cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11819804
The trend in western Europe is banks are pulling out of the ATM business and joining consortiums. Then those consortiums deploy much fewer ATMs than the banks had. And they monopolise. If one or two ATM brands reject your card, you may be fucked if it’s a small city, as I recently experienced.
ATM alternatives are becoming increasingly essential due to ATM enshitification & sparcity. Some shops give cash back, where you have more money pulled from your bank and the cashier gives you cash from the register. The US has always been on-the-ball with cash back, even though the ATMs in the US are not the shit-show that we see in Europe lately.
So it’s easy to find cash back options in the US because there are several compiled lists showing various stores and limits, like this. Some shops have a fee and some not and the range of limits vary wildly. But at least there are published options.
I’m struggling to find information like that in Europe. In part this is because “cash back” is an overloaded term that also means rebate deals (like discounts of ~1—5%), so search results are polluted. It’s bizarre there is so little info about this. So many people have become cashless that hardly anyone even notices the shit show that ATMs have become. Hence low demand for info on cash back options.
Cash back can be interesting for foreign card holders in Europe because they avoid ATM fees. Discovercard/Diner’s Club seems to guarantee no cash back fee and at the same time no currency exchange markup. But the data on cashback in Europe is sparse and inconsistent from one country to the next.
- Norway shops offering cash back refuse non-Norwegian cards.
- UK stores require no purchase and have no fee, but they also discriminate against non-local bank cards.
- Denmark: local cards only, credit cards refused.
- Spain: no cash back service (but that article is 10 yrs old).
- Netherlands: rumour is that Albert Heijn, SPAR, and Smullers have cash back. (SPAR advertises cashback on their UK site with a locator because apparently only some locations offer it. Yet they wholly conceal this option from their Dutch website)
- Belgium: Aldi has it. But if you boycott Israel then you boycott Aldi North (all Belgian Aldis are Aldi North)
Mastercard has a “cashback store locator” on their US website. And apparently that db is only populated with US stores. Which is a bit shitty because MC is global and they should have that information.
I’m not getting why shops are non-transparent about this. Presumably they offer cash back potentially fee-free because they profit from whatever you’re buying. It would work on me… if I have some confidence that I can get €200 cash back at a store, that store is sure to get my business.
Anyway, please feel free to use this thread to crowdsource cashback info.
Here in Germany it’s not as bad. maybe it’s because our attitude towards cash. There is atms everywhere and you can get cash at nearly all gas stations, aldi etc.
THe only thing that sucks here is that you kinda NEED to go to an atm from your own bank or that specifically is free for your bank or else you will have really high fees. But since it’s usually pretty easy to find one it’s not a big deal imo.
THe only thing that sucks here is that you kinda NEED to go to an atm from your own bank or that specifically is free for your bank or else you will have really high fees.
Not anymore, since many supermarkets let you withdraw money from your bank account when you buy something from them without any minimum purchase price.
Bullshit. The situation used to be (barely) acceptable. Now you can only find euronet scammy ATMs. There used to be plenty of Cashgroup ATMs but since Deutsche Bank and Postbank closed almost all of their branches it’s almost impossible to find one.
Bank ATMs are still fine in Germany, bonus of still being a cash based society I guess. You can also withdraw cash when paying with your card at every major supermarket chain. Works fine with German cards, no idea for foreign ones.
ATMs are getting sparse in Germany, too. My next ATM used to be within 10 minutes walking distance, now it’s a bus ride away.
Haven’t noticed that yet in my area. My village has 2 banks with like 3 ATMs each, which is the same as it was 20 years ago.
Maybe, in your region, the tendency for an ATM to spontaneously explode, is smaller than in others, especially those sufficiently close to the Dutch border.
In Italy what you say is not true. No issues with ATM at all, and cash back has never existed in any case.
For the Netherlands, all ATM withdrawals are free, and all debit transactions in stores are free. This applies to any combination of cards and banks. I don’t really see the point in trying to avoid either?
Getting cashback in stores is pretty uncommon because very few people will ever use it, since the alternatives are free and convenient.
Is this related to your previous post where you complained that your card kept getting rejected (resulting in your blaming the machine instead of your card/bank)?
