giropay
More info
- Owner
- German banks
- Released
- 2006–2024
- Type
- Online payment
German banks' shared button for paying online by plain bank transfer, switched off in 2024 after eighteen years and several relaunches.
The savings banks, cooperative banks and Postbank launched giropay in 2006. Shoppers were sent to their own online banking, where a prefilled transfer waited for approval, and the merchant got a payment guarantee on the spot. The design resembled the Dutch iDEAL, but where iDEAL became the national default, giropay never caught on to the same degree; German shops preferred invoices, PayPal or Sofort.
The banks tried again with the paydirekt wallet in 2015 and folded everything under the giropay name in 2021. It didn't help. The service closed at the end of 2024, and many of the same banks are now backing the pan-European Wero. It is hard to win a market where the competitor's password is already saved in the customer's browser.