Financial institutions plan to stop supporting Giropay by the end of 2024.

Financial institutions decide to discontinue Giropay services by the end of 2024.

The end of the joint online payment method Giropay/Paydirekt of the German banks and savings banks is imminent. At their shareholders’ meeting on June 12, 2024, the shareholders of Paydirekt GmbH will decide (subject to the approval of their committees) to discontinue the Giropay payment method by the end of this year, a spokesperson said. However, final decisions on this are still pending.

Giropay/Paydirekt, launched in autumn 2015 as a competitor to PayPal, had only moderate results in terms of popularity among consumers and merchants. This situation did not improve when the German financial industry combined and bundled the payment methods Paydirekt, Giropay and Kwitt under the Giropay brand in spring 2021.

Given the disappointing market development, shareholders apparently had little interest in investing more in Paydirekt/Giropay. In addition, the European Payments Initiative (EPI), a project supported by the German Savings Banks Association, Deutsche Bank and DZ Bank, is gaining momentum in Europe.

Shareholders of Paydirekt GmbH include Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, DZ Bank for the Cooperative Financial Group and GIZS GmbH & Co. KG for the Sparkassen Group.

The German financial industry launched Paydirekt in autumn 2015 to challenge the dominance of Paypal, Visa and Mastercard in the flourishing online commerce sector. By allowing users to conveniently make internet purchases via their current account, it wanted to offer consumers a quick and easy way to pay for goods and services online.

One of the selling points of Paydirekt/Giropay was that payment data would be stored securely at the user’s main bank and on servers in Germany, ensuring greater privacy and security compared to credit card companies.

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