For the Netherlands, all ATM withdrawals are free,
Try a non-EU card. Dutch ATMs charge a transaction fee of ~€4 to non-EU cards.
and all debit transactions in stores are free
Acceptance can be an issue. US banks have very favorable card features for the consumers, like chargebacks. If a consumer has some kind of complaint regarding a purchase, banks will claw back the money from the merchant until the merchant provides proof that counters the consumer’s claim, and I believe the mediation is all in English. They make it very easy for the consumer… the card holder simply calls their bank and says “dispute charge X” and briefly states the reason. Then the merchant faces a paperwork burden over a potentially small amount of money and often don’t bother, which means they lose by default. US consumers take advantage of this option enough that merchants in the EU sometimes refuse US cards because of the risk of chargebacks. It violates the Visa merchant agreement to treat foreign cards differently but it’s not enforced by Visa/MC. I’m not sure if any Dutch merchants discriminate against foreign cards but it’s certainly a thing in Europe.
USians also have Discovercard (Diner’s Club). This card has very low acceptance in European shops, but ATMs often accept Discovercard.
Is this related to your previous post where you complained that your card kept getting rejected (resulting in your blaming the machine instead of your card/bank)?
Indeed. The ATM machines themselves are persnickety and faulty when there is no problem on the bank’s side. The ATMs output bogus messaging. And because choice of ATM operator is diminishing, ATMs are a non-starter in some situations. They cannot be relied on.
Try a non-EU card. Dutch ATMs charge a transaction fee of ~€4 to non-EU cards.
True, but this is a minority of transactions, so it doesn’t really influence the culture by much. No store is going to leverage the “non-eu-expat-without-bsn-cash-only” segment of the market.
USians also have Discovercard (Diner’s Club). This card has very low acceptance in European shops, but ATMs often accept Discovercard.
Problems like this are pretty much universal though, and they’ve gotten much better in the last decades, not worse. It’s just that we’ve gotten less accepting of things not working flawlessly. Getting money in the US is a similar crapshoot, even with Visa/Mastercard, and most of Asia is worse.
The thing is, the majority of transactions are by card, so obviously services will lean that way. Annoying for tourists, maybe, but getting euros isn’t a huge problem for a short stay.
True, but this is a minority of transactions, so it doesn’t really influence the culture by much. No store is going to leverage the “non-eu-expat-without-bsn-cash-only” segment of the market.
ATM numbers have really dropped in Belgium and the backlash is that there is now pressure (and possibly plans) to bring the ATMs back in order to accommodate tourists. At the same time there is a somewhat global movement to try to steer tourists away from the tourist hotspots and toward smaller cities. But if they want to get their eye on the ball, they need to fix the ATM situation which neglects tourists in the small cities.
Cards are not as versatile as you make them out to be. EU cards used inside the EU, sure, but in the US and UK you have several complex factors:
- most banks burn you on the exchange rate and some rare ones have zero markup, so travelers are limited in which of their cards they use
- Mastercard/maestro is the most popular in Europe but its popularity is lower in the US and perhaps UK as well
- proper credit cards are very common in the US, most commonly Visa, but merchants sometimes refuse them because of the chargeback risk. Credit cards can be used to get a “cash advance” from the ATM, but the fees for that are often very high. There are lots of tricks to reduce the fees a bit but most consumers are unaware of them. So consumers are often pushed to use a debit card at the ATM.
- Discover has no foreign exchange costs which makes it very interesting for tourists but it’s blown by low acceptance.
Well, I could go on but the main issue is eurozone cards work trivially in the EU, but there is much more financial instrument diversity outside Europe that’s not well accommodated in Europe. Outsiders can’t just pick any card out and expect it to work Europe and to not get burnt on overhead. If a shop were to accept Diner’s Club and also offer fee-free cashback, it would lock-in business from US tourists and expats.
When you take away options and enshitify the ATMs, it increases complexity on an already complex situation. I may not go back to a small town in Netherlands knowing that I could again be trapped with an ATM monopoly that mistreats my cards. We need more options like shops that offer cashback.
Well, I could go on but the main issue is eurozone cards work trivially in the EU, but there is much more financial instrument diversity outside Europe that’s not well accommodated in Europe. Outsiders can’t just pick any card out and expect it to work Europe and to not get burnt on overhead.
For tourists, this might mean they spend 10 or 20 bucks getting euros over their holiday. They’d pay the same exchanging cash at home, so they tend not to care (they just spent 100 times flying across an ocean or continent, I know it’s not something I bother with when I go on vacation).
If this is a structural issue, I don’t understand the cause of it when there’s a simple solution: Get a Dutch bank account, and fix your EU-wide problems. It takes all of 10 minutes
I may not go back to a small town in Netherlands knowing that I could again be trapped with an ATM monopoly that mistreats my cards. We need more options like shops that offer cashback.
