Hi, > Is it true, that everybody in the States has a credit card? > I think diffusion is much less over here. > I for example haven't got one, and I know very few people who do. > They're expensive and you almost never really need one... except for > foreign transactions - but since the Euro came, even bank transfer to > other EU-countries and the UK is free now with IBAN & BIC.
this low penetration of credit cards is something of a German peculiarity. A few years ago I worked for a .com and was one of the people involved in setting up the German website, in particular the payment systems. For the .com and .co.uk we just did credit cards. For .de we had to get involved in cheques, credit referencing, the rather strange German version of Direct Debit, a very payer-friendly approach to refunds, usw. For instance, with the German Direct Debit (I've forgotten the German name for it), the customer (or someone claiming to be him - there's no way to tell online) gives you his bank account number and details - no card or signature involved over the net - and you, the retailer, take the money and send over the goods. But, the customer has the right to take their money back at any time up to some quite long time limit - they can just phone their bank and the bank takes the money out the retailer's account, no questions asked. It's then up to the retailer to try and get the goods back. So the retailer has to sign up with one of the big credit referencing agenciees who, of course, charge good money for chasing people who do this kind of thing. We found some of the things we were expected to do quite horrifying. It involved a degree of trust we would never have extended to the English or the Americans. But, it seems that on average German consumers are far more honest than we are. -- Cheers, Bob
