Giropay goes, Wero comes
The internet payment service Giropay and the responsible company Paydirekt will be wound up at the end of 2024. The new Wero service will fill the gap.
The Giropay payment service in use
(Image: giropay)
The German savings and cooperative banks as well as Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have decided at a shareholders' meeting to wind up their internet payment service Giropay by the end of the year. This was confirmed by Dr. Joachim Schmalzl, Managing Director of the German Savings Banks and Giro Association, at the "DK-Info" event of the German Banking Industry on Thursday. The operating company Paydirekt GmbH is also to be dissolved. Although other bodies still have to formally agree, this is considered a formality. The payment method recently lost further market share and, according to the EHI Institute, only handled 0.4% of sales in German e-commerce in 2023.
Giropay users are likely to be informed by their bank or savings bank before the end. Basically, they just need to remove Giropay from their online banking and delete the Giropay user account at the same time. Merchants should receive the notice of termination by the end of the year and must remove the payment method from their stores by then at the latest. Incidentally, the Girocard ("EC card") payment card for stationary retail is expressly not affected by the discontinuation. It will continue to be available as usual, including in its digital form for savings bank customers in Apple Pay, for example. Although the digital Girocard for Giropay customers with Android smartphones will no longer be available, it can also be technically integrated into other environments.
Observers consider the end to be logical considering the decline in market share and allegedly high fixed costs. The participating institutions had bundled the Paydirekt payment method based on the email address of the company of the same name with the Giropay transfer procedure in 2021 and also significantly simplified the payment process at the end of 2022 and finally equipped it with buyer protection. Nevertheless, the registration process for Giropay continued to deter many customers. Many retailers also refrained from using Giropay due to the lengthy and complicated setup process.
Wero launches - but too late for Giropay
Nevertheless, most experts had assumed that Giropay would remain a payment method in online stores until the new European service Wero is launched. Wero is set to launch at the end of June 2024 in the online banking of savings banks and cooperative banks and in the following months also at Postbank, Deutsche Bank and ING, but initially only for person-to-person payments (P2P). A standalone app, such as in Switzerland (Twint) or Denmark (MobilePay), is also planned for the second half of the year. As things stand, however, Wero will not be available for online stores until mid-2025, with the service coming to bricks-and-mortar retailers a little later.
(mon)