Visa in GermanyCan

Can anyone tel me why so few shops (ebay-inclusive) use Visa-card compered til f.ex. England and Denmark.





cheers



niles-erik

The reason is the amount of money Visa charges for transactions.



There are credit cards which are even more expensive (Diners Club), but even the five percent charged by Visa makes this very unattractive for sellers. Diners Club charges a whopping ten percent!



These charges reduce the net gain of selling wares and are sometimes even higher than the total gain - obviously a ridiculous concept.



In Europe the EC-Card (formerly known as EuroChecque), which is a direct-debit card, is much more feasible, since it is both quite widespread and charged much less for transactions.

There are actually two different modes of operation - "EC Cash", which is secured by a four-digit PIN which has to be entered by the card's owner, and bank withdrawal, which is usually authorized by a signature (but needn't be). This is the most economic way of payment and has the least risk for the customer - because every such bank withdrawal can be reversed without the hassle associated with credit card withdrawals.

[quote name='hartmann' date='Mar 20 2006, 10:32 PM']Can anyone tel me why so few shops (ebay-inclusive) use Visa-card compered til f.ex. England and Denmark.

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German customers are very sensitive to price. They would not tolerate any surcharges that sellers would have to calculate into their prices if they accepted the credit card.



Your bank might be able to issue a Maestro Card (formerly EC card). Ask them. With that, you can shop pretty much everywhere in Germany.



If you want to buy something from a German eBay seller, you could use a direct bank transfer. If you are in Euro-Land, the transaction would be free of charge if you have the IBAN and BIC of the seller. If you are not in Euro-Land, ask your bank for the fee.

Even outside euro-land a cost-reduced bank transfer is possible, when both ends of the transaction participate in the EuroGiro organisation.

This was originally an organisation of postal banks, but now also has other members.



Examples are:

Deutsche Postbank, Credit Suisse, PostFinance, Thailand Post etc.



Further information here www.eurogiro.com



Unfortunately, the clerks working in your local branch usually don't know about EuroGiro, but at least for a transfer I did earlier this year from "Deutsche Postbank" to "PostFinance" (Switzerland) it worked auto-magically, thus reducing the cost of the transfer to 1.50 EUR (instead of more than 10 EUR).

[Mirko Boeddecker]

The german credit card companies were just told by the german "Bundeskartellamt" to change their habits and lower their prices.



They have 6 weeks now to oppose to this.



Let?s?hope they become more reasonable so we can offer this service again.



Mirko

Thanks that will easy the trade for us forringiers.....





und hoffenlich sehen wier uns montag.... ich bin in Berlin von montag bis mitwoch......





niels-erik