girocard, Debit Mastercard, Visa Debit: the same receipt, three completely different prices

The short answer

girocard is by far the cheapest card rail for you as a merchant in Germany — in the same public price lists it sits at 0.16 to 0.26 per cent, while Debit Mastercard and Visa Debit cost between 0.89 and 1.25 per cent there. Your customers do not decide this consciously: they pull out the card their bank sent them.

This is therefore not a technical question but a cost question, and it shifts quietly every month — away from girocard, towards the international debit brands.

Why there are suddenly three cards in circulation that look the same

Until 2023, almost every girocard carried a co-badge from Maestro or V Pay — that was the international rail on the same card. Since 1 July 2023 no new girocards with a Maestro co-badge may be issued; cards already issued remain valid until their expiry date (girocard.eu, announcement of 1 June 2023). As a replacement, the institutions are turning to Debit Mastercard, Visa Debit, in part still V Pay, and in part to a second, standalone card alongside the girocard.

For the customer that is a card swap. For you it is a tariff change nobody discussed with you. A Debit Mastercard looks like a girocard at the terminal and behaves like a girocard when paying — but it runs over the international card systems and their fee logic.

In everyday use they can only be told apart in two places: on the card face, where the girocard logo is missing or stands next to the Mastercard or Visa mark, and on the receipt, which states the payment application actually used. At the till that is not a workable distinction, and that is exactly why hardly any business notices the shift before it lays its annual statements side by side. The figure that matters is not the advertised percentage but the share of each card type in your bookings.

What the difference costs in concrete terms

Three providers publish their terms openly. All values retrieved directly from the provider pages on 20 September 2026:

Provider / tariff	girocard	International debit (listed as Maestro / V PAY)	Credit card
PAYONE Classic	0.26 %	not publicly stated	1.49 %
PAYONE All Time Flex	0.89 %	0.89 %	1.90 %
CCV, “Zahlungsmöglichkeiten” page	€0.06 per transaction + 0.159 % + 0.06 %	€0.06 per transaction + 1.25 %	€0.06 per transaction + 1.25 %, business card 1.60 %
Raiffeisen-Volksbank Miltenberg (VR Payment)	0.160–0.195 % + €0.10 per 10 transactions started	0.89 %	1.29 % plus surcharges for business cards and non-European cards

Two things stand out. First: at CCV the international debit card costs the same as a credit card, around six times the girocard. Second: to this day the lists carry this item under the names “Maestro” and “V PAY”, that is, under brands that have been discontinued in new business. So have it confirmed in writing under which line Debit Mastercard and Visa Debit are billed. That is not pedantry; after the credit card it is the most expensive line in your contract.

The error of reasoning: it is not the interchange fee

The obvious explanation would be that the international debit card carries a higher statutory fee. It does not. Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2015/751 caps the interchange fee on consumer debit card transactions at 0.2 per cent, Article 4 caps credit cards at 0.3 per cent — and as a four-party system, girocard falls under this just as Visa Debit does.

The difference therefore arises in the two components beside it: in the scheme fees of the international card systems and in your provider's margin. On top of that comes the German peculiarity: since the Bundeskartellamt (German competition authority) forced the abandonment of the uniform merchant service charge of 0.3 per cent, minimum 0.08 euros, on 8 April 2014, the girocard charge has been negotiated individually. Its president Andreas Mundt said expressly at the time that such negotiations were “now possible for small merchants too, via their respective payment network operators”. How these components add up to the final price is in my article on the eight cost components of a terminal contract.

Worked example: what a shift in the card mix costs

In its own tariff calculator PAYONE uses 62 per cent girocard, 6 per cent debit card and 32 per cent credit card (retrieved on 20 September 2026) — the most reliable public reference mix the German market offers. Alongside it, the average girocard payment amount in the first half of 2026: 36.12 euros.

A business with 10,000 euros of card turnover a month therefore comes to around 277 bookings: 172 girocard, 17 international debit, 88 credit card. Calculated with the price list of Raiffeisen-Volksbank Miltenberg, girocard in the unfavourable case at 0.195 per cent:

Card type	Turnover	Rate	Merchant discount rate per month
girocard	€6,200	0.195 % + €0.10 per 10 transactions	€12.09 + €1.80 = €13.89
Debit Mastercard / Visa Debit	€600	0.89 %	€5.34
Credit card	€3,200	1.29 %	€41.28
Total	€10,000		€60.51, blended rate 0.61 %

This is a model calculation with disclosed assumptions, not an offer: someone else's price list, someone else's reference mix, the same average ticket across all card types.

Now the shift that is actually taking place. Ten percentage points of bookings move from girocard to the international debit card because customers have been given new cards. That is around 1,000 euros of turnover billed at 0.89 per cent (8.90 euros) instead of 0.195 per cent (1.95 euros): just under 7 euros more a month, a good 83 euros a year — with identical business, an identical terminal, and without anybody having done anything wrong.

On high tickets the same effect becomes more painful. A trades business at 450 euros per invoice pays, on the same price list, 0.88 euros if the customer uses girocard, 4.01 euros on Visa Debit and 5.81 euros on the credit card. Five euros of difference, decided by the customer in three seconds at your display.

Who decides which brand runs

This is the point almost no provider explains, although it is written in the Regulation. Article 8(6) of Regulation (EU) 2015/751 prohibits card schemes, issuers, acquirers and technical providers from equipping a terminal with mechanisms “limiting the choice of payment brand or payment application by the payer and the payee” on co-badged cards. Then comes the sentence that counts for you: payees retain the option of installing automatic mechanisms in the equipment used at the point of sale which make a priority selection of a particular payment brand — but may not prevent the payer from overriding it.

Translated: you may prioritise girocard on your terminal. The customer may object. Both are permitted, and in practice both are barely used, because the default was set at delivery and nobody has looked since. Anyone with two separate cards in their wallet decides for themselves anyway, and with Apple Pay or Google Pay the stored card decides — what then arrives at the terminal is an entirely ordinary transaction of the underlying brand. A device that does not handle contactless girocard cleanly loses these payments altogether; the contactless limit and the PIN rule fit in here.

What to do now

1. Break the last monthly statement down into girocard, international debit card and credit card. If it shows only one aggregate figure, you have a blended tariff — Article 9 of the Regulation requires itemisation unless you have asked in writing for blending.
2. Have it clarified in writing under which contract item Debit Mastercard and Visa Debit run. Most price lists still name Maestro and V PAY there.
3. Measure your own card mix over two to three months instead of estimating it, and track the girocard share over time.
4. Check the priority selection in the terminal and have it prioritised for girocard if appropriate — permitted under Article 8(6), with the customer's right to override.
5. Negotiate the girocard rate separately at the next negotiation. It has been negotiable since 2014 and affects around six out of ten bookings in a typical business.
6. Work out every “one price for all cards” offer against your own mix. With a high girocard share you are subsidising other people's credit card turnover in it.