cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11819804
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.
- 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.
Anyway, please feel free to use this thread to crowdsource cashback info.
I don't know what it is either :/
I'm also not exactly understanding how it can save people from sparse ATMs.
Supermarkets often offer cash back, and there's usually more supermarkets than ATMs.
Right, but what is "cash back"?
Basically you withdraw "extra" cash at the super market along when paying your groceries with card.
That's very alien to me wow, never heard of such thing. So you essentially pay more with card and get the change in cash.
Is that usually "imposed" by the shop or is something you ask for?
No, it is not imposed by the shop. You ask the cashier for the desired amount of cash money. However, some shops offer the service only when the amount of your groceries is above some limit, like 10 € or 20 € and have a limit like 200 € on the amount of cash.
Interesting. Sounds like it can be convenient.
Over here, there's pretty much a terminal at every not-even-necessarily-super market and often people will check their balance or withdraw cash from them before/after shopping.
It definitely is, as my bank doesn't have any own ATMs and the other banks charge like 5 € per withdrawal at their ATMs, I usually withdraw my cash money that way.
Oh what, 5€ per withdrawal? That's crazy!
Insane would be the word I'd use.