Largest payment providers in Germany

A rank compares a provider only with the other providers of its own group, so rank 9 for PayPal says nothing about its size next to rank 8 for Mollie. Group A, the payment service providers and acquirers, is ordered by the payment volume processed in the latest full year, then by transactions and then by merchants where a company publishes no volume. Group B, the wallets, payment methods and buy now, pay later services, follows the share of internet users in Germany who have set up each method in the payment survey of the Deutsche Bundesbank from September to December 2025. Group C, the neobanks, fintech accounts and money transfer services, follows customers in Germany first and customers of the whole company second.

Unzer stands above PAYONE, SumUp, Fiserv and Mollie only because Unzer publishes a processed volume and the other four do not. The same applies in group C to bunq, Wise and N26, whose order depends on group totals because none of the three publishes a customer figure for Germany. The list includes every provider that serves customers in Germany, wherever it has its seat, while the card schemes Visa, Mastercard and girocard have a section of their own further down.

A payment service provider connects the checkout of a shop to cards, wallets and bank payments, and an acquirer settles card payments and pays the money out to the merchant. Many providers in this group do both jobs, and the merchant acquiring behind a terminal or an online checkout is where the payment volume of this group comes from.

Stripe is a payment company from San Francisco and Dublin whose software lets online shops, subscription businesses and software platforms accept cards, wallets and local payment methods. Businesses on Stripe processed a total payment volume of 1.9 trillion US dollars in 2025, a global figure that grew 34 percent on the year before. Stripe publishes no separate figure for Germany, so the worldwide volume decides its place at the top of group A.

Adyen is a payment company from Amsterdam that combines payment processing with its own acquiring, so a merchant handles online, in-app and in-store payments under one contract. Adyen processed a volume of 1,394.3 billion euros in 2025, 8 percent more than in 2024, and this figure covers all of its markets worldwide. The same results show net revenue of 2,364.2 million euros for 2025, again without a breakdown for Germany.

Nexi is a payments group from Milan that serves merchants and card-issuing banks, and it took over the German acquirer Concardis and the Nordic provider Nets. Nexi bought the remaining shares of Computop, the payment service provider from Bamberg, and became its sole owner on 17 September 2025. In its results for 2025, Nexi reported managed transactions worth 837.0 billion euros in its merchant business, a figure for the whole group that includes the DACH region as one of its markets.

Unzer is a payment and software company for retailers, restaurants and online shops, with terminals, cash register software and more than 40 payment methods. Unzer states a processed transaction volume of 18.5 billion for 2025 and about 90,000 merchants in its main European markets, next to revenue of 225.0 million euros. Unzer gives the volume without naming its currency, and it is the only provider after Nexi in group A that publishes a volume at all.

PAYONE is a payment service provider in Frankfurt and a joint venture of Worldline with the DSV Group, which belongs to the Sparkassen organization. PAYONE processes 5.4 billion transactions a year for 277,000 customers with about 1,300 employees, but it publishes no payment volume in euros. PAYONE has accepted Wero in online checkout since November 2025, so merchants on its platform can offer the European payment method to their customers.

SumUp is a payments company for small businesses that take card payments with a card reader, a terminal or Tap to Pay on a smartphone. SumUp passed one billion transactions a year and serves more than 4 million businesses worldwide, and both figures cover all of its markets. SumUp publishes no payment volume in euros and no merchant count for Germany, so the global transaction figure decides its place in group A.

Fiserv is a US financial technology company that runs card acceptance in Germany through TeleCash, its subsidiary in Bad Homburg. TeleCash serves more than 130,000 small and medium businesses in Germany, and Fiserv launched Carat from Fiserv in Germany for larger merchants. Fiserv reported total revenue of 21.2 billion US dollars for 2025, a global figure, and it publishes no payment volume for Germany. Fiserv stands above Mollie because TeleCash publishes a merchant count for Germany, while the Mollie figure covers all markets of the group.

