Sofort

Sofortüberweisung launched in Bavaria in 2005. The customer typed in their banking credentials and a TAN, the service logged into online banking, checked the balance and made an ordinary transfer. The merchant got instant confirmation, which a normal bank transfer never provided, and card-averse Germans got an alternative to credit cards.

The banks were less charmed and wrote into their terms that customers must not hand out their credentials. Germany's Bundeskartellamt struck those terms down in 2016, and PSD2 turned the model into a regulated role, the payment initiation service. Klarna bought the company in 2014 and has gradually folded it into its own brand.