Anonymous credit cards are ruled out by law basically everywhere in the European Union. Assuming that I live in the US, and that everyone on this planets is doing so, is - as you call it - incredibly stupid.
That … seems stupid? And I don’t really think that can be true.
I don’t even have a credit card (like many Europeans I only have a bank card) and I’m also not enthusiastic about giving my payment information for just using something or even just looking around.
Ive never been asked for ID to buy a gift card in USA. I thought Europe was once renowned for it's strong financial privacy laws? my, things have changed.
Outside the US, credit cards are much less common outside the US. The alternative to credit cards isn't CoD, it's debit cards, which are connected directly to a bank account. Merchants love debit cards because they have near-zero transaction fees.
You don't need credit card for chargebacks, just strong consumer protection laws that permit the bank to claw the money back from the merchant.
As for fraud, I don't have any data, and I'm sure there's plenty, but we have had chip-and-PIN in Europe for decades, and for more than a decade cards have been protected with 3D Secure and similar types of mandatory 2FA, so having the card number is not enough to complete a transaction.
People seem more wary of accruing debt in Europe; it's easy to lose control over your personal finances with a credit card. But we have middlemen like Klarna now that offer credit-card-like payment deferral. Klarna appears as just another payment processor, but takes on all the risk, similar to a credit card company.
The only thing I miss from US credit cards are cash back rewards.
Could you please expand? In this area, the only ones available I found have a surcharge of ~5..10% (you buy a 100€ card through 105€..110€). Note: I am not certain of the amount, it has been a while since I used one.
And in Europe electronic payments cannot by law be anonymous over 150€.
I'm glad you brought up the privacy thing. I don't know much about Germany specifically, but people not wanting to create an electronic trail of financial transactions seems like a reasonable explanation for at least some people to be avoiding credit cards.
The dude is in Europe. Most people in Europe don't even have credit cards, really. Credit card infrastruture is way less developed in Europe. (Let alone 'less developed' parts of the world, which still have developers). The whole world is not the US.
Anonymous credit cards are ruled out by law basically everywhere in the European Union. Assuming that I live in the US, and that everyone on this planets is doing so, is - as you call it - incredibly stupid.
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