Mandatory card acceptance is a sales trick, and retailers are falling for it

There is no obligation to accept card payments in Germany. There is no bill, no ministerial draft, no date. There is one sentence in the 2025 coalition agreement describing an intention, and an answer from the federal government in September 2025 saying that work on it is going on internally, with no timetable and no sanctions. That is the entire legal position, today, on 5 September 2026.

And yet for a year and a half a sales rep has been ringing the bell at every bakery, every hairdresser's and every kiosk in Germany, advertising the obligation. “From 2026 you have to.” I have seen the sentence in sales material, in advertisements, on the landing pages of large providers. It is false, and those who use it know that.

The obligation has long existed, it just does not come from the state

What does exist is something stronger than a law. Ten days ago the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft (German Banking Industry Committee) published the girocard figures for the first half of the year: 1.397 million active terminals, eleven per cent more than a year ago. 92 per cent of all girocard payments in June were contactless. The customer has decided. He holds his card or his phone against the terminal, and if there is no terminal, he leaves.

The market does not need the obligation. Terminal sales needs it, as an argument against the customer's last question: “Do I really have to decide this now?” The honest answer would be: no, but it is worth it. The answer that sells is: yes, the law is coming.

What the fear costs

The damage does not arise from a business installing a terminal. The damage arises from how it does so. Anyone who signs under time pressure signs the contract in front of him: 36 to 72 months' term, terminal rental, service flat fee, a flat rate that bills the cheap girocard at the credit card rate, and a per-transaction fee of nine cents that turns the baker's five-euro receipt into a charge of 1.8 per cent before any percentage has been calculated at all.

And because § 270a BGB forbids the retailer from passing this fee on to the customer, every cent of it comes off his margin. At a bakery with a four per cent return on sales, a bad terminal contract decides over a quarter of the profit. That is the figure that appears in no advertisement.

What I expect from retailers

I sell terminals myself. I have an interest in businesses accepting cards. That is precisely why I say: the obligation is not an argument, and anyone who uses it as one does not want to advise but to close.

From the associations, the retail federation and the chambers of skilled crafts, I expect them to tell their members this, clearly and repeatedly: there is no law. Read the contract. Demand every cost item in writing. Sign nothing on the day of the visit.

From the providers I expect them to stop advertising with a law that does not exist. It is misleading advertising, and it poisons the market for everyone who does their sums honestly.

And from the legislator I expect, should the obligation ever come, that it be coupled with a second obligation: full, itemised disclosure of costs before the contract is concluded. The Interchange Regulation has required that since 2015, and hardly any retailer has ever seen such a statement. If the state forces businesses to accept cards, it also has to protect them from the contracts that get signed in the process.

The only obligation that applies in 2026 is the retailer's obligation to read his contract. Everything else is sales.