this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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Do people in europe use credit cards? I remember hearing it wasn't popular as much as the US. Isn't debit more common?
It mostly depends where. French use it for almost anything, even more since COVID. On the other hand, Germans have a tradition to prefer cash.
I think bank transfers are more popular in Northern Europe. I only use a credit card if I want additional buyer protection / insurance from my bank.
I'm from northern Europe, and I have never heard of or met anyone that preferred bank transfers ever. If I can't pay online with credit/debit card, I'm not buying from there, but it's extremely rare to find somewhere that does bank transfers for B2C at all IME.
With bank transfers I am referring to services like Paytrail/Klarna where you authenticate with your bank, and choose which account the sum is taken from.
Services like Klarna are micro-loans though. They're not a bank transfer or really a direct payment of the service/product you're buying, it is literally just a small loan with a short runtime (usually 3-12 months)
Klarna offers direct payments too. In Sweden you can pay with Swish, credit/debit card, or bank transfers.
Fair enough, they only offer the micro loans where i live.
Isn't Klarna a credit service more like a loan where you then distribute the payments over the next few months? You sign a contract and stuff just like bank loans, it's not the same as making a bank transfer at all.
You don't have to use the loan feature Klarna offers.
You can also pay with a credit or debit card using Klarna (makes makes it more convenient if you haven't memorized the CC numbers yet) or using bank transfers, or with services like Swish.
Never have I ever heard about anyone preferring a bank transfer in Northern Europe.
I'm from there, and I can't remember which year I used cash. It's either card or digital payment like MobilePay.
We use them to pay online, of course. But the payment mechanism is different because most of the time they're debit accounts not credit.
Depends where you go. My Czech bank card is a debit card with a number on it that you can use like a credit card. Dutch banks don't have this and we use different online payment methods. I never really needed a credit card for anything (until I traveled in France) so the price to have one is not worth it.
Here you get a debit card by default with your bank account, and that one's free. You might get a credit one, but credit limits are typically low. I lived in Canada for 9 years and by the time I left I had a CC with a limit of 26k CAD. Here my Spanish credit card has a limit of 1.2k euros, and I've had it for quite a long time.
In Spain at least there's quite a lot of confusion with this. People call any card type a "credit card", even debit ones.
No. It’s not as popular. In Germany most have a giro-card, but credit cards are becoming more popular. Many still prefer cash though.
I assume autocorrect screwed you?
For anyone else reading this: no, there is no such thing as girl-cards.
Yes thanks. I meant giro-card.
Can't use cash online, (nearly*) anywhere.
In Sweden we almost exclusively use Credit/debit cards cash is extremely rare and a lot of shops don't accept cash.
It has been this way for many years.