For a German it is common to have a "check account". The underlying system is called "girocard". It contains a module for paying in stores (electronic cash) and another one for withdrawing money from cash dispensers ("Deutsches Geldautomaten-System"). In addition to that most banks offer their customers access to "maestro" (some debit card service from Master Card) and V-Pay (same as maestro but from Visa). Credit cards are only popular among the younger population as they need them to buy things online (iTunes, Google Play, etc...).
However the "check accounts" come with a different kind of insurance. You can read quite a lot about that online, my personal experience is the following: If somebody steals (no matter how) 200€ from your credit card the bank will cancel the transaction immediately, if the same happens with your "check account" you need to go to court to get it back.
Having this system you might imagine why our online-banking is overly complex:
You have to login with a username and a password[=PIN] (for some banks you have a fixed username, at others you can choose one). Afterwards you are allowed to send someone money. Therefore you require another one-time-password[=TAN]. This TAN can be obtained in multiple ways: 1. Snake Mail (Just a printed TAN list asking you for a random free TAN), 2. Snake Mail (A printed TAN list asking you for a specific TAN at a given index), 3. Snake Mail (A printed TAN list asking you for a specific TAN at a given index and returning a verification code, that is also printed on the list), 4. Mobile TAN (TAN via SMS), 5. Push TAN (TAN via Banking App), 6. Photo TAN / QR TAN (Optical System which works with pub/priv key to verify your transaction), 7. Chip TAN (Special device that uses the chip in your card to verify your transaction).
After you verified your transaction it takes up to three days before the recievers bank notifies the reciever that he got the money. The real joke is, that everything regarding payments can be transmitted in real time. However some banks make use of these days to generate more interest.
End of the story: If you want to pay something online and you want to recieve it quick you need to either use a Credit Card or some proprietary system that your bank might support (see paydirekt, giropay). As both might not be available for some users they either have to wait for 3 days for their money to arrive at the reciever or use a untrustworthy service like sofortüberweisung (which scans all your transactions and predicts your accountability [Disclaimer: If I remember correctly, German Ref. http://www.pcwelt.de/news/Datenschuetzer-alarmiert-Sofortueb...).
For a German it is common to have a "check account". The underlying system is called "girocard". It contains a module for paying in stores (electronic cash) and another one for withdrawing money from cash dispensers ("Deutsches Geldautomaten-System"). In addition to that most banks offer their customers access to "maestro" (some debit card service from Master Card) and V-Pay (same as maestro but from Visa). Credit cards are only popular among the younger population as they need them to buy things online (iTunes, Google Play, etc...). However the "check accounts" come with a different kind of insurance. You can read quite a lot about that online, my personal experience is the following: If somebody steals (no matter how) 200€ from your credit card the bank will cancel the transaction immediately, if the same happens with your "check account" you need to go to court to get it back.
Having this system you might imagine why our online-banking is overly complex: You have to login with a username and a password[=PIN] (for some banks you have a fixed username, at others you can choose one). Afterwards you are allowed to send someone money. Therefore you require another one-time-password[=TAN]. This TAN can be obtained in multiple ways: 1. Snake Mail (Just a printed TAN list asking you for a random free TAN), 2. Snake Mail (A printed TAN list asking you for a specific TAN at a given index), 3. Snake Mail (A printed TAN list asking you for a specific TAN at a given index and returning a verification code, that is also printed on the list), 4. Mobile TAN (TAN via SMS), 5. Push TAN (TAN via Banking App), 6. Photo TAN / QR TAN (Optical System which works with pub/priv key to verify your transaction), 7. Chip TAN (Special device that uses the chip in your card to verify your transaction).
After you verified your transaction it takes up to three days before the recievers bank notifies the reciever that he got the money. The real joke is, that everything regarding payments can be transmitted in real time. However some banks make use of these days to generate more interest.
End of the story: If you want to pay something online and you want to recieve it quick you need to either use a Credit Card or some proprietary system that your bank might support (see paydirekt, giropay). As both might not be available for some users they either have to wait for 3 days for their money to arrive at the reciever or use a untrustworthy service like sofortüberweisung (which scans all your transactions and predicts your accountability [Disclaimer: If I remember correctly, German Ref. http://www.pcwelt.de/news/Datenschuetzer-alarmiert-Sofortueb...).