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When it is the majority of the population, it is beyond a personal decision.

This is just my personal observation. Among the western European countries, German has the smallest level of adoption of credit cards. The French, the Dutch, the Swedes etc love their cashless nature of credit cards, the Germans not so much.

Furthermore most of the credit cards offered by the German banks are actually debit cards.



When it is the majority of the population, it is beyond a personal decision.

It boggles my mind, but "majority" of the German population has a preference to Currywurst ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst ) - is this also "beyond a personal decision" ?

If you have a reference to German government pursuing an anti credit cards policy - please provide it here.


Curry wurst is definitely a cultural thing. Most kids growing up in Germany eats curry wurst, and continues to eat them in adulthood.

This paper (0) is a good write-up on how the card systems works in Germany.

(0) - https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/fub188/22957/...

edit:updated the link


Thanks for the link, it is indeed very good.


The link doesn't work?


A debit card is just as cashless, what is your reason for using a credit card?

Hotels or car rentals which want to block a certain amount on my card as guarantee are one. Other than that I never needed a credit card.

In case of an emergency most bank accounts in Germany can go into the negatives, I guess making minimum payments on a credit card is cheaper but that style of life isn't at all common in Germany.




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