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See the pie charts on page 7 of this presentation.
This is the transaction volume of 2061 randomly selected Germans, recorded over one week of 2014 and 2017, split by payment method, not taking into account periodic payments like rent.
Credit cards like VISA are green.
Contactless payment methods like VISA payWave are brown, but also include the contactless debit card payment method girogo.
The light orange (Barzahlung) is paying with cash.

Huh? You can exchange any amount of D-Marks to Euros at all branches of the Deutsche Bundesbank.

The only bills and coins no longer honored are ancient and you probably can get more from collectors anyway.

17k deutschmark, according to http://www.bundesbank.de/Redak...

This is simply not true. Banks cannot issue money they don't have, either physically or electronically.

You don't have to take it from me. Here is a nice visualization of what happens when a bank makes a loan. You can let economist Bill Mitchell explain it to you. Or you can read between the lines in the Basel accords, which define how much leverage a bank can have. Of course, "leverage" is the key word here - banks normally create money when they increase their leverage (technically speaking, they can also increase their leverage by changing their position to be riskier according to the Basel rules, but that is an exception rather than the rule). If you speak German, you might also want to look at this explanation of the German central bank, in particular the section on "Giralgeld". More generally, if you want to understand how money works, the best sources are the writings of Modern Monetary Theory economists, simply because they place value on explaining the down-to-earth mechanisms underlying all the fancy talk. I suggest you start here or here.

If I were you, this cross section of sources from all over the economics spectrum (from ultra-orthodox to highly unorthodox) would convince me.

Seriously, if every loan a bank made "magically created money", we'd be in such runaway inflation it would cost billions for a gallon of milk.

Since the premise of that implication is true without there being runaway inflation (though I want to emphasize that there still is no magic involved), it seems you also have to work on your understanding of how inflation works.

Look, I understand where you're coming from, and I understand you find it hard to believe the things that I'm writing. But consider the possibility that I'm right. Can you risk being wrong about that?

Two years ago, I probably would have reacted like you did (although I hope that I would have better estimated my own lack of knowledge in the matter). The fact of the matter is that, unfortunately, the macroeconomics education sucks everywhere around the world, and unless you study economics at university you never normally come across all these things. That's not your fault. In the context of the financial crisis I've become curious to understand more, and I've read up on all these things. I've come across a lot of unintuitive things along the way, and it takes time to digest everything. It took me at least a year, and I'm still learning new things.

I sincerely hope you will set aside some time to follow some of the links I listed above. It can be an amazing intellectual experience.

This PDF (in German) reports 90 M transactional accounts in Germany. So the 28 M are bullshit. So this story is already tagged correctly.

The Bundesbank is the "German FED".

New Caledonia is not part of the EU; it is only a TOM (Territoire d'Outre-Mer), in less flowery words, a colony. Reunion Island is a DOM (Département d'Outre-Mer), ie. "overseas chunk o'France". See for instance this banknote, you'll see the overseas confetti that do count (nexto to the omega). New Caledonia isn't.

Hell, part of this could be stemmed by:

-- installing or increasing more air-locks/decontamination/containment/quarantine areas
-- improving anti-bacterial ventilation and air cleaning/recirculation equipment
-- setting up scanners points to look for flush/sickly people who emit fumes of certain bug signatures

-- make the doctors and staff ALL wear anti-microbial/bacterial surgical masks EVEN FOR NON-SURGICAL visits (hey, they may be amped on anti-biotics, but aren't they still carriers?)

-- emulate (if not doing so already) practices of the travel/cruise industry which separates various linens according to bacterial or viral risk (using color-coded collection bins) to keep certain bugs out of warm linens while keeping less contaminated items from contact. This reduces staff exposure time to numerous critters

Most of all, given today's mass-travel economy/environment, hospitals and clinics should not be "walk-in-as-you-will" facilities. They should have screening or quarantine areas to separate and manage ENTRY of DETECTABLE vermin/air-borne agents. (Might even spark wild, new hospital designs, create jobs, and give politicians something new to do...)

For any interest in medical and tourism practices in effect, see:

http://www.riph.org.uk/pdf/healthAndHygieneOctober2003.pdf

http://www.bundesbank.de/download/meldewesen/bankenstatistik/kundensystematik/naics_2007_canada.pdf

http://chfs.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/4614B679-B2EB-4DD8-A486-C4FFDA7A542D/0/CommunityContainmentSupplement1.doc

http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/sup8.html

They do have markers.

By the way, there is no longer any German Central Bank.

