I do now that I live near Nuremberg, which is one of the safest cities in the world, but it was a hard thing to get used to, as I went to college in a US city rather infamous for its crime.

Surprisingly large restaurants in Nuremberg do not take credit cards. A lot of German and Austrian small business owners see no good reason to pay the credit card companies the ~3% fee when most of their customers are perfectly happy to settle a 500 EUR bill in cash. Always pay your hotel bill in rural Austria the night before you leave to prevent an emergency dash to the village ATM :)

>A lot of German and Austrian small business owners see no good reason to pay the credit card companies the ~3% fee when most of their customers are perfectly happy to settle a 500 EUR bill in cash.

Well, and mostly to avoid paying taxes. Card acceptance cost is down to under 1% since last year and often depositing money costs more.

There is no requirement for proper cash registers here in Germany, so card acceptance remains low in small businesses.

In Germany people do carry cash. Especially in Berlin, where there are plenty of smaller stores and restaurants that accept only cash.

Germany has its own shitty debit card system called "girocard". And whereas other smart countries (e.g. UK) switched to international schemes, this is still the card issued to most customers. There are a few downsides of this

* No Card-Not-Present-Transactions, because the cobranding is only for abroad

* Visa/MasterCard cobranding was not allowed until a few days ago (when the EU introduced new laws)

* Used to have high minimum fees (7 cents) for a long time, so expensive for smaller transactions

* Cashback only from 20€

* No damn contactless

=> Germanys banking sector is still mostly stuck back in 2000. Debit cards are around, but mostly for cash withdraws. Smaller transactions are mostly paid in cash, because they used to be expensive and no contactless.

The big banks have no interest in changing that, because as long as card payments are unpopular, they can charge >5€ for cash withdraws if you make "out-of-network" ATM withdraws.

tl;dr: Germany has its own shitty debit card system stuck in 2000 which sucks.

Most people still pay with cash. I would guess that per average people have about 50-100$ in their pockets.

Of course not. Yes, in fact bank-issued debit cards are the default here.

Worth pointing out that "bank-issued debit cards" in Germany usually refers to EC Cards, which is not the same as the Visa / Mastercard debit cards the rest of the world is used to. As a tourist in early 2015, international Visa & Mastercards were useless in most supermarkets & department stores - but international chains that get lots of tourists will take them (eg Starbucks, McDonalds, Subway etc).

I love Germany, but the credit card thing drives me nuts. I understand Germans like financial privacy, but I like having an electronic record of my purchases instead of having to write down every cash transaction I make before I forget it. (If there was a way to get a prepaid EC Karte as a tourist, I might not mind so much.)