Card Payments in Germany

The Deutsche Bundesbank's study of payment behavior in Germany in 2025 found that 55 percent of recorded purchases were paid without cash, the first time the share passed half. Cash was still used for 45 percent of payments, but only for 23 percent of turnover. The debit card, mostly the girocard, was used for 26 percent of payments and 28 percent of turnover, and mobile payments reached 10 percent of payments.

At the tills of German retailers, cards took 65.1 percent of turnover in 2025, according to the EHI Retail Institute (in German). The girocard had 40.5 percent, one point less than a year before. International debit cards from Visa and Mastercard grew by 2.5 points to 9.4 percent, and credit cards held 8.2 percent. Of all cashless payments at the till, 19.3 percent were made with a mobile device.

The girocard is the debit card system of the German banking industry, run by EURO Kartensysteme in Frankfurt. Its own site (in German) counts around 100 million cards and 8.3 billion transactions in 2025. Many Germans still call it the EC card. It works at German terminals and ATMs, and for payments abroad the card carries a second, international brand.

For years that second brand was Maestro. From July 1, 2023, banks and savings banks could no longer issue new cards with the Maestro function, and girocard (in German) named Debit Mastercard, V Pay and Visa Debit as the usual replacements, with some banks moving to two separate cards. Since most German cards are valid for four years, the last girocards with Maestro expire around the end of 2027.

Every card payment carries an interchange fee, which the merchant's bank (the acquirer) pays to the bank that issued the card. The EU's Interchange Fee Regulation (EU) 2015/751 caps it for consumer cards at 0.2 percent of the transaction value for debit cards and 0.3 percent for credit cards. Scheme fees and the acquirer's margin come on top, and the merchant pays the sum as the merchant service charge.

Online, card payments go through strong customer authentication, which the PSD3 and PSR package keeps with clearer rules for merchant-initiated payments. A card stored in a phone wallet works with a token in place of the card number, which the hub answer on payment tokenization explains. Visa settles part of its card payments between banks in stablecoins, and Wero, the wallet of the European Payments Initiative, competes with cards at the checkout by moving money between bank accounts.

Whether a German shop must offer cashless payment is a political question. The coalition agreement of CDU, CSU and SPD says the parties want cash and at least one digital payment option to be offered step by step ("grundsätzlich Bargeld und mindestens eine digitale Zahlungsoption", coalition agreement, in German). The agreement does not name a method, so a card terminal is one way to meet it. The payments in Germany page covers the licenses and rails behind the market.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people who run card payments in Germany: card issuers at banks and savings banks, acquirers, payment institutions and the fintechs that build on card networks. It connects the finance, IT and AI communities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

Visa is one of Finance Loop's event and network partners. Frankfurt, where Finance Loop is built in collaboration with TechQuartier, is home to EURO Kartensysteme, which runs the girocard, and to VR Payment, the card payments company of the cooperative banks. The payments in Frankfurt page covers the city's card and merchant payments business.

Capital & Code is a one-day conference in Frankfurt on stablecoins, tokenized funds and payments, hosted by AllUnity. On its panel on the future of payments, Dorothea Ysenburg of Mastercard and Eva-Maria Lindig of PayPal speak with AllUnity and Worldline, and payments started by AI agents are among the topics. Finance Loop is a media partner of the conference.

Yes, but at the till they are a small share. Credit cards took 8.2 percent of German retail turnover in 2025, against 40.5 percent for the girocard, according to the EHI Retail Institute. Online they are almost everywhere: Visa is accepted by 94.3 percent and Mastercard by 94.1 percent of the 1,000 largest German online shops, the EHI E-Commerce-Report 2026 (in German) found.

The girocard is a debit card too, but it runs on the German girocard system and is built for German terminals. A Debit Mastercard or Visa Debit runs on an international card network and works abroad and online wherever that network is accepted. Many German banks put both on one card: the girocard for home and an international brand for everything else.

No. In the Bundesbank's 2025 study, a cashless payment method was available for 86 percent of recorded in-store purchases, and cash was accepted in 94 percent.

For consumer cards issued in the EU, the Interchange Fee Regulation caps it at 0.2 percent of the payment for debit cards and 0.3 percent for credit cards. The cap does not cover commercial cards. The merchant's total cost also includes scheme fees and the acquirer's charge.