girocard

Last updated: 9 September 2026

The girocard is the debit card system of the German banking industry and by far the most widely used card scheme in Germany. It combines a card tied to a current account with its own acceptance, authorisation and clearing system – and therefore works differently from an international credit card.

Three terms that are not the same

• girocard is the scheme and the brand since 2007. The colloquial German term “EC-Karte” goes back to the predecessor scheme electronic cash and has not been a system name since.
• giropay was an online payment scheme run by the German banking industry; its discontinuation was decided at the end of 2024. It has nothing to do with the girocard at the terminal.
• GiroCode is the QR code carrying credit transfer data on invoices – a separate topic, described in the glossary under GiroCode.

Significance in Germany

In the first half of 2026 the German banking industry recorded 4.21 billion girocard transactions, up 4.0 per cent year on year. Turnover reached EUR 151.9 billion, and the number of terminals rose by 11.1 per cent to 1.397 million (prior-year period: 1.257 million). In June 2026, 92 per cent of all payments were contactless.

More telling than the growth figures is the average amount per payment: it fell from EUR 37.28 to EUR 36.12 while transaction numbers rose. The girocard is moving into amounts that used to be paid in cash as a matter of course – the bakery and the weekly market, not the electronics store.

Who runs the system

The system has been operated since 1990 by the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, the joint body of the German banking associations. It sets the rules, defines the technical specifications and decides who may take part. Operational scheme management sits with EURO Kartensysteme GmbH; the approval office is hosted by the association of public banks.

This construction explains a peculiarity: unlike international card systems there is no single operator pursuing a profit, but a scheme jointly carried by the banking industry. Both terminals as a type and network operators as companies require approval.

Processing: terminal, network operator, authorisation

Between merchant and bank sits a role that exists in this form only in the German card market: the network operator. It runs the technical route from the terminal into the authorisation systems, requires approval from the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, and is the merchant’s contractual partner for terminal operation.

A payment falls into two separate processes. First the authorisation: the customer inserts or taps the card, the terminal passes the request to the network operator, which forwards it to the card issuer’s authorisation system. Once approval comes back, the merchant has a payment guarantee – the decisive difference from the German electronic direct debit procedure. Everything else follows afterwards.

Whether the customer has to enter a PIN is not a property of the scheme but depends on the situation. For contactless payments of smaller amounts – the threshold currently being EUR 50 – entry is normally not required; at irregular intervals the system asks for it anyway, for security reasons. Above that threshold it is required. When paying by smartphone, the release usually happens on the device rather than at the terminal.

Clearing through SEPA Card Clearing

The actual movement of money does not run over the authorisation route but through SEPA Card Clearing. Technically the procedure is an extension of the SEPA direct debit: the card payment is transmitted as a collection enriched with card-specific data. Settlement runs through the Deutsche Bundesbank’s SEPA Clearer.

This places the girocard in the same message world as the rest of payments: submission as pain.008, interbank exchange as pacs.003, returns as pacs.004. Besides card payments it also covers ATM withdrawals and the co-badged variants. One peculiarity: because there is no European EPC rulebook for cards, the procedure rests on a Berlin Group standard.

Co-badging and use abroad

The girocard is a purely national scheme – it is not accepted abroad. For a card to work across borders it carries a second brand, the co-badge. For decades this was Mastercard’s Maestro.

Since 1 July 2023 no new cards carrying the Maestro co-badge are issued. Cards already in circulation remain fully functional until they expire; as German cards typically run for four years, the last Maestro variants will expire by the end of 2027. Debit Mastercard, Visa Debit and V Pay take their place. Some institutions take a different route and issue two separate cards – a girocard and a debit card.

In practice this means the customer does not decide which function applies; the terminal and the acceptance situation do. The overview below shows which brand carries where.

Contactless, mobile and digital

Contactless has become the normal case: 92 per cent of all girocard payments in June 2026 were contactless. Technically this rests on NFC and the card's chip application.

Beyond that, the girocard can be held as a digital card in the wallets of the common smartphone providers. The card application then no longer sits on the physical chip; providers of digital cards need their own approval from the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft.

Technical specifications

Terminals and cards follow a rulebook of their own. The Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft issues the terminal specifications and updates them regularly; terminals are approved as a type, network operators as companies. All transactions have run through the EMV chip application since 2013; the magnetic stripe no longer plays a role. For communication between the point of sale and the terminal, protocols of their own have become established in the German market.

At European level girocard works with the nexo specifications, which aim to harmonise card and terminal protocols across borders, and with shared certification frameworks that spare manufacturers a separate certification per market. The versions in force are published by the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft; anyone implementing should take them from there rather than rely on secondary sources.

Additional functions

• Cash withdrawal at the point of sale. Retailers hand out cash at the till, booked as a card payment – in many places now the replacement for a missing ATM.
• Age verification. The card can be used to verify age at vending machines, for instance for cigarettes.
• Distinction from the electronic direct debit procedure. There the card is only read in order to generate a direct debit – without authorisation by the card issuer and therefore without a payment guarantee. To the customer the process at the terminal looks similar; for the merchant the risk is entirely different.

Sources

• girocard – half-year figures 2026
• Die Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft – the girocard system
• girocard – the end of Maestro
• girocard – standardisation and European certification
• girocard – FAQ on contactless payment
• EURO Kartensysteme – girocard scheme management