What is Giropay?
Established in 2005, Giropay is a perfect success story in Germany. It is an online payment solution headquartered in Frankfurt.
At first, the service was a collaborative effort by:
- Postbank (a retail arm of Deutsche bank)
- The German Cooperative Financial Services Network, and
- The German Savings Bank Group.
As such, the consortium put Giropay above several other fintech services.
Nowadays, bank partnerships are not so rare. However, the situation in the first decade of this century was quite different.
Not many financial institutions were willing to tread the online route. This is because customers were still skeptical about using the internet for financial purposes.
The emergence of eCommerce stores and iGaming made online payments a necessity. Notably, the main issue revolved around the sharing of user details. Existing security measures could not prevent various cybercrimes including credit card hacks and fraud.
Giropay was then created to tackle these problems. In fact, the company’s approach made the brand an instant hit in Germany.
By 2008, Giropay had processed upwards of 3.2 million transactions. The number has been on the rise since.
In 2014, Giropay merged with EPS, the leading online payment solution in Austria. Consequently, Giropay’s service became available in the two countries. The merger opened up a potential of 45+ million customers.
In 2019, Giropay saw yet another significant breakthrough when it adopted a new PSD2 (X2A) interface. This advancement allowed the brand to serve customers of non-partner banks. It resulted in near-total bank coverage all over Germany.
Today, approximately 1500 German and Austrian financial institutions are in consortium with Giropay. The brand currently processes about a million transactions daily.
Due to its credibility, most gambling sites in Austria and Germany allow Giropay payments.
