A woman at the Decathlon approached me and asked if I had a bank card for payment, she’d give me 330 euros cash back.

A woman at the Decathlon approached me and asked if I had a bank card for payment, she’d give me 330 euros cash back. She had no card, she said. Sunday, Berlin Main Train Station.Usually I’d always say no, sounds sketchy, right? What would I do with 330 euros cash, anyway?But I ended up paying her bill. Decathlon does not accept any cash payments, the employees confirmed. So I used my card to pay, telling myself that there are cameras, I can freeze my card anyway and 330 is a lot for me, but I’d survive if this money is fake or smth.I’m super aware about the whole fraud thing, but here, something else happened.I had my mom move to Portugal from Russia last year and it was her full time job for almost a year – opening a bank account, getting the official rental and all the right documents for her European residence permit. All this time, she did not have a working European bank card, only the one I gave her under my name, so she’d always have access to cash.And with all that European sovereignty going on, I was thinking about those solutions, made in Europe for European services, how accessible will they be for people coming from the outside? Will they need to wait months for an Anmeldung (German registration) and a proper European bank account to start using those?European bureaucracy is slow and some take pride in it. I’ve had an .eu domain registered – extra waiting time and needed to confirm that my bank is actually in Europe.Just thinking out loud. In Berlin, services feel smoother than it used to even 5 years ago. Berlin is way more card friendly and things work surprisingly well, at least over here in Prenzlauer Berg. Even public services – it is not great, but it is way better.How do we please not break this progress?The money is real btw – I did not get scammed. Now paying cash to spend the 330 euros, very unusual. Reinstated my trust in humanity as well.