'Wiring' is called 'Überweisung' here and the most common way to do banking without incurring additional fees. There are no cheques anymore, which were never that common around here, with the exception of 'Postbarscheck', which are gone since the split up of the former Deutsche Bundespost into Briefpost, DHL(Express), Telekom, T-Online, and their pseudo privatization. Regarding trusting random merchants, i can give them a one time account number, dispute any suspicious bookings within a timeframe of at least two weeks, and so on.
Again, from the point of view of someone who despises to have an orwellian tracking device with him at all times, i prefer to go to the branch office, use some self service terminal, and be done with it, without having to care about the infrastructure.
If i'd order something via internet from some shop now which is 4:09 AM localtime it wouldn't be processed anyways until a few hours later, and then i'd maybe have the option of paying per invoice a few days later, or paying the postman when he brings it. Or i'd go to some self service terminal in a branch office of my bank some time during the day to initiate the 'push', the 'Überweisung' which is elsewhere known as 'wiring'. If i'd want to do that right now, i'd have to walk about 30 minutes, or use my bicycle for maybe 10 minutes to do that, because some self service terminals are closed over night because of vandalism, homeless ppl sleeping there, or something like that. Only cash withdraw works then.
Regarding credit history, you don't really need one here, because the bank which issues the card has it, vouches for you, and only if you fail some payment you'll get one via a hand full of companies. But that is a negative one then.
Again, from the point of view of someone who despises to have an orwellian tracking device with him at all times, i prefer to go to the branch office, use some self service terminal, and be done with it, without having to care about the infrastructure.
How well do you expect that to scale in a country with over one billion people like India or China? How safe do you think it is to even have paper currency at banks or “self service terminals” You do realize that mobile phone penetration is over 90% in developing countries (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/03/itu_facts_and_figur...). You are the outlier, not them.
Almost all of your response is either still using the electronic infrastructure, or based on a trust relationship. No one in a developing country is going to “issue an invoice” to random people.
And no one is concerned about your needs as individual, we are talking about 2-3 billion people in developing countries.
Again, from the point of view of someone who despises to have an orwellian tracking device with him at all times, i prefer to go to the branch office, use some self service terminal, and be done with it, without having to care about the infrastructure.
If i'd order something via internet from some shop now which is 4:09 AM localtime it wouldn't be processed anyways until a few hours later, and then i'd maybe have the option of paying per invoice a few days later, or paying the postman when he brings it. Or i'd go to some self service terminal in a branch office of my bank some time during the day to initiate the 'push', the 'Überweisung' which is elsewhere known as 'wiring'. If i'd want to do that right now, i'd have to walk about 30 minutes, or use my bicycle for maybe 10 minutes to do that, because some self service terminals are closed over night because of vandalism, homeless ppl sleeping there, or something like that. Only cash withdraw works then.
Regarding credit history, you don't really need one here, because the bank which issues the card has it, vouches for you, and only if you fail some payment you'll get one via a hand full of companies. But that is a negative one then.
That's how it works for me. And that's OK.