German business practices

[Mihnea Cotet]

At 17:26 4/04/2002 -0500, TM wrote:
>Well there is Audi content- Jurgen Lewandowski's Sport Quattro book.
>
>Do Germans (or other Europeans) primarily use wire transfers for payment
>these days? I know that this is the case in Japan (no personal checks,
>all wire transfer), but am not sure about Germany.
>
>We are so backward in the US that we're not at this stage just yet and
>making wire transfers is very costly and time-consuming.

Well, as far as Belgium goes, almost all payments like car monthly
payments, insurance payments, even parking fines, rents and stuff like that
are ALWAYS paid by wire transfers. This is so easy and it costs no
money....checks used to be pretty popular (especially Eurocheques) but now
they don't seem to be that popular anymore...except for France where almost
everything is paid by checks, even fuel and hotel bills...
In Belgium we pay almost every immediate payment (like a gas bill or a
hotel or food) by bank cards. This is also very easy especially when the
gas station is closed at 2:00 a.m., you CAN pay with your bank card (not
credit card, this is why strangers are pretty annoyed when the gas station
is closed at a late hour)....

Just my Belgian 0.02 Eurocents :-)

Mihnea