Six savings banks have already started or completed the switchover to Girocards with additional Mastercard features.
(Photo: Shenzhen Photo)
frankfurt Over the next six months, many Sparkasse customers will receive the e-commerce enabled Girocard. As Joachim Schmalzl, member of the board of directors of the German Savings Banks and Transfer Association (DSGV), said at this week’s Savings Bank Day event, around a third of the 46 million cards are expected to be exchanged this year. one. The entire exchange is distributed over three years.
Girocards (better known under the old name “EC Card”), Maestro and V-Pay functions of most savings banks will be replaced by Mastercard and Visa in the future.
To date, almost all Girocards issued by savings banks use the Maestro function – a MasterCard application for foreign payments at the cash register. But American Payments Group will discontinue the feature. So, with few exceptions, banks will only be able to issue new cards with Maestro functionality until July of this year.
No more Maestro functionality: Girocards are still debit cards
As an alternative, Savings Banks and Volksbanks will in the future use Mastercard and Visa as an add-on to Girocard, in the technical term “Co-Badge”. In addition to paying abroad, the combined Mastercard and Visa badge also supports online payments – much like you would with a credit card. The new Girocards will also mainly feature a 16-digit number.
However, Girocards are still debit cards. All payments are debited directly from the account.
The new joint badge enables Savings Bank customers who already have their Girocard stored in their smartphone wallet on their iPhone to now also be able to use Apple Pay to make payments abroad. So far this is not possible with Maestro or V-Pay.
60% of the new Girocard (formerly known as the “EC Card”) from Savings Bank has an additional MasterCard feature – recognizable by red and orange circles and 16 digits.
(Photo: Savings Bank)
About 60% of savings banks choose Girocard MasterCard. The rest relies on Visa, a major gain for the second-largest U.S. payments group. So far, only a handful of savings banks use V-Pay, Maestro’s Visa counterpart. Visa has not yet announced an end date for issuing new girocards with V-Pay as a joint badge.
>> Read more here: Germany is still a cash country – almost 60% of all payments are made in cash
Unlike Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken, only a small percentage of savings bank customers need to expect that they will be asked to obtain approval from their financial institutions during the card replacement process. “The new card terms and conditions are included in the existing terms and conditions of 80 percent of savings banks,” Schmalzl said.
This comes against the backdrop of banks tweaking their general terms and conditions (GTC) two years ago following a Federal Court ruling and requiring customer consent to charge prevailing fees. The Savings Bank has added the conditions for the new Girocard type to the new terms and conditions. The judgment was aimed at Postbank, but affects all banks as the general terms and conditions are similar across the industry.
Volksbanks seeks consent from customers
However, a number of cooperative banks that began to change their cards at the end of August need to re-obtain the conditions for customers to recognize MasterCard or Visa Girocard.
On request, the industry association BVR said: “We have advised our members to change the joint badge in order to obtain agreement to the terms and conditions.” agree.
According to BVR, partner institutions will exchange some 6.6 million Girocards this year, more than half of which will use V-Pay. Some Volksbanks may continue to issue Girocards with Maestro from July onwards.
Pilot project: E-commerce functions are widely used
Several of the private banks that issue the Girocard have yet to comment on the exact procedure for future joint badges. In some cases, they should also rely on Mastercard’s extension of the deadline. Several foreign banks and online banks mainly offer debit cards directly from MasterCard and Visa, with Girocards only to a lesser extent.
Some European countries have their own card payment system, similar to Girocard in Germany. In other countries, banks mainly offer Visa and Mastercard debit cards.
Six savings banks have already started or even completed the switchover to Girocards with additional Mastercard functionality. A savings bank launched Visa’s Girocards as a pilot. Schmalzl said the e-commerce functionality is widely used, far more than Giropay. Giropay is an online payment method for German banks, and the company behind it is called Paydirekt.
more: New Competition for Visa and Co.: Banks to Offer European Payments in 2024