What disgusts me about this is the digital markets act names all the tech giants except Cloudflare as gatekeepers. The single most harmful bully on the block is Cloudflare. I can (and am) boycotting Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon. It’s difficult for most civilians but possible.

But if you want to be free from Cloudflare, it’s impossible because Cloudflare has even MitMd public services. You cannot get public information from government sources operating on public money without Cloudflare. Because I choose to boycott Cloudflare, I have had to give up my voting rights. I cannot vote in elections because of Cloudflare. So indeed it’s disgusting that Cloudflare is not even on the radar when it should be at the top.

BTV can cause abortion, in animals? WTF? I guess they must mean miscarriages. AFAIK non-human animals don’t do abortions.

That’s the same portal that they expected us to use to report what a shit show GDPR enforcement has been the past 4 years. The irony was the site demanded more information than necessary – thus the site asking how is the GDPR going was itself infringing on data minimisation. It’s fussy about who hosts the email address they force you to disclose. I eventually got an account after revealing more than I wanted to and then the JavaScript doc submission app gave vague errors anyway and could not be used. It also forces periodic password changes which seems a bit over the top for this sort of mission.

tl;dr: not everyone can have their say. Only some people.

I said it was unlikely to change, because there’s little profit in catering to such the niche crowd of cash-only tourists with incompatible cards who also

^ this is a stark good example of endorsement of marginalisation. You identify a group as “niche” and say it’s okay to fuck them over because they are a minority.

didn’t think to pick up foreign cash at home.

What an absurd attempt to declare ATMs redundant. You cannot just walk through the airport with €10k and expect no problems or questions asked. You cannot carry that around with you and claim you have the same security than if don’t. Some will go as far as to only use ATMs inside casinos because they rightfully have concern for security just along the road between the casino and external ATM.

Also, not offering a specific service to anyone isn’t “marginalizing”.

Of course it is. Discriminating against a demographic of people is obviously marginalisation.

I don’t marginalize black people by not cutting their hair, because I don’t cut anyone’s hair…

This is a fallacy of bad analogy. If you don’t cut anyone’s hair you are not faced with treating different hair clients differently. Unlike ATMs which are treating different demographics of people differently.

Seems like the US bank should make a new partnership then? It’s weird you place the onus of this entirely on the destination bank instead of your own.

It’s weird to rationalise the consequences of elimination of competition as something other than antitrust, and then misplace the onus on consumers and external banks who are the ones disadvantaged by the loss of competition as if there is no cost to that. It’s somewhat like another manifestation of victim blame. The power imbalance inherently makes negotiation unfavorable for those burdened by the monopoly. It also intensifies the damage done by the monopoly. If all banks negotiate a deal with Geldmaat, Geldmaat’s sparse competition (which only exists in some cities but not others) is not interesting for foreign banks to negotiate with.

Well no, it’s not all about getting cash. Or at least, that’s not the message you’ve been sending, from all your exceptions and problems.

Of course it is. The problem is for me to define and describe. And I have described a problem increasingly broken cash retrieval infrastructure. You saying “use a card” is absolutely not relevant to the problem. It’s an attempt to undermine the discussion of the problem as described.

It’s about getting cash while on vacation (no long-term stay)

It does not matter how long the stay is. ATM monopoly X treats people Y poorly no matter how long they are visiting.

without traveling to a specific foreign exchange machine/office (has to be within the small town you’re staying in)

Don’t try to muddy the waters because you’ve failed to defend the increasing enshitification of the status quo. FX offices are a different service with different costs serving a different workflow and cannot replace ATMs because they rely on assumptions about the sending bank that ATMs do not. Not to mention hours of operation and availability differences.

or bringing foreign currency from home (something you didn’t respond to),

That doesn’t need a response because it fails to replace ATMs. That option always existed independent from ATMs and still remains less popular than ATMs for countless reasons. To suggest OTC cash exchange is to disregard fees and various offerings by different banks. A bank with zero markup exchange on their card at an ATM will not typically give you that zero markup when you appear in person with cash.

