Accepting girocard in Germany

girocard is Germany’s domestic debit scheme, managed by the German Banking Industry Committee, with more than 100 million active cards in circulation. It is the most common cashless instrument in the country and, for a German merchant, the cheapest way to take a debit payment at the point of sale.

Channel

girocard is built for the till, not the checkout

This is the fact that catches foreign merchants out. girocard was designed for in-store use and does not carry a regular card number usable in an online checkout form. It is not an e-commerce method. The service that bridged that gap for years, giropay, was switched off entirely on 31 December 2024, which means German domestic debit currently has no direct online equivalent and the volume has redistributed across cards, PayPal, Klarna, open banking and increasingly Wero.

What that means for a German payment mix

A merchant with both a physical estate and a webshop is effectively running two different German payment strategies whether they intended to or not. In store, girocard is the low-cost default. Online, the same customer reaches for something structurally more expensive. Understanding that split is what allows you to price the channels honestly rather than assuming one blended German rate describes both.

Routing

How to accept girocard as a merchant

You do not contract with the scheme. Acceptance runs through your acquirer and your terminal estate. Many German debit cards are co-badged with an international scheme, which means the same card can route down girocard or down the international rail at a different cost. Where routing choice exists, it is a cost lever, and it is one most merchants have never asked their acquirer about.

Rules

What a scheme may not charge you for, and what a routing rule has to survive

Co-badged German debit means two brands sit on the card while only one of them carries any given transaction. Two provisions of Regulation (EU) 2015/751 govern what may be built around that.

Article 8(4) provides that payment card schemes shall not impose reporting requirements, obligations to pay fees or similar obligations with the same object or effect on card issuing and acquiring payment service providers for transactions carried out with any device on which their payment brand is present, in relation to transactions for which their scheme is not used. Article 8(5) provides that any routing principles or equivalent measures aimed at directing transactions through a specific channel or process, and other technical and security standards and requirements with respect to the handling of two or more different payment brands and payment applications on a card-based payment instrument, shall be non-discriminatory and shall be applied in a non-discriminatory manner.

The first is a floor under your cost base. A brand that is present on the card but absent from the transaction is not entitled to be paid for that transaction, so a scheme line that behaves otherwise is worth an explanation from your acquirer rather than an assumption on your part. The second is a lever. A routing rule that pushes German co-badged volume down one rail has to be non-discriminatory in substance and in the way it is applied, which makes ’that is how the terminals are configured’ an answer about your provider’s defaults rather than about the rules they operate under.

Which payment provider supports girocard in Germany?

PAYONE, Computop and CCV all name girocard among the schemes they accept, as does any acquirer serving the German market. The useful questions are what a girocard transaction costs against a co-badged international debit transaction, how your terminals route by default, and whether the difference has ever been measured across your estate.

Arithmetic

Two channels, one country, and a number nobody has written down

Because girocard stops at the till, every euro that migrates from your stores to your webshop is a euro moving from your cheapest German acceptance to your most expensive. That migration happens continuously and no one signs off on it, which is precisely why it belongs in a spreadsheet rather than in an assumption.

Put numbers on it. Take a German retailer with 40 million euros of card-accepted turnover, 70 per cent at the till and 30 per cent online. Suppose the till runs at 0.35 per cent all-in on girocard and the webshop at 1.10 per cent all-in on co-badged international debit and credit. That is 98,000 euros in store and 132,000 euros online, 230,000 euros in total, a blended 0.575 per cent. Now shift five points of turnover from stores to the webshop, which is roughly what a normal year does. Two million euros crossing from 0.35 to 1.10 per cent adds 15,000 euros to the cost base, and not one line of your contract changed.

That 15,000 euros is EBITDA, and under a single blended German line it is invisible, because a mix shift and a rate rise look identical on a statement. What makes it visible is reporting the two channels separately and tracking the online share as a cost driver in its own right. On this rail, the number that decides your German cost base is not the rate you negotiated. It is the share of turnover that no longer touches a terminal.

Reviewing what this costs you

What you pay is set in your PSP contract, not by the scheme. Start by establishing whether you are overpaying your PSP, or move straight to cutting your PSP costs, where interchange, scheme fees and markup are separated before anything is negotiated.

Relevant markets: Germany