The 2026 payment trends: Our report from the EHI Payment Kongress.

Cash has fallen below the one-third threshold for the first time.

The key market development in German physical retail stores remains clear: cash continues to lose significance, while card-based payments are growing.

According to the EHI, cash accounted for 32.3% of sales in 2025. The year before, this figure was 33.8%. Cash has thus fallen below the one-third threshold for the first time!

Card payments increased to 65.1% of sales in 2025. This amounts to growth of 1.6% compared to 2024. Despite a slight drop, the girocard remains the main payment method in physical retail stores. Its share of sales fell, however, from 41.5% in 2024 to 40.5% in 2025.

Payment mix development in German retail

International debit cards in Germany still on a growth course.

By contrast, international debit cards remained on a growth course in Germany in 2025. From a customer perspective, Visa Debit and Debit Mastercard offer advantages of international usability, e-commerce ability and mobile payment. This is reflected in their growing popularity with consumers.

At the POS, Visa Debit, Debit Mastercard, V PAY and Maestro increased their share of the payment mix from 6.9% in 2024 to 9.4% in 2025 according to the EHI. This amounts to growth of 2.5 percentage points.

The EHI analysis of international credit and debit cards also shows the increasing relevance of these methods: international credit and debit cards accounted for sales of 88.794 billion euros in 2025 and thus for a 17.6% market share of all sales in physical retail stores in Germany.

This development is of strategic relevance for retail because, in addition to different application possibilities, compared to girocard international debit cards also have different fee structures, which usually means higher costs for retail companies.

girocard vs international debit cards in Germany

Mobile payment has taken root.

Contactless payment is now standard: according to the EHI, all major companies on the EHI panel can process contactless girocard and credit card payments. 94.0% of all girocard transactions and 94.6% of all credit card transactions were contactless in 2025!

In this field, mobile payment is seeing the biggest growth. While around 12.85% of cashless payments in Germany were made using a mobile device in 2024, this increased to 19.26% in 2025.

It’s interesting to take a look at mobile use within contactless payments: according to the EHI, around 15.5% of all contactless girocard payments, 32.5% of all contactless credit card payments and 45% of all contactless debit card payments are already being performed with cards stored digitally on a mobile device.

Share of mobile payments in Germany in 2025

Cashback continues to grow – and is becoming a burden for retailers.

The cashback service enables customers to “withdraw” cash at the POS as part of their purchase. Cashback sales in German retail stores rose from 13.57 billion euros (2024) to 15.18 billion in 2025. This amounts to growth of around 11.84%!

Retailers are increasingly raising the question of roles and costs in the context of cashback: retailers do not see themselves as “system-relevant strategic cash suppliers”, object to being forced to offer it and would like at least cost-neutral processing of cash payouts – rather than having to pay fees themselves for this service.

Customer loyalty is going digital: from cards to apps

The mobile trend is also noticeable when it comes to customer loyalty in Germany. Loyalty apps are increasingly moving away from physical customer cards: just 13.5% of the surveyed major retail companies are exclusively using physical customer cards in 2026; 31.5% combined a digital app and card and 42.4% relied exclusively on a digital app.

Customer loyalty is thus increasingly shifting towards app-based ecosystems. This development is relevant for payment because retailer apps can combine loyalty, offers, digital receipts and payment functions more heavily in future.

PAYBACK remains by far the biggest loyalty programme in Germany. The number of users has grown from 31 million (2024) to 35 million (2025/2026). Here too, the trend is towards app use: Over 18 million active users now regularly access the mobile PAYBACK app.

The digital euro: Infrastructure project with political ambition

The digital euro is currently in the development phase and aims to make cashless payments in the EU more independent and efficient, as well as increase the sovereignty of the EU monetary system with regard to private (often international) payment providers and crypto currencies.

The Bundesbank describes it as a retail central bank digital currency (retail CBDC): This is a digital version of cash that is directly issued by a central bank. It’s intended for the general public – i.e. private individuals and companies.

