Tips are often treated as casually as they are given. What exactly constitutes a tip can’t even be clearly defined in legal terms, but rather resembles a kind of “moral agreement,” as historian Winfried Speitkamp puts it. In his small volume Der Rest ist für Sie! (“Keep the Change!”), he has produced one of the very few German academic publications on the history of tipping. Yet tipping is far from a trivial matter: 10 percent on every tip-worthy transaction – at a restaurant or in a taxi, at least in Germany; in the U.S., it’s well known that the standard is about double that, roughly 20 percent. From an economic perspective, this adds up to astonishing sums – more than 2 billion euros per year in German restaurants alone – which, however, are barely regulated in Germany and, above all, don’t have to be taxed.
In the digital context, the nature of these casual, almost hidden micro-payments has shifted. Will digital technologies accelerate tipping – or its decline? That’s the question we explore in the second episode of our series on microtransactions.
Season Small Money – Episode 2 | 28. Februar 2025
Guests
Sascha Hoffmann is a professor of business administration and online management. One of his research focuses is on digital product management. In 2021, he published an empirical study revealing the connection between small gifts in restaurants and larger reciprocal gestures – namely, tips.
Katrin Lindow-Schröder ist Referentin für Fundraising bei der Evangelischen Kirche in Hessen und Nassau. Sie hat dabei mitgewirkt, digitale Bezahloptionen in der Landeskirchengemeinde einzuführen.
Further Information
The article referenced in the podcast about Uber’s “no-tip policy” can be read here. The studies by the two marketing researchers Hansen and Warren are available to read here, as is the study from Jägermeister Mast. The “Swiss discussion” about tipping can be followed in more depth in this NZZ article.