There is. It is just not the highest authority any more in the genaral fiscal matters. In the Euro countries, all national central banks still exist. Part of their responsibilities is to manage the currency supply of their respective countries. The directors of the national central banks also form the board of directors of the European Central bank.

That is, at the moment, for each value of coin (from 1 cent to 2 Euros) there are 12 different types.

+ Vatican City + San Marin +Monaco = 15 types ;)

By the way, there is no longer any German Central Bank.

There is. It is just not the highest authority any more in the genaral fiscal matters. In the Euro countries, all national central banks still exist. Part of their responsibilities is to manage the currency supply of their respective countries. The directors of the national central banks also form the board of directors of the European Central bank.

That is, at the moment, for each value of coin (from 1 cent to 2 Euros) there are 12 different types.

+ Vatican City + San Marin +Monaco = 15 types ;)

I hope that's not a common misbelief. Please note that the German Government didn't even control the Deutschmark. At first it was controlled inderectly through the US. (There was a fixed exchange-rate simmilar to Argentinia.) But after the US used their printing machines excessively in order to finance the vietnam war control was transfered to the "Bundesbank" which is owned but not controlled by the government.

It's not comparable to the ICANN which currently is controlled by the US-government.

There is no such thing as a bundesbank.

Actually the Deutsche Bundesbank still exists and I think there are no plans to close it.

I think the introduction of the physical currency will have at least a short-term effect on the value of the Euro. Here in Belgium the new prices in Euro have been invariably rounded up to a nice 10 cent multiple, even though this is supposed to be forbidden. With prices for everything going up I think there will be quite some inflation in the first weeks / months of the physical currency. I expect this to stabilize pretty soon, though.

Oh and by the way, I must agree with the Dutch: the queen Beatrix on the backside of your coins really looks awful. Even our old guy Albert looks better...

This gold coin from the netherlands is the only exposure I've had in the US yet and I got it in november. It was in a bag of chocolate coins ;)

The coins of the different countries have different pictures on their back. Follow this link for an overview of the back sides of the euro coins.

Well, this is yet another stab at Micropayments in Germany. This marketplace has seen quite a lot of those. Card based and software based. First there was the Geldkarte, a stored value card based system for the real world which never found real acceptance despite the fact that there are millions of users out there. Why? The added value was not there (besides paying ticketless in Parking garages or in public transportation). The private banks committees are nevertheless still trying to push it into the Internet market. Doesnt help, the require a class 3 card reader (_with_ a crypto pinpad and a display), that costs money (hardware, support, rollout logistics etc.) and the user doesnt like it. Then there were eCash and CyberCash. eCash was developed by DigiCash and introduced by Deutsche Bank (worlds largest bank) in 1996, CyberCash was the "enemies" response by Dresdner Bank, Hypovereinsbank and others.
eCash is a Cypherpunks wet dream. It is anonymous, you can send it to others, there are clients out there for all the real OSs (Linux, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Sun, etc.) and it had large support in the hacker community. It is going to be shut down in a month. Why? Deutsche Bank says in their letter it didnt meet their market expectations. It was another value stored system, it required a complicated subscription mechanism (say loud and slow Anonymity and Bundesbank (federal bank)).
Now Cybercash, developed by the now defunct Cybercash corporation (Verisign and FirstData just bought the assets). It should have been the consumers dream. Micropayment, Debit-Payment and CreditCard payment (not SET but C5) combined in one wallet. And the support of all the big banks in Germany but Deutsche Bank. So why did they fail? The software sucked (not all the beautiful OSs available that eCash had), was complicated and not marketed correct by the Banks. The consumer was not ready for a system like that. It is so convenient to enter your credit card number and shop online, isnt it? The consumer is protected when he shops online with his credit card. Protected by policies. The merchant has the risk. But, and here is the point of failure for all the systems described above, the Banks did _not_ give the merchant enough incentives to market the new systems (e.g. by giving rebates when you pay with eCash). And for the average consumer anonymity is nothing. At least nothing yet.
So what does Deutsche Telekom do different? From what I read these cards will be bundled with phone card functionality. The consumer can phone on public phones and can spend money on the Internet. The phone card market (stored value, wasted money) is already prepared. Everybody has one over there. Now bundle it, get enough shops and there you go. The only problem (in my opinion) will be the "Kreditwesengesetz" of the federal bank (see here). This says that everybody who creates so called netmoney has to be a bank (Telekom is no bank) and has to comply with the rules. Now this is going to be a lot of fun ...