Hi fellow GOG-ers,

A non-gaming question for you all - I am based in the UK, and am being sent to Germany for a few months with work. Do any Germans (or frequent travellers to Germany) have tips on how to use debit cards there? My UK Visa Debit Card seems to be not accepted except at big malls etc - would a pre-paid Maestro card be a good idea? I can't seem to find any in the UK, they're all Mastercard instead.

Thanks in advance for ideas :)

Y halo thar.

The most common form of debit card payment in Germany is the "EC card" (edit: actually that's supposed to be "Girocard", but we all still call it the "EC-Karte"). We don't specifically have "Visa" debit cards or "Mastercard" debit cards - you can buy pre-paid cards for those services but they're treated as credit cards.

Although I have a Maestro symbol on my bank card, as far as I can tell, Maestro payment isn't widely supported here, and I've never been able to use my German Maestro card for anything in the UK.

I don't really have any experience with debit cards myself (I distrust them as a means of payment, government can track your transactions with them), but here's German wikipedia about it:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debitkarte#Deutschland

Especially significant: "Ausländische Maestro- oder V-Pay-Karten werden in Deutschland an reinen EC/girocard-Terminals nicht akzeptiert. Jede EC-Akzeptanzstelle muss die Nutzung solcher Karten durch eine separate Vereinbarung mit ihrem jeweiligen Zahlungsdienstleister ermöglichen, was regelmäßig mit weiteren Kosten verbunden ist. Insbesondere im lokalen Einzelhandel und z.B. auch in vielen Supermärkten kann daher mit der Akzeptanz ausländischer Karten zumeist nicht gerechnet werden."

Translation: Foreign cards (apparently including Maestro cards) apparently can't be used in many German shops, supermarkets etc.
Seems like you need to get a card from the German debit card system. But maybe someone with experience knows more about this.

So no, it seems like a Maestro card from the Uk won't be of use to you in Germany.
Interestingly enough, according to Wikipedia it would work in Austria and Switzerland.

Thanks for the feedback :)

My Googling seems to indicate that the EC card is a German-specific EuroCheque card, and you need a German bank account to acquire one. They seem to be accepted only in German-speaking countries (Germany, Lichtenstein, Austria, Switzerland).

The UK does accept Maestro cards for payment, but not EuroCheque. Almost no UK banks now issue Maestro cards, they issue free Visa or MasterCard debit cards instead that are linked to your account.

Since the company are going to pay my expenses and living costs whilst I'm away, I guess I can just keep drawing money from ATM machines with my Visa debit, and get the company to pay the currency conversion fee...

(I'm wary of having no cash, last time I went to Switzerland, the local pasta restaurant didn't accept either and I had to be bailed-out by a colleague)

Pff, cash is all that matters. Why would you ever go without it?

Cash is great, but I don't want to travel with 6 months of it... :)

That's probably the best solution. Most, but not all restaurants in Germany accept card payments, it's also rare for fast food restaurants to accept card payments. The only place where you might NEED a card is to pay for non-local train tickets from a vending machine, but public transport ticket vending machines for local public transport usually accept coins and notes (it can be confusing for foreigners to tell between "Bahn" and "S-Bahn"), and even so, you can still pay cash at the Deutsche Bahn sales office.

Supermarkets, shops will always accept debit card payments, usually Visa and MasterCard as well (don't take it for granted: it's actually only fairly recently that supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi started accepting credit cards!)

You can do pretty well with cash in Germany. Since my bank decided to start charging me per transaction, I've found myself increasingly using cash.

I'm in Germany right now! :D


The problem is it's Germany 1939.

I guess you could say it was a... final solution.


I'll show myself out.

Great job!

Germany loves cash

How did you get there and can you park your time machine somewhere, where I will find it in 2017?

On topic: as others said, EC card (Eurocard or Girocard) is the most frequently used card around here which is accepted almost everywhere. It's called 'Euro'-card, but it's one of those 'European' things that are uniquely German. Other than that credit cards are also frequently accepted. Most common are Visa and Mastercard. But always ask in a shop whether they accept cards. Some smallish shops only accept cash and generally cash is still the most frequently used way to pay in shops.

Debit cards are not common. There is one kind of debit card which is accepted in many machines (called Geldkarte), but it is again uniquely German and you are required to have an account at a German bank. But there are several banks that offer giro accounts free of charge. So if you are in Germany longer, perhaps just get a German banking account together with the EC card that comes with it.

Another alternative would be traveller's cheques. But they come with a conversion fee as well.

Cash is great, I'll never understand why people willingly use those cards, it's a really dangerous technology that could easily be abused by a tyrannical government.
And when you watch those American true crime shows like Forensic files, they often have cases in which criminals are caught because of evidence from credit/debit card transactions.

At least it's not 1944.