England fans in Dusseldorf are in immediate danger of becoming victims of a shocking ATM fraud that police say is taking place in the city.
Compared to the UK, Germany is surprisingly behind on the digital front, and cash is still the norm.
Although the use of plastic has increased enormously since corona, euro coins and notes are still the only accepted means of payment in many bars and cafés.
But English fans who now go to ATMs in Dusseldorf run a great risk of losing their money to scams.
In an “urgent warning”, a spokesman for the Düsseldorf police said: “This week there has been an increase in the number of offences related to the manipulation of ATMs in the city of Düsseldorf.
The victims stated that their EC cards had apparently been taken from the ATMs used.
‘During the actions, the victims heard cracking noises and the display reportedly showed a fault: “This ATM will be available again shortly.”‘
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The innocent victims’ cards were then swallowed by the machine, with the understanding that their request for cash would be processed shortly.
But instead of being returned, the bank cards were then ‘stolen by unknown perpetrators and subsequently misused at the same ATM or at other locations’.
Düsseldorf police are now calling on people not to use an ATM if they notice anything unusual.
And it says that if your card is swallowed, you should not leave the location, but rather take your mobile phone and call the bank or the police.
Although Germany is known for its technical feats, the country is unfortunately still in the digital Stone Age when it comes to payments.
According to the European Central Bank (ECB), as much as 39 percent of all transactions at points of sale in Germany were made with cash in 2023.
While the rest of Europe is moving towards a cashless society, Germany remains a digital dinosaur that handles a lot of cash.
PYMNTS.com is a platform for payments, commerce and financial technology news. According to PYMNTS Intelligence’s 2023 “How the World Does Digital” report, Germany underperformed in a survey of 11 countries, averaging 183 active days per year.
An ‘activity day’ measures how often consumers participate in digital activities such as banking, shopping and entertainment.
The countries surveyed were the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Brazil.
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Brazil led the way with 361 days of activity, while Japan had the lowest number with 127. Germany came in second with 183 days of activity.
Even stranger is Germany’s shameful position on the EU’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), where it ranks 21st out of 28 countries with digital government services.
In Germany, the wifi connection can be very bad to date. In addition, local governments are still stuck in the past. Many governments even still hold on to fax machines and suffer from poor broadband coverage.
Even more shocking is that, at a time when there is an urgent need for public investment in this area, the federal government has not increased resources but has actually cut them.
The total federal budget for 2024 amounts to €476 billion, of which no less than €70.5 billion is reserved for investments.
Yet the government chooses to spend only 3.3 million euros on administrative digitalization.
And worse still, this amount has fallen drastically compared to the 377 million euros set aside for administrative digitalization in 2023.