You take a bad example and compare it to another bad example. Germany is well known to be behind the curve like the US. It's the only western European country I still bring a healthy amount cash when I go there. Wouldn't be the first time I had to pay parking with cash in recent times. Every where else this is a non issue. It's rapidly changing though, but I don't like the common in use PIN terminals as they have no way of hiding the PIN entry.

Now I'm not generally a big defender of Germany, but the reason for much more prevalent use of cash is largely privacy in Germany. And I sort of agree that handing all monetary transactions to the mastercard/visa duopoly is a terrible idea.

We are essentially trading the convinience of a tap for increased prices and unelected gatekeepers that can (and will) easily push sectors out of business, because they don't like what they do.

Regarding the parking, I much rather would be able to pay with cash than the $2 parking plus 50 cents cc transaction fee that you have to pay in many places in NZ.