Well no, you need it, but you’re very much a minor use case, which makes it very unlikely to happen. I’m not saying it shouldn’t happen, just that it’s very unlikely. The Dutch Geldmaat is already a mandated thing, banks would have even fewer ATMs if it were up to them.
Get a Dutch bank account, and fix your EU-wide problems. It takes all of 10 minutes
If a tourist from outside the EU attempts to open a normal bank account they will vary likely be refused. Banks want to see that you are doing business locally and their KYC/AML needles go off the charts with this kind of rationale which then creates a reporting burden. But if a bank is exceptionally flexible, I’m highly skeptical that they can have an account open with bank card in hand in 10 minutes. It would likely take much more time than they want encroaching on their vacation time. The fees are also a problem because many European banks have annual fees to compensate their overhead.
Then how do they fund it?
If a tourist is refused a normal account (which I find likely), they can demand a “basic” account which cannot legally be refused (though most tourists would not know about that nuance). But a basic account is especially crippled to not accept cash deposits. So the consumer cannot make an ATM withdrawal to then fund the account. And even if it’s a non-basic account, they can do that in principle but if the ATM works for them why are they opening a euro account to begin with?
Money transfers are extremely expensive for consumers in some countries (e.g. the US). $40-50 per transfer is typical in the US, plus ~3% for the currency conversion. Not even all banks support international transfers. There are countless small credit unions in the US and some have no intermediary agreement with a SWIFT bank to be able to offer a SWIFT transfer service.
Then when they leave the eurozone the money sits idle in an account that eats away at it. So they have the burden of closing it, or wasting whatever they cannot withdraw.
If you still think the idea is viable, you might bring that idea to the debate going on over whether Belgium should bring back more ATMs for tourists. See if they like the idea of tourists opening accounts for periodic visits.
BTW, Denmark is a disaster for getting an account open. You have to prove having a legal right to live there at the commune, then you have to wait 30 days for a social security number. Banks will not talk to you without that number. None of those steps can be done in advance via mail. People must start the process in person. It might be amusing to appear at a Danish bank without residency and demand your EU right to a basic account. I would guess they are non-compliant on that.
The Dutch Geldmaat is already a mandated thing
Apparently they are mandated to exist, not to actually function and serve all comers. The Geldmaats can apparently refuse service if they want because I’ve seen them use that power.
If a tourist from outside the EU…
Which is why I specifically said it wasn’t a solution for tourists, but for expats/immigrants/exchange students/whatever. IF you’re one of those, you probably already have a BSN, which means you can have a bank card in 2 days if you have a RFID passport and a phone.
If you’re a tourist, this “problem” is likely a very, very time-limited issue, and if you really wanted cash, you could have exchanged it at home.
My point is, this isn’t enshittification, things are hugely better than they were just 10 or 20 or god forbid 30 years ago. There are plenty of options, from paying in stores, to google/apple pay, to exchanging cash like it’s 1972. Both my real-life American friends have zero issues in stores or at ATMs with their US cards, though both also have a Dutch bank account, since they do live here longterm. It really seems that this is a very you-problem, and you’ve decided you want a solution that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen here.
If anything, quite the opposite is happening: more no-cash stores are appearing. Hell, most people I know only carry cash for emergencies and presents.
Apparently they are mandated to exist, not to actually function and serve all comers.
The government seems to require that every Dutch person must have access to a Geldmaat machine within 5km.
It really seems that this is a very you-problem,
Victim blame is really fucked up here. ATMs are violating the GDPR by making use of undisclosed automatic decision making. Only pushovers accept that the ATM is right.
and you’ve decided you want a solution that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen here.
You’re not paying attention. The fix exists: SPAR gives cashback. The purpose of the thread is to crowdsource information that is undisclosed. It’s unclear exactly which SPAR locations in NL supports cashback, and who else does. In this shitshow of the hunt for criminals causing problems for lawful citizens, we need options. And we need them documented.
Why shouldn’t I just pay with card and avoid all of this? Even food stands on the street accept cards nowadays.
This is a must-read. Someone’s alcohol consumption was tracked through his card purchases and then used against him to deny him a mortgage. So it would be foolish to use a card to buy:
- alcohol
- tobacco
- marijuana and things to cultivate it
- parafranelia (pipes, bongs, etc)
- flipper zero
- psilocybe cubensis spores… etc
Apart from that, there is a war on cash, which is a war on privacy. When you pay by card, you are part of the problem. You serve as an enabler for shops to refuse cash. It’s important to use cash for everything now to signal its importance to merchants considering eliminating it as an option. Once cash is gone, banks have full power over you. All consumers will be wholly disempowered.
