girocard in the first half of 2026: record terminal numbers, but a shrinking basket
4.21 billion payments, 151.9 billion euros in turnover, 1.397 million terminals. Transactions are up four per cent, turnover only 0.8 per cent. For merchants that means more bookings for the same money.
What happened
EURO Kartensysteme, the company that runs the girocard scheme on behalf of the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft (German Banking Industry Committee), published its half-year figures on 25 August 2026. The girocard was used around 4.21 billion times for payments in the first half of the year, up 4.0 per cent on the same period last year. Turnover came to 151.9 billion euros, 0.8 per cent more. The number of active terminals rose by 11.1 per cent to 1.397 million, a new high. In June, around 92 per cent of all girocard payments were contactless, up from 88 per cent in June 2025. The average payment amount fell from 37.28 euros to 36.12 euros.
Who is affected
Every merchant in Germany with a card terminal, and in particular businesses with a lot of small receipts: bakeries, kiosks, cafés, hairdressers, takeaways.
Assessment
The headline says record; the merchant's own arithmetic says something else. If the number of transactions rises by four per cent but turnover only by 0.8 per cent, customers are paying more often and in smaller amounts. That is good for customer loyalty and bad for any contract with a fixed fee per transaction. At seven to eleven cents per booking, the usual range in the German payment network operator (Netzbetreiber) market, a five-euro receipt effectively costs up to 2.2 per cent, no matter how low the advertised merchant discount rate is.
The eleven per cent increase in terminals is the second message. Growth has almost doubled against the previous year, and it is not coming from grocery retail, which has long been fully equipped, but from small businesses. And that is precisely where contracts with terms of 36 to 72 months are being signed right now. Anyone entering the market today is fixing their cost structure for years.
What to do now
- Pull your own average basket size from the till system and compare it against the per-transaction fee in your contract.
- At ticket sizes below 15 euros, look at offers without a fixed per-transaction fee; above 50 euros, focus on a low percentage rate.
- Take the 92 per cent contactless share seriously: a terminal without fast NFC slows down the checkout.