Point of sale payments in Germany

The till sends the amount to the terminal, the terminal reads the card by chip or NFC and sends an authorization request, the issuer approves or declines, and approved payments are captured in a batch, usually at the end of the day, and settled to the merchant minus interchange, scheme fees and the acquirer's margin (Solidgate). A card-present payment usually falls into a lower interchange category than the same purchase online; the fees are on the card scheme fees page.

For the girocard, the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft approves each terminal type. Its list of approved girocard terminals (in German) names, per model, the till interface, such as the ZVT interface, and the approved functions: contact and contactless girocard, reservation of an amount, cashback, tip entry, and whether the terminal is attended or unattended.

The IHK Pfalz overview of card terminals (in German) gives typical figures: a rented stationary terminal costs about 6 to 14 euros a month plus a service fee, each payment about 7 to 12 cents plus a share of the amount, around 0.2 to 0.27 percent for the girocard with PIN and 1.5 to 3 percent for credit cards. Credit card acceptance needs a separate contract with an acquirer. The IHK warns of long terms and fees for updates in terminal contracts.

Contactless NFC is the norm: 88.5 percent of girocard payments in December 2025 ran this way (IT Finanzmagazin, in German). Phone wallets such as Apple Pay send a token in place of the card number, and SoftPOS turns the merchant's own phone into the terminal, which in Germany has worked with the girocard since the savings banks received approval for Tap to Pay on iPhone.

The next change comes from account-to-account payments. Unit Economics names Pix in Brazil and UPI in India as instant payment systems that have lowered the cost of payments for merchants (Unit Economics). In Europe, Wero builds on SEPA instant transfers, and the digital euro is planned for payments at the till as well.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people who run payments at the till in Germany: acquirers, terminal network operators, the payment companies of the savings and cooperative banks, retailers and the fintechs that build SoftPOS and 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.

A payment made in person at the place of sale, usually at a terminal by card, phone or watch. Card networks treat it as card-present, which usually means lower interchange than an online payment.

The device that reads the card and sends the payment for authorization. It can be a countertop unit, a mobile terminal on WLAN or a mobile network, an unattended terminal in a machine, or a phone with a SoftPOS app.

ZVT connects the merchant's till system to the card terminal in Germany, so the till sends the amount and receives the result. The Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft lists the ZVT version of each approved girocard terminal.

There is no general duty yet. The card payments in Germany page covers the plan of the coalition agreement for at least one digital payment option.