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ATMs are becoming a shit-show in Europe. Can cash back save us? Info is sparse as fuck. (slrpnk.net)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

In Italy what you say is not true. No issues with ATM at all, and cash back has never existed in any case.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (13 children)

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)?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Why shouldn't I just pay with card and avoid all of this? Even food stands on the street accept cards nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Ah, someone hasn't been to Germany/Austria/parts of France.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fees. Hidden as fuck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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%.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

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).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

PayPal is super unreliable and will happily delete your account and take your money whenever they feel like it with little legal recourse.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I agree, but it's the only one.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Klarna can go fuck themselves for pushing people to run up debts.

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