There are more methods of payment or ways to get goods and services than in 2015.

You can have all the smartphone frills you want. QR codes, apps, NFC, … all useless to those who grok privacy. All the privacy-naive cashless options are rich for sure. There is no shortage of innovations to get your data. But when you break ATMs, you break privacy. All these bullshit options do not serve as a replacement for people who are not privacy-naive.

For Dutch people, that doesn’t matter at all, since to them, all those machines were exactly the same for many years,

This is a common theme in your messaging… that it’s okay to marginalise demographics of people you are not in… that it’s their problem for not being in your marginalisation-free demographic.

I’m not fully sure on what rates different banks used to charge foreign accounts, maybe that was different.

Different banks have different partnership agreements with US banking networks. I’m sure it’s a shit show now that competition is gone. Some US banks simply eat the ATM fee for their customers and some do not. It’s another loss of options. Some people probably have to start paying a fee once their bank’s partnership with SNS (for example) becomes useless.

But for some reason, you have a burning need to implement one specific solution (cashback) in favour of all the others. Why? What is the core of your issue?

It’s all about getting cash because electronic payment cannot replace cash from a privacy standpoint. I expect to pay cash for alcohol and marijuana. I also expect to pay cash for everything else because privacy matters. You can name off all the fancy new electronic options you want – they do not replace cash. Cash is how Wikileaks survived when the banks blocked payments to them. Not even cryptocurrency can replace cash (though it comes the closest to being a viable alternative). Anonymous prepaid cards don’t likely exist in Netherlands, and they are not likely as free as cash transactions and would at least have the waste of expiration and unspent funds. So still lousy compared to decentralised ATMs that work.

Trading one good option for a dozen shitty inferior options that tie you to electronic records and limit your control is a poor trade-off. It’s clearly worse than it was 2015.

Meanwhile, you’re shouting things have gotten much worse, when they clearly haven’t:

Clearly they have. Ten years ago when an ATM tells you to fuck off, you could just walk a block or two down the street to an ATM by a different operator. That choice was taken away from us in the past few years. And it’s getting worse. Independent ATMs are getting boarded up and mothballed. The trend of banks leaving the ATM business and consolidating into a monopoly is spreading. We have lost ATM diversity and competition. And there are fewer of them. If you are in a small city with only Geldmaats and Geldmaat decides to marginalise you, you’re fucked. That was not a problem 10 yrs ago.

It’s unclear how you are not grasping that fewer options means less autonomy. Fewer players implies power imbalance. Monopolies are a bad idea in general not just because power becomes centralised but also because our data becomes centralised and consequently centrally vulnerable along with being exposed to centralised mishandling.

So you say I shouldnt beleieve the news

That’s not what I said. Read your own quote. Sensational penalty figures are irrelevant. I gave you the source of the raw unadulterated data with stats. If you want to ignore that and have the media tell you what they think you should find relevant, you are free to do so. But this is why you are misinformed about GDPR enforcement. That, and your anecdotal experience which does not even test GDPR enforcement.

It really seems that this is a very you-problem,

Victim blame is really fucked up here. ATMs are violating the GDPR by making use of undisclosed automatic decision making. Only pushovers blindly accept that the ATM is serving them well when some AI algo decides you are not profitable, or whatever… we actually don’t even get the benefit of knowing what that non-transparent algo is basing its decisions on. It’s really a dick move to then say to those rejected by that AI processing are themselves the problem. People rejected by that machine aren’t even told what they need to do to not be rejected.

and you’ve decided you want a solution that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen here.

You’re not paying attention. The fix exists: shops like SPAR and Aldi give cashback. The purpose of the thread is to crowdsource information that is undisclosed. It’s unclear exactly which SPAR locations outside UK supports cashback, and who else does. In this shitshow of a hunt for criminals causing collateral damage to lawful citizens, we need options. And we need them documented.

Oh, right I forgot the EU controls that. The EU limits those fees by law. Outside the EU the free market yields fees of ~3—5%. It’s still a shit show of cash payers subsidising card payers in the end, helping the consumers who reduce our privacy by supporting the war on cash.

