If you never take your bank cards out of the country, for the most part shit just works. But you leave the country and try to use foreign ATMs and payment terminals, shit is broken. And worse, banks don’t even know why.
Netherlands: maestro-centric. That’s a mastercard-owned network but transactions are different. Transactions are processed with a single msg instead of multiple msgs spanning days. Even if your network logo matches that of the ATM or payment terminal, transactions that should work get declined. The decline msg is always vague and almost always lies about where the fault is (machines blame your bank, and your bank blames the other end).
Germany: a domestic network called giro dominates. There are shops that have a Visa logo but if you use a visa card and try to get cashback, their shit is broken. Instant decline. No reason given. The bank is clueless. Says nothing is wrong with the account and in fact does not even see failed attempts.
Electronic payment broken to the extent that banks, merchants, and ATM operators don’t even have a way of knowing whether the fault is on their side of the transaction, or the other. They always just blame the other side of the transaction. Consumers just see finger-pointing and no solutions.
How are so many people on board with a cashless society when electronic payment has this degree of incompetence on top of breakage? I am basically being told by machines to fuck off. And no one can explain it. Bankers have no access to the logs of their own ATMs. wtf. Why is this level of incompetence tolerated?
In one case the bank said: ”use a different card”. Not joking. They seriously said that. What happened to that “relationship banking” agenda to try so hard to make customers loyal?