no receipts
ATMs in Germany did not ask if I wanted a receipt. Then they simply neglected to print a receipt. I noticed one ATM did not even have a printer… no slot to output a receipt.
Not too long ago I came across some international law regarding ATMs. One of the requirements was that ATMs provide a receipt. How is Germany getting around that law? Or did the law change?
no mention of fees
Every ATM I have encountered outside of Germany (w/the exception of 1 machine) mentions a fee for non-SEPA cards, which is then printed on the receipt. The transparency is also an obligation imposed by international law. Is it safe to assume German ATMs do not charge a fee to non-SEPA cards? Or did I just get lucky on the ATMs I encountered? I think I once used an ATM in France which did not charge a fee on a non-SEPA card… so they do exist but I’ve found it to be quite rare before traveling to Germany.
Ideally there would be a list of ATMs somewhere that are wholly fee-free. AFAICT, it’s a crapshoot.
banknotes
I heard some German ATMs will dispense bills as big as €200. But banknote availibility is never disclosed until you do a transaction. Some ATMs only went up to €50 and some €100 but I never got a bigger note than that. What bank or ATM operator has €200?
tailgating to reach an ATM
There was a locked ATM room. I did not try my card to open the door because it was not of that bank. But luckily there was enough traffic that I could tailgate someone in to access the ATMs. That’s a bit bizarre, no? Anything wrong with tailgating? Is it setup that way to be a kind of VIP privilege to enter for just that particular bank’s customers?
international law regarding ATMs
I don’t know of any such law or even which organization would be able to make such a law.
mentions a fee for non-SEPA cards
Fee structure is indeed extremely intransparent in most cases. Generally, I have too look up ATM fees in my online banking access and I never know them beforehand. Iiuc, your bank and the ATM-operating bank roll the dice to find out the fees they each want to charge as part of the process of handing out your cash anyway.
What bank or ATM operator has €200?
I don’t know of ATMs dispensing €200 notes. If you’re a customer of a German bank, you may be able to get €200 notes over the counter.
In any case, no store wants to receive notes above €100 because politicians and media have successfully created mental associations between those notes and money laundry/corruption/organized crime.
Is it setup that way to be a kind of VIP privilege to enter for just that particular bank’s customers?
You can usually enter with any card. This is a measure against homeless people sleeping (and sometimes urinating) in the ATM room.
Fee structure is indeed extremely intransparent in most cases.
IIRC, when using German ATMs with my Swedish VISA Debit card, I had the choice whether to let my bank or the bank of the ATM do the conversion of € to SEK. For the latter, it displayed the exchange rate.
I also was once “lucky” and only found an ATM of Sparkasse, which displayed that withdrawing money would cost me an additional fee of 5,95 €.
So yes, you have full transparency over the costs and fees of the money withdrawal, yet usually only directly at the ATM.I would say mostly true. And that much is driven by Regulation (EU) 2021/1230. If an ATM offers DCC¹, it must show the exchange rate and fees, and it must give a comparison to a non-DCC option, which must be offered (iow, there must be an opt out).
A common practice is to charge a flat transaction fee when DCC is not used, and to charge no fee when DCC is used, because the exchange rate is so terrible they are profitting hand over fist if you use DCC. But the ATMs often do not expressly state that the fee is waived in the DCC case – they simply make no mention of the fee you would /otherwise/ pay had you not taken DCC. This is because (IMO) the ATM operator does not want users to relise that the exchange rate builds the fee into their fat margin.
I avoid DCC. But then my bank statement only shows how much was taken from my account in the account’s currency, not the ATM’s currency. The ATM receipt (which apparently does not exist in Germany) gives the local currency you pulled out. These two figures leaves you having trust them as far as the fees go. Some ATMs bundle the fee with the withdrawal amount and the drafting bank has no way of knowing what portion was for the fee. And of course neither do you, unless the machine properly informed you. But what if it didn’t? There is not enough information for the end customer to work out what the overhead was in some cases because the exchange rate applied by the account’s custodian is undisclosed.
¹ DCC: dynamic currency conversion
I don’t know of any such law or even which organization would be able to make such a law.
Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 covers ATMs to some extent. I think there was a law even broader than EU law but I’ve lost track of it – or just have a bad memory.
(found the bit about receipts being required)
Article 4
Currency conversion charges related to card-based transactions- With regard to the information requirements on currency conversion charges and the applicable exchange rate, as set out in Article 45(1), Article 52, point (3), and Article 59(2) of Directive (EU) 2015/2366, payment service providers and parties providing currency conversion services at an automated teller machine (ATM) or at the point of sale, as referred to in Article 59(2) of that Directive, shall express the total currency conversion charges as a percentage mark-up over the latest available euro foreign exchange reference rates issued by the European Central Bank (ECB). That mark-up shall be disclosed to the payer prior to the initiation of the payment transaction.
- Payment service providers shall also make the mark-up referred to in paragraph 1 public in a comprehensible and easily accessible manner on a broadly available and easily accessible electronic platform.
- In addition to the information referred to in paragraph 1, a party providing a currency conversion service at an ATM or at the point of sale shall provide the payer with the following information prior to the initiation of the payment transaction: (a) the amount to be paid to the payee in the currency used by the payee; (b) the amount to be paid by the payer in the currency of the payer’s account.
- A party providing currency conversion services at an ATM or at the point of sale shall clearly display the information referred to in paragraph 1 at the ATM or at the point of sale. Prior to the initiation of the payment transaction, that party shall also inform the payer of the possibility of paying in the currency used by the payee and having the currency conversion subsequently performed by the payer’s payment service provider. The information referred to in paragraphs 1 and 3 shall also be made available to the payer on a durable medium following the initiation of the payment transaction.
….
What I find shitty about this wording is it’s unclear if the receipt is only required in the case of currency conversion by the ATM. Apparently yes… apparently if DCC is not offered the the ATM is off the hook for giving a receipt. Several ATMs did not have DCC, but the machie that did not even have a receipt printer offered a DCC option, which seems to be illegal.
Fee structure is indeed extremely intransparent in most cases. Generally, I have too look up ATM fees in my online banking access and I never know them beforehand. Iiuc, your bank and the ATM-operating bank roll the dice to find out the fees they each want to charge as part of the process of handing out your cash anyway.
The fee structure is indeed very well concealed. Before approaching an ATM the fees are undisclosed and many ATMs demand your PIN as the very 1st step. It’s a shit show for sure. But at least they must inform you of fees before you commit to the transaction, per
2021/1230.In any case, no store wants to receive notes above €100 because politicians and media have successfully created mental associations between those notes and money laundry/corruption/organized crime.
Yeah I heard Germany has no cash acceptance obligation whatsoever, which by extension supports your narrative that they can be fussy about banknotes, as in France.
This contrasts with Belgium where brick and mortar merchants must accept banknotes. They can reject money that is disportionately sized if they want. E.g. they can reject a €200 note on a transaction of €20 but not on a transaction of €175. Or they can reject a shit ton of coins on a 3+ figure transaction.
Removed by mod
Why are you so rude?