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Cashless Adoption Growing In Europe
dkatana writes: Many European cities are moving toward a cashless economy. Some public services are not accepting cash anymore, such as parking meters, buses and transit, and city offices. (If you plan to visit Europe make sure your credit card has a chip, or you won't be able to use self-service machines.) Contactless cards, which allow people to pay easily for small transactions, are also gaining popularity. According to Finextra, a leading financial news service, "contactless is the new normal in Europe, with more than a billion tap-and-go purchases worth €12.6 billion on Visa cards in the last 12 months."
In some places, cashless options are being pushed by mistrust of the banking system. At the same time, places like Germany are dead set on keeping cash as the preferred method of payment.
In case you didn't know, the cards that most banks are now issuing in the US are chip and signature, not chip and pin like in Europe, and I understand that there are some spots that DO NOT accept chip and signature, like unattended tolls, unattended gas stations, and possibly some unattended transportation ticket purchases (trains, etc).
Pretty frustrating that credit card issuers decided to go this route in the US with some bullshit justification that people wouldn't know how to use the cards (WTF?).
While the chip and signature is more resistant to skimming and duplication, it is no more secure than the old magnetic stripe cards if your physical card is stolen. I think they did this to prevent an increase in support costs instead (people requesting to reset PIN numbers, etc).
In the U.K. you must spend more than GBP 5.00. EUR 7.16. 7.80 USD. before you are allowed to use a debit card, or credit card in shopping centre/shopping complex/shopping mall.
You pulled that out your arse. I live in the UK and use my Debit card all the time and there is *no* simple rule like this, although in my (very considerable) experience the most common case is 'no minimum and no surcharge' for debit cards.
I've also seen the following for Debit cards:
Min £10
Min £5 (common in pubs but not universal)
Min £3 (e.g. one of my local sandwich shops)
No minimum at all - this applies in nearly all major supermarkets and major stores - I bought a sandwich for £2.20 with my card this morning).
No minimum but 50p transaction charge.
Etc.
And then there's a whole different set of charges (sometimes % charges) or lack of charges for credit cards.
Why would you just make up random shit about stuff you obviously know nothing about? Did you go in one shop in the UK once and assume they were all the same?
If I had to guess, this isn't a case of "government tapping into my bank account", but rather a case of having previously given them payment information tied to this account, and as a "courtesy", they auto-renewed the registration when it was due. Heck, an "auto-renew" setting may have even been turned on and forgotten about...