You linked to a comment, and I don’t see an article there, but maybe I’m not noticing something.

That comment is the source. It is now your job (if you choose to accept it), to chase that up, ask the source for their source, and investigate until you are satisfied. Or give up. You have the source to do what you want with it. But you can’t reasonably claim the source was not given.

I’m not going to do an investigation for you. Do your own homework. You are the sole judge for the standard of evidence you seek. I could not act your behalf even if I wanted to.

Afaik GDPR applies to EU citizens worldwide, not expats living in the EU.

The GDPR covers EU citizens worldwide and also everyone in Europe regardless of citizenship (expats and even 1-day tourists passing through). That doesn’t mean you have a functional enforcement infrastructure when shit falls apart. The system isn’t even fully operational inside the EU for EU citizens facing EU companies. Enforcement is a shit show. Absolutely laughable to think someone can return to the US and demand GDPR protection on their EU transactions. It’s technically covered but there is no long-arm jurisdiction that would effectively lead to a fine on a US bank. No teeth. These rules are just for show. The EU has rubber-stamped the US as “adequate” w.r.t the GDPR likely for political reasons / trade relations, but it’s a joke. It would be naive to put stock in that.

(edit) What do you even expect to happen in this bizarre fantasy where you think you have all the benefits the GDPR attempts/pretends to deliver? That a US card holder would call their US bank and say “delete those transactions where I was drinking at a bar in the EU”? Even wholly within Europe, the bank has a legal obligation to retain that data. You cannot willy nilly make an art.17 req. and expect satisfaction of your demand. Your art.17 request to delete your speeding ticket will just be laughed at. With banking transactions you have an expectation that EU banks keep that data but does not needlessly share it. Try demanding a non-EU bank tag all your EU transactions and block them from sharing. Your demand will be laughed at (despite being technically valid). Then to come into this forum and tell people they can rely on non-EU banks not sharing EU-based transactions is perversely reckless.

I really hope no one would actually believe your bullshit. It’s dangerous to mislead people to think they have privacy safeguards they can rely on when they do not.

GDPR enforcement works, it’s not a quick process, but companies gets fines all the time for that, if you follow related news.

Nonsense. Forget the news, they just sensationalise the fine amounts. Have a look at https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ to get the real data. Look at the fines per month stats. It’s at the bottom of the stats page. An embarrassment.

it’s not a quick process,

The EDPB published the average times from submission to fine per member state last year. When i say all the violations have been mothballed, it means they have sat more than double the average processing time. They sat for years – so long that the benefit of action has diminished and unrecovered damage is history.

I regularly request deletion of my data from websites, and never been refused that.

That is not a test of GDPR enforcement. That is simply data controllers complying voluntarily.

A data controller sought out my sensitive personal data without my consent, collected it from another data controller who distributed it without my consent, used that info to send even more sensitive info outside the EU to a surveillance advertiser, and neither of them informed me of the collection and processing. When I discovered it, the acquiring data controller ignored my repeated article 17 requests. This is the most perverse abuse you can have in the right to erasure category. Then the DPA mothballed what was an easy open-shut case.

Different people pay different fees. Even “basic” accounts are non-free in Europe. But I believe what daddy32 has in mind is the extortionate ~3-5% fee charged to the merchants by the card networks. Consumers are oblivious to that but they pay it one way or another. The visa/mc merchant agreements also bar merchants from surcharging card payers, which further conceals the fee. So the cost gets factored in. The only practical way to escape it is for the merchant to be a cash-only shop. Which btw was just banned in Belgium. Shops are now /forced/ to accept electronic payment and effectively pass on all those fees to all consumers.

By paying in cash, you at least reduce the fees the merchant pays on your transaction, which helps all consumers. When you pay by card, you effectively force other consumers to subsidise the fees you generate.

The source is the article I linked. I would love to see the author to get that story published by a credible publisher because that story really needs widespread exposure.