Even though I have a card, if a shop refuses cash I usually refuse to patronise the shop so as not to support the social irresponsibility of their exclusivity and the forced-banking consequence they are pushing.
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The source is the article I linked. I would love to see the author to get that story published by a credible publisher because that story really needs widespread exposure.
It likely was the US. And if that same US card holder were to do their alcohol consumption in the EU, I would like to see them return home and demand their GDPR right to have that information not leaked all over the place and abused. Such an attempt would be laughable.
Even inside the EU, GDPR enforcement is a bit of a shit show. It’s not something you can rely on. I’ve reported dozens of blatant GDPR violations that are simple, stark, with solid evidence and would be trivially easy to enforce yet they just get moth balled. They enforce a few token cases to make it look like the GDPR is working well. I’ve seen enough to know it’s a terrible idea to rely on the GDPR. Especially with banks. Data protection authorities are turning a blind eye to banks. They are scared of them for some reason. It’s good that the GDPR is at least in place, but a bit of street wisdom is still absolutely essential in the EU.
Even in some hypothetical utopia where the GDPR is thoroughly enforced and adhered to, there is nothing in that GDPR to empower consumers who are disempowered by forced banking. It would take one hell of a brilliant lawyer to effectively argue that cash elimination violates the data minimisation principle. If a bank decides they don’t want you donating to Wikileaks, or that they want to freeze your account because your ID card expired, that is entirely outside the purview of GDPR rules.
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You linked to a comment, and I don’t see an article there, but maybe I’m not noticing something.
That comment is the source. It is now your job (if you choose to accept it), to chase that up, ask the source for their source, and investigate until you are satisfied. Or give up. You have the source to do what you want with it. But you can’t reasonably claim the source was not given.
I’m not going to do an investigation for you. Do your own homework. You are the sole judge for the standard of evidence you seek. I could not act your behalf even if I wanted to.
Afaik GDPR applies to EU citizens worldwide, not expats living in the EU.
The GDPR covers EU citizens worldwide and also everyone in Europe regardless of citizenship (expats and even 1-day tourists passing through). That doesn’t mean you have a functional enforcement infrastructure when shit falls apart. The system isn’t even fully operational inside the EU for EU citizens facing EU companies. Enforcement is a shit show. Absolutely laughable to think someone can return to the US and demand GDPR protection on their EU transactions. It’s technically covered but there is no long-arm jurisdiction that would effectively lead to a fine on a US bank. No teeth. These rules are just for show. The EU has rubber-stamped the US as “adequate” w.r.t the GDPR likely for political reasons / trade relations, but it’s a joke. It would be naive to put stock in that.
(edit) What do you even expect to happen in this bizarre fantasy where you think you have all the benefits the GDPR attempts/pretends to deliver? That a US card holder would call their US bank and say “delete those transactions where I was drinking at a bar in the EU”? Even wholly within Europe, the bank has a legal obligation to retain that data. You cannot willy nilly make an art.17 req. and expect satisfaction of your demand. Your art.17 request to delete your speeding ticket will just be laughed at. With banking transactions you have an expectation that EU banks keep that data but does not needlessly share it. Try demanding a non-EU bank tag all your EU transactions and block them from sharing. Your demand will be laughed at (despite being technically valid). Then to come into this forum and tell people they can rely on non-EU banks not sharing EU-based transactions is perversely reckless.
I really hope no one would actually believe your bullshit. It’s dangerous to mislead people to think they have privacy safeguards they can rely on when they do not.
GDPR enforcement works, it’s not a quick process, but companies gets fines all the time for that, if you follow related news.
Nonsense. Forget the news, they just sensationalise the fine amounts. Have a look at https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ to get the real data. Look at the fines per month stats. It’s at the bottom of the stats page. An embarrassment.
it’s not a quick process,
The EDPB published the average times from submission to fine per member state last year. When i say all the violations have been mothballed, it means they have sat more than double the average processing time. They sat for years – so long that the benefit of action has diminished and unrecovered damage is history.
I regularly request deletion of my data from websites, and never been refused that.
That is not a test of GDPR enforcement. That is simply data controllers complying voluntarily.
