Hello everyone,
I’m living in Germany and looking for a good PayPal alternative. I mainly need it for:
- Sending money to friends
- Paying online, especially to small vendors
- Ordering food and everyday purchases
I’ve heard about Bunq, Klarna, Revolut, and N26, but I’m not sure which one would be best for my needs. Has anyone had experience with these services in Germany? Which would you recommend and why?
Thanks in advance!
Revolut is great, but more like a banking servive than a payment service. You’ll get virtual credit card details that you can use to pay, just like with regular credit cards. Haven’t used N26, but I think they’re similar from what I’ve heard…
Klarna is widely used, but I heard they can be quite predatory and make it very easy to make debt, which they then use to squeeze hella fees from you until you paid everything off.
No idea about Bunq.
Well I use Revolut and even get my salary paid on it so I’d say its good. Bunq is a stay away thing, too dangerous. Klarna is very bad with their buy now pay later stuff putting people in debt, N26 is more expensive than Revolut iirc so I didn’t try it.
Do take in mind all of these still use Visa/Mastercard for payments which is american
For friends i use SEPA, for the rest i just use my debit card
If i wanted to add a layer, i could add a rechargeable card to my bank account
Digital euro is slowly coming anyway
I just want to give a quick shout out to the GNU Taler project. It may not be usable yet, but the initiative is commendable and they are funded by the European commission.
Thanks for suggesting Wero! I tried it out, but unfortunately, they’re incompatible with my bank (Deutsche Bank). It does seem super cool, though! I’ll follow their progress and hope they add support soon. I appreciate the recommendation.
Deutsche Bank folgt im kommenden Jahr (Deutsche Bank will follow next year)
Edit: The post is from November 2024, so I assume that next year means 2025.
It’s absurd that this only works if your bank is officially on board. All this really is is a phone number/e-mail to IBAN “DNS”. It shouldn’t be that complicated.
If I’m gonna have to go through “do you have Wero? No? Would you consider getting it? Oh, your bank is not in on it? That sucks.” every time, a normal bank transfer via IBAN is certainly quicker. Free real time transfers are mandatory now anyway.
that’s exactly how PayID works in australia: in every bank interface you can “pay to” email addresses, phone numbers, ABN (australian business number) and a whole range of things, and it’s implemented as essentially a DNS of those things to our version of IBAN - it works great! and some banks automatically give you an <username>@<short domain> (up bank for example has whoever@up.me) associated with your account, orrrr services to pay bills sometimes have <account number>@<service payment domain>
i was just in europe and did some bank transfers and received - both with european bank accounts - and was pleasantly surprised that it was instant!
these 2 things combined in australia means we don’t have these shit middle-men and it’s all insured etc the same as any old money transfer (because it is) and you’re not relying on some “totally not a bank so we don’t follow banking regulations”