It likely was the US. And if that same US card holder were to do their alcohol consumption in the EU, I would like to see them return home and demand their GDPR right to have that information not leaked all over the place and abused. Such an attempt would be laughable.

Even inside the EU, GDPR enforcement is a bit of a shit show. It’s not something you can rely on. I’ve reported dozens of blatant GDPR violations that are simple, stark, with solid evidence and would be trivially easy to enforce yet they just get moth balled. They enforce a few token cases to make it look like the GDPR is working well. I’ve seen enough to know it’s a terrible idea to rely on the GDPR. Especially with banks. Data protection authorities are turning a blind eye to banks. They are scared of them for some reason. It’s good that the GDPR is at least in place, but a bit of street wisdom is still absolutely essential in the EU.

Even in some hypothetical utopia where the GDPR is thoroughly enforced and adhered to, there is nothing in that GDPR to empower consumers who are disempowered by forced banking. It would take one hell of a brilliant lawyer to effectively argue that cash elimination violates the data minimisation principle. If a bank decides they don’t want you donating to Wikileaks, or that they want to freeze your account because your ID card expired, that is entirely outside the purview of GDPR rules.

Get a Dutch bank account, and fix your EU-wide problems. It takes all of 10 minutes

If a tourist from outside the EU attempts to open a normal bank account they will vary likely be refused. Banks want to see that you are doing business locally and their KYC/AML needles go off the charts with this kind of rationale which then creates a reporting burden. But if a bank is exceptionally flexible, I’m highly skeptical that they can have an account open with bank card in hand in 10 minutes. It would likely take much more time than they want encroaching on their vacation time. The fees are also a problem because many European banks have annual fees to compensate their overhead.

Then how do they fund it?

If a tourist is refused a normal account (which I find likely), they can demand a “basic” account which cannot legally be refused (though most tourists would not know about that nuance). But a basic account is especially crippled to not accept cash deposits. So the consumer cannot make an ATM withdrawal to then fund the account. And even if it’s a non-basic account, they can do that in principle but if the ATM works for them why are they opening a euro account to begin with?

Money transfers are extremely expensive for consumers in some countries (e.g. the US). $40-50 per transfer is typical in the US, plus ~3% for the currency conversion. Not even all banks support international transfers. There are countless small credit unions in the US and some have no intermediary agreement with a SWIFT bank to be able to offer a SWIFT transfer service.

Then when they leave the eurozone the money sits idle in an account that eats away at it. So they have the burden of closing it, or wasting whatever they cannot withdraw.

If you still think the idea is viable, you might bring that idea to the debate going on over whether Belgium should bring back more ATMs for tourists. See if they like the idea of tourists opening accounts for periodic visits.

BTW, Denmark is a disaster for getting an account open. You have to prove having a legal right to live there at the commune, then you have to wait 30 days for a social security number. Banks will not talk to you without that number. None of those steps can be done in advance via mail. People must start the process in person. It might be amusing to appear at a Danish bank without residency and demand your EU right to a basic account. I would guess they are non-compliant on that.

The Dutch Geldmaat is already a mandated thing

Apparently they are mandated to exist, not to actually function and serve all comers. The Geldmaats can apparently refuse service if they want because I’ve seen them use that power.

This is a must-read. Someone’s alcohol consumption was tracked through his card purchases and then used against him to deny him a mortgage. So it would be foolish to use a card to buy:

• alcohol
• tobacco
• marijuana and things to cultivate it
• parafranelia (pipes, bongs, etc)
• flipper zero
• psilocybe cubensis spores… etc

Apart from that, there is a war on cash, which is a war on privacy. When you pay by card, you are part of the problem. You serve as an enabler for shops to refuse cash. It’s important to use cash for everything now to signal its importance to merchants considering eliminating it as an option. Once cash is gone, banks have full power over you. All consumers will be wholly disempowered.

Even though I have a card, if a shop refuses cash I usually refuse to patronise the shop so as not to support the social irresponsibility of their exclusivity and the forced-banking consequence they are pushing.