The Bundesbank says the key merits of the digital euro include the validity of the currency across the entire eurozone, its status as safe central bank money, fee-free basic services, privacy protection, offline availability and the broad range of applications at the POS, in e-commerce and between private individuals (peer-to-peer payments).

If the legislative process relating to the digital euro is completed in 2026, the new currency will be issued in 2029. Acceptance will be mandatory for all companies

The prospect of being forced to offer this additional payment method was questioned as another burden for retailers by some of the audience during the subsequent discussion.

Wero / EPI: A European alternative that still needs to prove itself.

Wero is the new European payment system from the European Payment Initiative (EPI). The aim is to facilitate European scaling using a cross-border system – and to establish a serious alternative to the US providers Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal.

These US providers are currently profiting in particular from the fact that they use existing card infrastructures and global platform ecosystems. This enables them to scale much faster than many individual national solutions.

Wero currently allows users to send and receive money in real time direct from bank account to bank account and to pay online.

Participants’ assessment of Wero’s success is mixed, but it is noticeably higher compared to previous years: just 32.5% still believe that Wero will remain a niche product, while 31.3% believe that the new system is capturing notable market share online (still 14.3% in 2025). 10.8% now credit the system with market-leading success, though.

The response is still somewhat reserved when it comes to plans to introduce Wero in their own company: 74.6% of the surveyed companies want to wait to see how Wero continues to develop, 11.3% are planning to introduce Wero in 2026 in e-commerce and 14.1% are planning to introduce Wero in 2026 both in e-commerce and at the POS. So there is still some work to do here on persuasion.

Despite the current marketing pressure and the more positive assessment from retailers compared to previous years: how well the new system is accepted by consumers and retailers in the future will be crucial for its success.

Bluecode: Another European mobile payment alternative

Bluecode (a member of the EMPSA association) was presented at the EHI Payment Kongress as a mobile payment solution at the POS for the European market.

The payment process for Bluecode works by scanning a barcode or QR code. The system is based on the vision of all Europeans being able to use their national payment solution Europe-wide without barriers or charges.

Whether this solution will achieve notable market penetration remains to be seen, however.

The case of Deichmann: A template for new payment strategies?

Deichmann and its partner CMSPI presented an exemplary case for this development: the central aims of this payment infrastructure project were greater resilience, regulatory security, regional scalability, optimised terminal management, more precise payment reporting and greater payment independence for the future.

The results included the introduction of Android-based terminals and a mobile cash register app with the second acquirer, which were intended to increase protection against failures in the future and improve customer experience.

More focus on architecture!
New strategies for payment systems

The case of Deichmann exemplifies a trend that we’re seeing with larger retail companies in particular: payment and the systems behind it have become a critical strategic issue. Modern payment architectures help retailers to integrate new payment methods more quickly, incorporate multiple acquirers or service providers in parallel and implement more robust protection against failure scenarios.

The four stages of agentic commerce

In its talk, Otto Payments divided agentic commerce into four development stages that retail companies will likely have to go through in the future:

While the checkout responsibility in stage one and two still lies with the webshop, that shifts in stage three and four: agents perform checkout here, which has major implications for the entire payment process.

Agentic commerce alters fraud prevention.

The developments around agentic commerce also have a critical impact on how retailers and payment providers will use fraud prevention tools in the future. This became particularly apparent during the talk by RISK IDENT.

A series of internal and external data points along the entire customer journey are currently used to detect potential fraud attempts: account and order data, payment information, customer profiles, data enhancement, device data and – in the future – agent data.

Many of these signals are, however, based on the stages of a human-influenced purchase process. In agent-managed scenarios, these signals are not present or become harder to interpret.

The implications of this for fraud prevention in the future should not be underestimated. Against this background, RISK IDENT recommends creating the greatest possible transparency throughout the purchase process and taking risk management into account from the start.