Interesting example ... Yesterday I was having a couple of beers with my friends, and we also talked about credit cards (weird topic maybe, but it was a long night
). To make a long story short:
Credit cards are really unusual in Germany, or at least that's my perception.
That doesn't mean that no one has credit cards - in fact, a lot of my friends do, but that's because they went abroad and required one. What we
do have though are EC or Maestro cards, which aren't quite the same. Your card gets charged at once, not only at the end of the month as a lump sum, but of course you can pay instantly, provided that there's enough cash on your account (another difference).
I have to admit that I use my EC card for pretty much everything, including daily grocery shopping, which is rarely more than perhaps 4-5€.
Apart from that: Seems like this thread has developed into a 'credit cards in Germany thread'
Could you give another example OneToughHerring? I think this is really interesting