Mandatory card acceptance 2027: what Klingbeil's key points really say

What happened

The declaration of intent in the coalition agreement has become a paper. Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil has drawn up key points for an obligation to offer a digital payment option; the news agency dpa reported this on 11 September 2026. Under the plan, businesses would have to offer at least one digital payment option alongside cash — card, smartphone or smartwatch — everywhere goods and services are paid for directly on site. Which method that is would be up to the business, but at least one European method must be among them. Minimum amounts and surcharges for small sums would be ruled out, making the coffee just as digitally payable as the washing machine. Non-commercial organisations such as amateur sports clubs and charitable associations remain exempt, as do street festivals and flea markets; hardship provisions are still being examined, according to the report. The project is justified by customer demand and by the fight against tax evasion, money laundering and financial crime. The key points are in interdepartmental coordination, a cabinet decision is due to follow in 2026, and entry into force is planned for 2027. There was no press release from the Bundesfinanzministerium (Federal Ministry of Finance) itself on the day of the reporting; no bill has yet been presented.

Who is affected

Every business with till contact: retail, hospitality, bakeries, hairdressers, trades with cash sales, kiosks, market traders with a business registration. Especially those businesses that currently deliberately write “cash only” or stick a minimum-amount threshold of five or ten euros on the terminal. For payment network operators, till manufacturers and payment service providers it is the largest demand expectation since the switch to contactless.

Assessment

Retail reads these key points as a cost issue, and that falls short. According to dpa, Ulrich Binnebößel of the Handelsverband Deutschland calls a statutory rule completely unnecessary, saying it creates bureaucracy and uncertainty because merchants would have to accept the whole range of cards; the association therefore demands the right to pass card fees on to customers. But the real point of decision sits elsewhere in the paper: at least one European method. That is an industrial policy statement in favour of girocard and Wero, packaged as consumer protection — and it is cheaper for merchants than the opposite, because European debit methods have carried the lower fees at the POS for years.

The figures argue against the drama anyway. According to the EHI study “Zahlungssysteme im Einzelhandel 2025”, around 63.5 per cent of retail turnover was already generated by card in 2024, while the cash share fell to 33.8 per cent. The obligation therefore does not hit the mainstream but a shrinking minority — and that is exactly where the difficult question lies that the key points leave open: what counts as a hardship case? The snack bar without internet, the weekly market stall in a mobile dead spot, the ice cream parlour with a twelve-week season. The ban on minimum amounts is no small matter arithmetically either: anyone settling 1.80 euros for a bread roll by card pays the highest percentage on that transaction. Anyone who does the maths now instead of protesting in 2027 negotiates from a better position.

What to do now

1. Check which methods your own terminal actually accepts today — girocard, debit and credit cards, wallets. Anyone who only accepts international cards would have catching up to do under these key points.
2. Quantify your own small-amount structure: the share of receipts under five euros and what a card payment there actually costs after the fixed per-transaction fee.
3. Review the terms of your terminal and payment network operator contracts before demand picks up in 2027. Negotiating is better before an obligation than after it.