The cashier politely waved my debit card away.
“No cards.”
My 10 euro bill for a currywurst, pommes frites and a Coke had to be settled in cash.
Hamburg, one of Europe’s richest cities and Harare, one of the world’s poorest, have at least one thing in common — retailers here love cash and attempts to pay using cards, credit or debit, is often a frustrating exercise.
While Zimbabwe is going through its latest phase in episodic foreign currency crises punctuated by bank note shortages, Germany’s $3.5 trillion economy — Europe’s biggest — has no such ills.
Economic experts and historians often find the roots of Germany’s love for cash in the 1921-1923 hyperinflation episode when the country’s currency, the mark, crashed from 4.2 to the dollar in 1914 to 4.2 trillion by November 1923.
Close to a century after the end of the Weimar Republic, the effects of the inflation nightmare still weigh on the German psyche.
Children are raised into the cash culture, using it for the bulk of their transactions.
Recent estimates from the German central bank show that up to 80 percent of financial transactions in the country are settled in cash, almost double the rate in other advanced economies such as the US and UK.
Typically, a German moves around with the equivalent of $123 in cash, twice as much as peers in industrialised economies.
The eurozone’s biggest bank note is worth 500 euros, a concession to the Germans, whose largest bill was a 1 000 deutsche mark prior to the issuance of euro notes in 2002.
Zimbabwe, on the other hand, experienced the 21st century’s first episode of hyperinflation, which peaked at 500 billion percent in December 2008, according to IMF data.
Continued next page
(138 VIEWS)
This post was last modified on May 22, 2017 1:35 pm
Twenty-five white Zimbabwean farmers who took their R2 billion land damages claim to the South…
Africans must now tell their own stories because if they continue to denigrate themselves they…
Quarterly taxes, which are due next month, will force businesses to sell a quota of…
Zimbabweans will soon be able to change their ZiG to United States dollars and vice-versa…
Senator Sengezo Tshabangu yesterday expressed dismay at the pace at which the government is constructing…
Zimbabwe has ordered providers of goods and services to use the official exchange rate or…