL the chains accept plastic. ie EC cards.
There may be a local variety in that some stores were due for a re fit of their till systems and have gone over to chip and PIN and some still have the old signature system. As, given a couple of days for security, ALL German EC cards have a PIN issued with them, you need to learn the PIN and you should have it within a couple of days.

Or the Tante Emma stores will just stop existing. And actually the OP was not asking why stores do not accept EC cards at all, as I suspected, because it would be just ridiculous for someone to come here saying "I could not find any store that would accept my EC card." My answer to that would be, "well, clearly you weren't looking very hard." (As I and several others said, almost all stores with the exception of small ones do.) The problem was indeed (as I had suspected) that they did not accept his EC card, not EC cards in general. That is why I asked some more questions because from his initial post there was no way to tell him for certain why this happened.


Yes, that is what my impression is, too. I also asked at a store once, and they told me it was a randomized process, though it does depend on the amount you shop for at others.

The best advice here is really to get money from the bank. (When they are opened, you can go to a person and ask for money to be paid out to you from your account if you present your ID, so you can get money out of your account without using an ATM.) Just avoid using the card for electronic payment until you get your PIN. I used to have a card that was only PIN payment and not signature-based though once I was able to use it to pay with signature. It seems to me PIN payment is the more common procedure, and grocery stores like Aldi and Lidl only do PIN payment, so it might indeed be a bit hard to come across a store that will accept your card as long as you do not have a PIN for it, especially on a Sunday. Go to a Deutsche Bank tomorrow and get enough cash to last you a while, until you have your PIN, after that you will be able to use it virtually everywhere (with the exception of some smaller stores, but all chains accept EC cards).

Names of shops that accept EC cards?

Food & groceries:
Rewe
Aldi
Lidl
Kaufland/Handelshof
Real
etc etc.

Drugstores:
dm
Schlecker
Rossmann
Müller

Clothes:
C&A
H&M
Esprit
and pretty much all other ones.

Books:
Hugendubel
Lehmanns
etc.

Electronics, DVDs, CDs:
Saturn
Media Markt
Müller
Makro Markt (or whatever its current name is)
Conrad

Really the best advice is to go downtown or even just down the street, and keep your eyes open, especially as long as you are not telling us what kind of store you are asking about. I do not think anyone will be able to tell you any stores that accept signature-only payment as a general statement as that depends on the store as well as on the amount and the occasion (when it is randomized).

Ummm, why? Only if they're not willing to change with the times and they find business declines because of this.

Indeed, the OP clarified this

No, Timmeh, because that is what globalization does. Most small stores cannot compete with the big stores on prices and people are likely to stop shopping there because they do not care about what makes shopping at Tante Emma stores nicer than grocery stores. I cannot remember seeing any Tante Emma stores in the US when I lived there. The same development is fairly likely to take place in Germany at some point. It has nothing to do with EC cards.

Errr, forgive me for being dumb...why did you mention these in a thread concerned with EC cards?

It was a reply to posts #25 and #26. Accepting EC cards would probably make products at mom and pop stores even more expensive, and I doubt people would shop there more just because they now accept EC cards. As you noted Germany is still largely cash-based and most Germans are not opposed to paying in cash if they have to. It makes no sense to accept EC cards for the small purchases people usually make at mom and pop stores, because of the three people who base their decision to buy something there on the fact that they do or do not accept EC cards.

I didn't increase prices in NZ, it doesn't need to here either. It would be interesting to hear from other peeps from the US, UK, Aus and so on what kind of affect it had on the price of goods. Introduction into all stores will happen here, guarantee it, you've seen it in all the other markets it's been introduced to. As I stated at the very start, Germany is just a couple of decades behind on this front.

I just did a bit of research on the NZ system. The cost of such a system is $18/month/terminal, approx €9. This would be more than reimbursed by the benefits of such a system. Does anyone have a clue as to the costs of having the EC system here in Germanland?

It has less of an effect on the price of goods but an effect on the costs / profits.

Supermarkets turnover allows them to have lower prices becuase of their bulk buying power.
At the same time they have (say) thousands of Euros of business a day and are more than willing to cut the costs of handling cash by paying the costs of card systems.

For the mom and pop store that doesn't apply.

The costs of accepting plastic wouldn't be outwieghed by the benefits.

In my parents UK village the (still just remaining) butchers, bakers and greengrocers don't take plastic.

So these benefits (taken directly from EFTPOS) wouldn't outweigh a relatively small outlay?


Unless the fees here are stupidly high, it'd be a bit foolish not to accept as many payment types as possible

You do realise EFTPOS are trying to sell their product there don't you Timmeh!

All that can be true of course, but not necessarily so.
IF there is demand / potential then the smallest shops will go for it.

I've been in the US, Australia, NZ if their banking systems are so advanced that the UK.
Never felt the need or obligation to put a samdwich for a few dollars on plastic.

There is no way a credit card terminal costs just €9 a month. That may be the cost of renting the equipment but there'll be an additional charge of at least 2-3% per transaction on top of this.

The signature-without-pin "requirement" was not mentioned in your original post. You did not state that the lack of pin was the issue.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought that for EC transactions (=direct debit) there was no surcharge, as opposed to payment by credit card. I know I sometimes get asked in a shop or restaurant if I don't mind using EC instead of MC so they don't get charged for the transaction.

There is a surcharge for EC, but it's much lower than that for credit cards (something like 0.5 - 0.8% I think). There's no surcharge to the customer.

IF the costs are that low and below the cost of handling cash and/or less than the potential new business to be gained by accepting the cards then the market will take care of it.

I use my EC card everywhere in Germany and Europe wide. Timmeh needs to get out more and experience real life. Reminds me of the elder Bush being amazed at scanners in supermarkets in 1991.

hats off to the people who contributed to the plethora of information regarding ec cards. esp mariposa as you were the only poster who provided me with a LIST of shops, which was the topic and point of my thread.

all the rest seemed to argue about how much they new about the setup and infrastructure of EC cards in Europe.

been playing too many online games i think.