So do you like always take split bills for everything? Like when eg. 4 coworkers go to eat together (ie. not a situation where one person pays everything)? Over here in the balkans/mitteleuropa you just put some approximate amount of cash on the table. Same for kids, you're not giving a kid your credit card when you send him to a bakery to get bread, you give him a couple of euros in cash.
> Same for kids, you're not giving a kid your credit card when you send him to a bakery to get bread, you give him a couple of euros in cash.
I got caught out by a thing like this, recently. (I'm on the east coast of the US.)
My kids had a day off from school, and it was a nice day to ride bikes. There's a small municipal park around 5 miles (8 km) away, with a nice mini-golf course and a grill/cafe next to it. They were eager to go by themselves, so I told them they could ride their bikes there and gave each kid enough cash for a round of mini-golf, a cold drink and some lunch.
The park was card only! While that has been happening more and more, I was not expecting that from a city park. Thankfully, they're not shy kids, and they persuaded one of the park employees to use a personal card in exchange for cash. But I was shocked. They're 10 and 13 years old... it had not previously occurred to me that I should give them cards of any kind.
In that situation either (1) someone will pay for everyone at the table and then everyone else will “Swish” (the name of the local money transfer app) them their respective share of the total bill; or (2) they’ll just ask the server to split the bill and each person pays for their part. Both are actually quite common, and having lived many years in Sweden, I’ve never eaten at a restaurant where asking the server to split the bill was a problem.
Or, if it's a group that goes out together often and doesn't vary their orders much (in terms of order-of-magnitude of spend), then this will sometimes evolve into a rotation on one person picking up the tab each time.
Reporting for Hungary and Italy here: at the restaurant you ask for split bills or someone pays and the others will just pay back. It's been a few years since this was a problem, shops have adapted.
In Denmark someone will pay, and the others will use MobilePay to pay back their share.
But you've reminded me of a case I still use cash: on business trips abroad with a mixed group of people from several countries, most people put money on the table to pay their share.
quite often we pay separate by cards, that is so common the personell even asks if that is how we like to pay. otherwise one pay using his card and we swish (tranfer money instantly using the swish app) him the money.
