ATMs are becoming a shit-show in Europe. Can cash back save us? Info is sparse as fuck.
ATMs are becoming a shit-show in Europe. Can cash back save us? Info is sparse as fuck.
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. Interesting that in the UK you can ask for any odd denomination including coins (unlike with ATMs and perhaps unlike cashback in other regions).
- 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. They also benefit from a security standpoint as there is less cash in the tills at the end of the day.
Anyway, please feel free to use this thread to crowdsource cashback info.
Australia passed a law about a decade ago that limited how much a bank could charge another banks customer for withdrawing money.
Before the law if you were a customer of the ING bank and withdrew money from an ATM operated by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), CBA would charge ING about $2 for the transaction and that would be passed onto you.After the law was passed a significant number of interdependent ATM networks (such as Red or Star) started appearing charging you the $2 withdraw fee regardless of who you were banking with.
Some banks started offering refunds of ATM fees of you met certain criteria per month (enough deposited, more than a number of transactions).
So sadly this is not a thing limited to Europe.In AU "Tap and Go" has a no pin requirement under $100 so it kinda kicked people off cash. I don't recall the last time I used cash for a regular transaction like groceries or fuel.
Are you travelling through Europe and try to find the best options for many places? But wouldn't you be interested most in the shops at the places were you will stay? Anyway, for Germany I looked at the websites of the three shops I visit most: Netto Marken-Discount (not the Netto with the dog) has a limit of 200 € per day and it accepts Mastercard and Visa, as well as the German Girocard. Edeka and Rewe accept only Girocard for "Barauszahlung". I used the German word for "cash back", because you'll find more info in German than in English here.
Are you travelling through Europe and try to find the best options for many places?
Yes. And I want to know my options in advance because I had a bad experience in Netherlands which is taking options away from people as it becomes more hostile toward cash and as ATMs become centralized by a single supplier.
But wouldn’t you be interested most in the shops at the places were you will stay?
Well after some experiences in Netherlands, where I will travel will have to depend on whether my money is wanted where I might plan to go. I think I have to stop assuming I can just show up somewhere and expect a functioning wallet. I’m glad to hear cash is healthy in Germany and thus Germany caters for tourism. Germany has had a reputation for embracing cash for a while IIUC.
I think before traveling somewhere, I should try to asses ATM frequency and diversity in the destination, and ideally it would be good to know if there are some cashback shops as well. I often want to visit bars when traveling but I would never pay with a card in a bar.
UK ATMs are still good, they're everywhere and rarely charge for withdrawal. Bank ATMs don't charge fees if your card is from a different bank.