This is a wonderful encapsulation of the dysfunction of modern corporations.

Yeah, it’s a lot to enable mobile payment. Personally, I just bought myself a nice wallet. Much less hassle.

Also, conditions will vary depending on which Sparkasse/Volksbank you look at (they’re all independent and might have very different fee and offer structures), but they’ll likely all have more fees than most large private banks.

The thing is, they have some good projects like these independent mobile payment apps, and are great for giving out loans to smaller, regional businesses, but as banks for private users, they definetely aren’t the best available.

Lol, can see that. But there’s been times I lugged around separate company and private laptops. Two phones is tame in comparison.

No.

Well, it really depends. Both aren’t one single big bank, but a lot of semi-connected local banks. They are huge disparities in what e.g. Sparkasse München and Sparkasse Hinterpfaffenhofen can offer. The bigger ones mostly have proper online services, but might require a letter for some stuff.

Regarding savings accounts - from what I’ve seen, most of the products they offered weren’t really competitive, and mostly relied on you not shopping around. Volksbanken, as a co-op, allow you to buy shares in the bank, which can have a pretty good return, but there is a relatively low limit on how many shares a single person can own, so no one can have outsized voting power.

So, bit of a mixed bag, really.

Also, all of them (I’ve seen) have a new account, and all their text output seems LLM generated, with them claiming it’s cause english isn’t their native language and they need LLMs to translate - on that note, that’s suspect to me, cause translating a human written text, at least with dedicated translation services, tends to retain a human structure. This feels more like they’re generating the whole message.

Doesn’t apply here, but some also had a story about “working in X trade for Y years”. It all feels very disingenuous, very much like marketing. I’d be surprised if even half of these projects are still around in two years time.

Rant over, just something that grinds my gears.

Here in Germany, it’s pretty much Sparkassen and Volksbanken. One are city/state owned, the others are pretty much a co-op.

This is pretty Germany specific. Heard from friends elsewhere they had some luck with local options, but don’t have a list Handy rn.

I don’t want them to subsidise it, the current price doesn’t really matter to me. It’s just that for their niche, the hardware isn’t quite where it’d need to be.

That’s the thing I don’t get - compared to current flash prices, the cost of tooling and designing a custom pcb, going for a 20% more powerful gpu shouldn’t have been a crazy blocker.

CPU and GPU are soldered to the board. Only effective upgrade are system memory and storage. Think of it as a nuc or laptop board.

It’s not just the price, it’s the hardware. They could have gone for a slightly more powerful gpu, even in their thermal emvelope, and it’d xonfpunding they didn’t. This way it gets beaten by a PS5, on both price and performance.

Doesn’t mean I’d buy a PS5, but does mean there’s many better options, even if you want small and quiet.

Makes sense. I always liked the symbolic act of shutting down my work issued phone when I didn’t need to be reachable, but I see the convenience here.

Yeah, I was thinking of separate profiles in general, and had never encountered the concept of an employer controlled separate profile. When I needed a device for something work related, I usually got issued a phone.

That’s pretty interesting. What version of Android are you running, and on what device, if you feel comfy sharing that?

There’s several EU countries that do. Some of them as part of a push for sovereignty, but most, I think, cause they developed their solutions before Google Wallet was enabled in that country.

It’s probably illegal in Germany and some other EU countries. Not that that always stops Big Tech. But this one, at least in Germany, could land the user some jail time.

Oh, you mean a profile set up by your employer. Actually, dunno whether that works. I never let any employer touch a personal device.

That has been working fine for years at this point.

Contactless payments technically work fine, just not via Google Wallet. Banks that have their own tap to pay app usually don’t have that problem.

If you can prove that, you’d probably have a nice story on your hand. I don’t think there’s currently a known way an app can bypass system permissions for contacts on current Android/iOS.

New Maestro Card haven’t been issued in a while. If you’d replace that card now, you’d likely get one cobranded girocard/MasterCard instead of girocard/Maestro. Works just like a credit card online. There’s a few banks thag issue girocards with no cobranding, but that’s rare.

Even most Sparkassen have started giving out a cobranded Master/Visa by default.

So what you said was true 10 years ago, but likely isn’t/soon won’t be anymore.

It is relatively easy for me, but I am with a relatively modern bank in Germany. Am sure it’s worse in the States.