I recently found out about a type of boycott going on with German banks against Visa cards. It has something to do with fees and savings banks and ... well, if you're good enough with German, here's one little article I found: Sparkassen sperren ihre Automaten für Bank-Kunden .
It's some confusing thing like this...
Some banks are backed by Visa (like Citibank, ING, etc) and others not. If you take a Visa card to one of these non-Visa banks, you get a charge of less than 2 Euros for using their ATM. However, if you take an EC card to a Visa bank, you get charged almost 5 Euros for your withdrawl. So the EC banks like Sparkasse and Volksbank are pissed about the big fees being charged to their customers and therefore aren't going to let you use your Visa card to get any money out of their ATMs. (I think it's just to confuse and piss off tourists, though, lol.)
Some people have said this includes debit cards with the Visa logo. My American debit/check card has a Visa logo, so we went to Sparkasse this weekend to try it out. No problem, got the cash. So it seems to be either not all Sparkassen or only Visa credit cards that are affected.
(In some ways I'm surprised I can only find articles about this in German and not in English. After all, I don't personally know one single German with a real credit card, so why would they care? I've heard a few of them do exist, but they must be very rich world travelers. Or expats.)
Monday, June 8, 2009
No Cash for You (if you have Visa)
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Actually,we have a German Visa card with a Visa bank, as you define it, and regularly get money fee free with that German credit card from Sparkasse. It's a function of our type of account though, and if I use my "Vias bank" EC card at Sparkasse, we get charged big time. So we maintain a Sparkasse account only for the EC card (its free) and uberweisung money there to top off ATM needs. Which seems to contradict what you are saying.
I use my american bank card at my sparkasse and get charged nothing for getting cash out of their machines. But I've used my german Visa card there to get cash and did get charged 5 Euro.
Well, I'm certainly not an expert on this topic. Just reporting what I'm reading and from the news stories. I don't quite get it myself (like what does it mean when a bank is "backed by Visa"?) Some Sparkasse and Volksbank locations reportedly have big stickers now on their Geldautomats stating that they won't take Visa cards.
I don't think we've ever used our EC card at another bank than its issuer, so I don't know what we'd normally get charged. And my card from the US I don't think gets charged anything for using it at Sparkasse (but boy, my bank back home charges me bigtime for that).
I gave you a Great Expat Blog Award. Stop by my blog if you'd like to play. :)
http://blog.spottedsparrow.com/2009/06/award-show.html
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