Germany

Cash resilience is structural, not nostalgic

Germany's ~50% cash share is often misread as a cultural artefact. The Bundesbank's 2023 study attributes it to (a) strong privacy norms reinforced by a surveillance-wary post-war public, (b) universally-available and fee-free cash infrastructure, and (c) an unusually cash-preferring older population. The trajectory is down, but at 2-3pp/year the point at which digital will dominate is still years out.

girocard is the quiet giant — and EPI/Wero is the bet to scale it beyond Germany

girocard processes roughly 6.3bn transactions a year, exceeding combined domestic Visa and Mastercard debit volume. The European Payments Initiative's Wero wallet — launched 2024 by a consortium of German, French, Belgian and Dutch banks — aims to extend girocard-style economics across the euro area via a unified A2A payments layer. Retail rollout began in Germany H2 2025; merchant-acceptance partnerships are the gating item for 2026.

SEPA Instant is now free at most banks — the first real retail-A2A moment

The EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) took effect in October 2025, requiring SEPA banks to price instant credit transfers no higher than standard SEPA. In Germany that means the 5–25 euro per-transaction fees most Sparkasse and cooperative banks charged for instant have been abolished. Sending-side economics now match batch SEPA — the last structural blocker for retail A2A displacing girocard for peer-to-peer transfers.

Wero's consumer app is in-market, but merchant acceptance is still patchy. Acquirers and PSPs that bundle Wero acceptance with girocard and card acceptance at parity terms are positioned to capture the merchant-onboarding wave before the scheme mandate bites. Pan-EU scaling depends on FR and BeNeLux uptake; merchant tooling built today is reusable.

PSD2 has been live for five years with lacklustre PIS adoption in Germany. IPR-driven free instant settlement changes the merchant calculus: a €50 basket costs €0 via A2A vs. €0.30-0.80 via card. PSPs offering single-click, Konto-based A2A checkout with refund and chargeback parity to cards have the first live opportunity.

German SME payments rely heavily on Überweisung and manual reconciliation. Platform-embedded payables (Xero-equivalent for DATEV ecosystem) and working-capital products denominated in SEPA Instant remain under-built vs. UK or US comparables. DATEV's own payments-modernisation roadmap is a key anchor partner.