A data controller sought out my sensitive personal data without my consent, collected it from another data controller who distributed it without my consent, used that info to send even more sensitive info outside the EU to a surveillance advertiser, and neither of them informed me of the collection and processing. When I discovered it, the acquiring data controller ignored my repeated article 17 requests. This is the most perverse abuse you can have in the right to erasure category. Then the DPA mothballed what was an easy open-shut case.
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So you say I shouldnt beleieve the news
That’s not what I said. Read your own quote. I gave you the source of the raw unadulterated data with stats. If you want to ignore that and have the media tell you what they think you should find relevant, you are free to do so. But this is why you are misinformed about GDPR enforcement. That, and your anecdotal experience which does not even test GDPR enforcement.
Ah, someone hasn’t been to Germany/Austria/parts of France.
Fees. Hidden as fuck.
I pay 50 cents a month for my account and debit card. the only additional fees are when changing currency, which happens when you change cash into different currency too. so what’s the problem?
Different people pay different fees. Even “basic” accounts are non-free in Europe. But I believe what daddy32 has in mind is the extortionate ~3-5% fee charged to the merchants by the card networks. Consumers are oblivious to that but they pay it one way or another. The visa/mc merchant agreements also bar merchants from surcharging card payers, which further conceals the fee. So the cost gets factored in. The only practical way to escape it is for the merchant to be a cash-only shop. Which btw was just banned in Belgium. Shops are now /forced/ to accept electronic payment and effectively pass on all those fees to all consumers.
By paying in cash, you at least reduce the fees the merchant pays on your transaction, which helps all consumers. When you pay by card, you effectively force other consumers to subsidise the fees you generate.
I absolutely agree that card companies charge fees which are bad for the consumers, however the actual fee is a lot lower than that, in my country it’s 0,8-0,9%.
Oh, right I forgot the EU controls that. The EU limits those fees by law. Outside the EU the free market yields fees of ~3—5%. It’s still a shit show of cash payers subsidising card payers in the end, helping the consumers who reduce our privacy by supporting the war on cash.
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Cash back is simply to use a cashier at a store as a sort of ATM to withdraw money. Example: You buy groceries and when you go to pay with your card you ask for some amount of cash back. Your card will be charged for your groceries + the amount that you asked in cash, that you get as physical money.
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I don’t know what it is either :/
I’m also not exactly understanding how it can save people from sparse ATMs.Supermarkets often offer cash back, and there’s usually more supermarkets than ATMs.
Right, but what is “cash back”?
Basically you withdraw “extra” cash at the super market along when paying your groceries with card.
That’s very alien to me wow, never heard of such thing. So you essentially pay more with card and get the change in cash.
Is that usually “imposed” by the shop or is something you ask for?No, it is not imposed by the shop. You ask the cashier for the desired amount of cash money. However, some shops offer the service only when the amount of your groceries is above some limit, like 10 € or 20 € and have a limit like 200 € on the amount of cash.
Interesting. Sounds like it can be convenient.
Over here, there’s pretty much a terminal at every not-even-necessarily-super market and often people will check their balance or withdraw cash from them before/after shopping.
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these* problems
In Spain, I think only ING has this cashback procedure that allows you to withdraw cash from supermarkets, but it’s only for its own clients. It’s not very popular and I have to admit, that as an ING client, I’ve never use that feature. More traditional banks still have lots of ATMs and banks like ING cover the ATM fees if you withdraw enough money (if you withdraw 200€ in one go, it’s free for example).
Banks are useless. This is not a joke. Paypal and Klarna are better banks to most people than, for example, fucking Sparkasse. Get your cash from the supermarket and you can ditch the idiotic bank fees by getting an online bank.
That’s why they’re dying out. They only want to deal with people who have a lot of disposable income and are about to buy a house, and very few of those exist anymore.
PayPal is super unreliable and will happily delete your account and take your money whenever they feel like it with little legal recourse.
Indeed, that’s what happened to me. Paypal killed my account and kept the money. It was not enough money to justify bringing a court case so Paypal got away with it. So I’m done with Paypal for sure.
In fact, I also avoid cashless Dutch cafes that insist on using Zettle as a payment processor because Zettle is Paypal.
Paypal is not a good alternative.
I agree, but it’s the only one.
Yes, but it’s such a lousy option that you’re better off walking. If a merchant only accepts Paypal, they automatically lose my business. Even in one case where I was quite interested in buying an e-bike motor direct from the manufacturer (because that motor had no importers), the mfr only accepted Paypal. So I had to nix that product entirely. For me Paypal is simply not an option.
Klarna can go fuck themselves for pushing people to run up debts.
