Expansion of the Girocard: New functions for EC cards: These changes will soon be available at banks and savings banks

This article first appeared on RTL.de.

The previous Girocard will be gradually converted in the coming years. Customers should then be able to use a whole range of new functions.

With the new changes, the Girocard should be competitive with other card systems and payment service providers. Some of these have been offering integration into mobile phone wallets for some time.

PayPal is used particularly frequently for in-app purchases. That should change. “Our goal: We are faster on the market, meet the needs better and develop relevance faster,” says the managing director of Euro Kartensysteme Oliver Hommel. To this end, they are also working on additional functions that go beyond pure payment, such as e.g. B. an extended age verification when selling age-restricted product groups, says Hommel in the RTL interview.

Despite the competition, the Girocard is still popular with many Germans. With 100 million copies issued, it is the most widely used bank card in Germany.

According to the company, 6.7 million card transactions were counted in 2022, around 13 percent more than the year before.