Is that the death rattle of the Euro I hear?

[Dick_Dastardly]

@Ximenean

You’re just moving the conversion costs around, and either way it’s the customers who pay them in the end. A company operating in the Spanish market couldn’t just buy things from Germany without taking into consideration the value of the peseta vs. the Deutschmark, because ultimately it must sell things priced in pesetas.

You can’t use two currencies in one country that float against each other*, so everything must at some point be converted into the standard local currency.

• somebody’s going to say “hey, they use the euro and the <whatever> in <some border/tourist region>”. Yeah, but that’s small potatoes, not country-wide, and somebody, likely the customer, swallows an exchange fee somewhere in the transaction.

Switzerland takes Euros and Swiss Francs everywhere. You can buy chicken curry sandwiches and glasses of champagne at the main bar in Zurich airport, the taxi drivers, hotels and restaurants all take Euros. The ticket machines in parking garages and vending machines take both currencies. Before the Euro came along you could spend Swiss francs, French francs, Deutschmarks and Lira.