Mollie is a payment service provider from Amsterdam for online shops and businesses that also sell in person, with checkout integrations and payment terminals. Mollie completed the purchase of GoCardless, the London provider of direct debits and bank payments, and the combined group serves more than 350,000 businesses in more than 30 markets. Mollie publishes no payment volume, which places it last in group A even though the merchant count of the combined group is high.

A wallet or payment method sits between the customer and the account or card that pays, and the customer chooses it at the checkout. The payment survey of the Deutsche Bundesbank asked internet users with a current account in Germany which of these methods they had set up, and the shares below come from that question. The survey ran from September to early December 2025, so later growth, such as the Wero rollout in online shops, is not part of these shares.

PayPal is a digital wallet from San Jose that people in Germany use to pay online shops, send money to friends and, since 2025, pay at shop terminals with a virtual card in the app. In the Bundesbank survey, 77 percent of internet users had set up PayPal, and PayPal was the third most used payment method for everyday purchases after cash and girocard. The news site heise online reported 35 million active PayPal accounts in Germany, citing PayPal, while the company counted 439 million active accounts and a total payment volume of 1.79 trillion US dollars in 2025 worldwide.

Klarna is a payments company from Stockholm that lets shoppers pay at once, pay later or spread a purchase over installments, a model known as buy now, pay later. In the Bundesbank survey, 48 percent of internet users in Germany had set up Klarna, the second highest share after PayPal. In its results for the second quarter of 2026, Klarna named Germany its largest market by volume and counted 120 million active consumers worldwide over the previous twelve months.

Apple Pay lets people pay with a debit or credit card stored in the Wallet app of an iPhone or Apple Watch, at a contactless terminal or in apps and online shops. Apple publishes no user figure for Germany, but in the Bundesbank survey 18 percent of internet users had set up Apple Pay, and about 40 percent of people who pay by phone at the checkout usually use it. Mobile methods were used for 10 percent of all payments in Germany in 2025, four percentage points more than in 2023.

Google Pay is the payment method of Google for paying with a card stored in Google Wallet on an Android phone or a Wear OS watch. In the Bundesbank survey, 16 percent of internet users had set up Google Pay, and among mobile methods at the shop checkout it ranks second behind Apple Pay. Google publishes no user figure for Germany, and its share of mobile payments at the checkout rose slightly between the surveys of 2023 and 2025.

Wero is the account-to-account payment method of the European Payments Initiative, built into the apps of participating German banks and available as a separate app. Only 5 percent of internet users had set up Wero in the Bundesbank survey of late 2025, when the service still worked almost only for payments between people. Later the tech magazine t3n reported 9 million registered Wero users in Germany, citing the European Payments Initiative (in German), and the initiative counted 60 million users of Wero transfers in Belgium, France and Germany in September 2026.

A neobank runs current accounts, cards and savings through a smartphone app without a branch network, and its customers pay with its card every day. The neobanks in Germany let customers open and use an account entirely in an app, while transfer services such as Wise specialize in payments in other currencies.

Trade Republic is a bank from Berlin whose app combines a current account and a debit card with savings plans, shares, ETFs and crypto. The news agency dpa reported in April 2026 that Trade Republic has more than 10 million customers in Europe, over five million of them in Germany (in German). That German figure puts Trade Republic first in group C, ahead of Revolut, the only other provider in the group with a German customer count.

Revolut is a financial app from London with accounts, cards, currency exchange and transfers for private and business customers, and it offers German IBANs to customers in Germany. Revolut passed 3 million retail customers in Germany in January 2026, a few months after it had reached 2.5 million. Across all of its markets, Revolut counted 68.3 million retail customers at the end of 2025.

bunq is a bank from Amsterdam that runs current accounts, cards and savings for private customers and businesses entirely through an app. bunq passed 20 million users across Europe in September 2025, ten years after its launch, and publishes no customer figure for Germany. The European total therefore decides its place in group C, after the two providers with German figures.