Yes, but it’s such a lousy option that you’re better off walking. If a merchant only accepts Paypal, they automatically lose my business. Even in one case where I was quite interested in buying an e-bike motor direct from the manufacturer (because that motor had no importers), the mfr only accepted Paypal. So I had to nix that product entirely. For me Paypal is simply not an option.

True, but this is a minority of transactions, so it doesn’t really influence the culture by much. No store is going to leverage the “non-eu-expat-without-bsn-cash-only” segment of the market.

ATM numbers have really dropped in Belgium and the backlash is that there is now pressure (and possibly plans) to bring the ATMs back in order to accommodate tourists. At the same time there is a somewhat global movement to try to steer tourists away from the tourist hotspots and toward smaller cities. But if they want to get their eye on the ball, they need to fix the ATM situation which neglects tourists in the small cities.

Cards are not as versatile as you make them out to be. EU cards used inside the EU, sure, but in the US and UK you have several complex factors:

• most banks burn you on the exchange rate and some rare ones have zero markup, so travelers are limited in which of their cards they use
• Mastercard/maestro is the most popular in Europe but its popularity is lower in the US and perhaps UK as well
• proper credit cards are very common in the US, most commonly Visa, but merchants sometimes refuse them because of the chargeback risk. Credit cards can be used to get a “cash advance” from the ATM, but the fees for that are often very high. There are lots of tricks to reduce the fees a bit but most consumers are unaware of them. So consumers are often pushed to use a debit card at the ATM.
• Discover has no foreign exchange costs which makes it very interesting for tourists but it’s blown by low acceptance.

Well, I could go on but the main issue is eurozone cards work trivially in the EU, but there is much more financial instrument diversity outside Europe that’s not well accommodated in Europe. Outsiders can’t just pick any card out and expect it to work Europe and to not get burnt on overhead. If a shop were to accept Diner’s Club and also offer fee-free cashback, it would lock-in business from US tourists and expats.

When you take away options and enshitify the ATMs, it increases complexity on an already complex situation. I may not go back to a small town in Netherlands knowing that I could again be trapped with an ATM monopoly that mistreats my cards. We need more options like shops that offer cashback.

Paypal is not a good alternative.

For the Netherlands, all ATM withdrawals are free,

Try a non-EU card. Dutch ATMs charge a transaction fee of ~€4 to non-EU cards.

and all debit transactions in stores are free

Acceptance can be an issue. US banks have very favorable card features for the consumers, like chargebacks. If a consumer has some kind of complaint regarding a purchase, banks will claw back the money from the merchant until the merchant provides proof that counters the consumer’s claim, and I believe the mediation is all in English. They make it very easy for the consumer… the card holder simply calls their bank and says “dispute charge X” and briefly states the reason. Then the merchant faces a paperwork burden over a potentially small amount of money and often don’t bother, which means they lose by default. US consumers take advantage of this option enough that merchants in the EU sometimes refuse US cards because of the risk of chargebacks. It violates the Visa merchant agreement to treat foreign cards differently but it’s not enforced by Visa/MC. I’m not sure if any Dutch merchants discriminate against foreign cards but it’s certainly a thing in Europe.

USians also have Discovercard (Diner’s Club). This card has very low acceptance in European shops, but ATMs often accept Discovercard.

Is this related to your previous post where you complained that your card kept getting rejected (resulting in your blaming the machine instead of your card/bank)?

Indeed. The ATM machines themselves are persnickety and faulty when there is no problem on the bank’s side. The ATMs output bogus messaging. And because choice of ATM operator is diminishing, ATMs are a non-starter in some situations. They cannot be relied on.

Indeed, that’s what happened to me. Paypal killed my account and kept the money. It was not enough money to justify bringing a court case so Paypal got away with it. So I’m done with Paypal for sure.

In fact, I also avoid cashless Dutch cafes that insist on using Zettle as a payment processor because Zettle is Paypal.

I get rid of them pretty quickly by saying I have no bank account. I might start adding to that “take cryptocurrency?” so they leave with the idea that maybe they should be open to cryptocurrency.