Contactless payments in Germany

Card and terminal talk over NFC, the radio standard ISO/IEC 14443 at 13.56 MHz, which works at a distance of about four centimeters or less (Wikipedia). The chip creates a new code for every payment, so data read from one transaction cannot be replayed for the next. A phone or watch wallet sends a token in place of the card number, as the hub answer on payment tokenization explains.

For the merchant and the acquirer, a contactless payment is a card-present payment like one with chip and PIN. It goes through the same authorization, clearing and settlement, and the same card scheme fees apply.

The EU rules on strong customer authentication allow a contactless payment at a terminal without a PIN when it is 50 euros or less, as long as the payments since the last full check stay under 150 euros in total or under five in number. That exemption is Article 11 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389. A bank may set lower limits for its own cards.

For the girocard, the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft raised the limit without PIN from 25 to 50 euros per payment in spring 2020. Its press release (in German) repeated that cardholders must enter the PIN again after five payments or 150 euros at the latest, and counted more than 75 million contactless girocards among over 100 million. A phone wallet works differently: the payment is confirmed with fingerprint, face or passcode on the device, so the PIN count does not apply. The strong customer authentication page covers the rules behind it.

The girocard carried about 8.3 billion payments in 2025. In December 2025, 88.5 percent of them were contactless, against 86.8 percent a year before, and 1.344 million terminals were active, according to EURO Kartensysteme figures reported by IT Finanzmagazin (in German).

Phones are a growing share of these taps. The Bundesbank found mobile payments at 10 percent of all payments in 2025, as the card payments in Germany page shows. The UK allows more: its limit is 100 pounds per contactless card payment.

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

Visa is an event and network partner of Finance Loop. Frankfurt, where Finance Loop is built in collaboration with TechQuartier, is home to EURO Kartensysteme, which runs the girocard.

For the girocard it is 50 euros per payment without PIN, the maximum the EU rules allow; other cards follow the setting of their issuing bank. After five payments without PIN, or 150 euros in total, the card asks for the PIN again.

Because the cumulative count was reached. The EU rules require a full check once five payments or 150 euros have passed since the last PIN entry, whatever the amount of the next payment.

Phone wallets confirm each payment with the phone's own unlock, which counts as strong customer authentication. The 50 euro limit for cards without PIN therefore does not apply in the same way, though the bank and the merchant's terminal can still set limits.

Each payment uses a one-time code from the chip, and a wallet uses a token, so the card number is not exposed. The risk is a lost card used for small payments until the PIN count stops it, which is why the 150 euro and five-payment rule exists.