Wise is a money transfer and multi-currency account provider from London that converts money at the mid-market exchange rate and shows its fee separately. Wise counted 18.9 million active customers in the year to March 2026 and moved 243.5 billion US dollars across borders, both of them global figures. Wise publishes no customer number for Germany, where businesses and private customers use it for payments in other currencies.

N26 is a mobile bank from Berlin with a full German banking license that runs current accounts, cards and savings through an app. N26 reported 5.6 million revenue-relevant customers for 2025 in its 24 markets, together with revenue of 501.6 million euros. N26 gives no customer figure for Germany, so it stands below bunq and Wise, whose group totals are higher.

Qonto is a business account provider from Paris for small companies and freelancers, with cards, invoicing and bookkeeping tools, and it serves German customers from a branch in Berlin. Qonto serves more than 750,000 small companies and freelancers in eight European markets, Germany among them, and does not publish a separate German count.

Vivid is a financial app from Berlin with business and private accounts, balances in several currencies and interest on cash held in the account. Vivid passed 100,000 business customers in March 2026, less than two years after it began to serve small and medium companies, and it publishes no total for private customers.

Visa stays out of the ranking, and so does Mastercard, because both are card schemes that set the rules and run the network, while a shop contracts with an acquirer and a cardholder gets the card from a bank. International card schemes handled about 61 percent of euro area card payments in 2022, according to the European Central Bank, and national schemes such as girocard handled the remaining 39 percent.

girocard is the debit card scheme of the German banking industry, and in the Bundesbank survey 90 percent of respondents owned a girocard, far more than any other debit card. Debit cards from Visa and Mastercard are catching up among younger people, and more cardholders now store their card in a mobile wallet. What a shop pays for card payments in Germany depends on the scheme, the acquirer and the interchange fee of each card.

Cash was still the most used single payment method in Germany in 2025, with 45 percent of all payments, while 55 percent of recorded purchases were paid without cash for the first time. Among the payment providers in Germany, PayPal comes third for everyday purchases after cash and girocard, and the Bundesbank puts its share among internet payment methods at about 86 percent. Mobile payments with a phone or watch reached 10 percent of all payments, and Apple Pay leads them at the checkout.

Payment processors in Germany accept much the same cards, so merchants compare them on pricing, payout speed and the sales channels they cover. A merchant weighs a fixed blended fee against interchange plus pricing, checks how fast the money reaches the account and asks whether the same payment service provider handles the shop terminal and the online checkout. Businesses with subscriptions need recurring payments by card or direct debit, and larger merchants route transactions across several providers through payment orchestration. German online shoppers expect particular methods at the checkout, and the online payment methods in Germany show which ones a shop needs.

German payment companies with their seat in Germany include PAYONE in Frankfurt, Computop in Bamberg and TeleCash in Bad Homburg, which belongs to Fiserv. On the account side, Trade Republic, N26 and Vivid are based in Berlin, while Revolut, bunq, Qonto and Wise serve German customers from other European countries. Stripe, PayPal, Apple and Google have their headquarters in the United States, and their figures reach Germany only as part of global totals.

The largest neobanks in Germany by published German customers are Trade Republic, with more than five million customers in Germany, and Revolut, with more than three million. N26 and bunq publish no German figure, and N26 reported 5.6 million revenue-relevant customers across all 24 of its markets in 2025. Direct banks such as DKB also run accounts without branches, but they are older banks with a different model and stay out of this group.

Measured by customers, the biggest fintech companies in Germany on this list are Trade Republic and N26, both from Berlin, followed by Vivid with its business accounts. Measured by payment volume, no provider with its seat in Germany publishes a figure close to Stripe or Adyen, and PAYONE reports transactions instead of a volume. Start-ups, investors and hubs across the country are part of the wider picture of fintech in Germany.