Accepting payments in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. 6 chapters and a final quiz.

Chapter 1. Building the payment list and costing it.

A German checkout is not built the way checkouts are in Latin Europe. The first button is not the card, and it isn’t in Austria or Switzerland either. Two measures determine the list: the share of revenue each method actually carries, and what it costs the merchant. They pull in opposite directions, because the two leading methods in German e-commerce are also the most expensive.

Don’t read this table row by row. Weight it. A merchant’s acceptance cost is not a payment method’s list price. It is the average of those prices, weighted by the shares the merchant’s customers impose. Every trade-off is therefore calculated in two steps: the price saving, then the conversion lost by shifting demand.

ASSUMPTION  EHI 2026 average shares and costs, for the three methods whose
            cost is published: PayPal 28.7% · Rechnung 26.1% · SDD 14.4%

CURRENT MIX
  PayPal      0.287 x 1.94%  =  5,568 EUR
  Rechnung    0.261 x 1.42%  =  3,706 EUR
  SDD         0.144 x 0.65%  =    936 EUR
                               ----------
  total cost                     10,210 EUR   (1.02% of total revenue)

TARGET MIX  shift 5 points from PayPal to direct debit
  PayPal      0.237 x 1.94%  =  4,598 EUR
  Rechnung    0.261 x 1.42%  =  3,706 EUR
  SDD         0.194 x 0.65%  =  1,261 EUR
                               ----------
  total cost                      9,565 EUR

SAVING                              645 EUR   or 0.065% of revenue

DECISION THRESHOLD
  The move loses money as soon as the shift costs more than
  0.065% of revenue in lost conversion. On 1,000,000 EUR, that is
  645 EUR of lost sales: less than one 650 EUR order, or
  about ten 65 EUR orders. The margin for error is thin.
  Bottom line: do not remove PayPal. Add direct debit
  and move it higher in the list.

Chapter 2. Kauf auf Rechnung: transferring the risk or keeping it.

Kauf auf Rechnung (buy now, pay by invoice) is sold as a payment method. It isn’t one. The customer receives the goods, tries them, and pays within 14 or 30 days. What you buy from an invoice provider is a credit decision and, depending on the contract, a payment guarantee, not access to a rail. The price pays for risk, not processing, so you negotiate different levers than in a card acquiring contract.

• Guaranteed or non-guaranteed. Under a guaranteed contract, the provider pays you on a contractual schedule even if the customer never pays. Under a non-guaranteed contract, it only scores and invoices on your behalf: unpaid invoices stay with you.
• Scoring scope. Shipping address, internal history, credit bureau data. Check what triggers a decline, because your customers are the ones who will be declined.
• Order value limits. A minimum and a maximum order value determine whether the button appears. Set them wrong and they hide the invoice option on exactly the orders where it converts.
• Returns handling. A partial return must generate a partial credit note on the provider’s side, without asking the customer to pay again. Have this case tested before go-live: it breaks more integrations than the happy path does.
• Who owns collections. Reminders, formal notice, debt assignment: agree in writing who contacts the customer and under whose letterhead. A customer chased by two companies at once calls your customer service, not the provider’s.

DATA
  Average Kauf auf Rechnung cost ................ 1.42% of revenue  (EHI 2026)
  Recovery rate on your unpaid invoices ......... 60%               (measure your own)
  Net loss per unpaid euro ...................... 1 - 0.60 = 0.40

CALCULATION
  The guarantee pays off when
      unpaid rate x 0.40  >  1.42%
  i.e.
      unpaid rate  >  1.42% / 0.40  =  3.55% of invoiced revenue

READING
  Below 3.55% unpaid, the non-guaranteed invoice is cheaper,
  provided you know how to collect. Above that, the guarantee pays.
  The two inputs to measure BEFORE signing are therefore the unpaid
  rate and the actual recovery rate, not the list price.

TRAP   The recovery rate collapses on cross-border sales. Chasing an
       Austrian or Swiss debtor from another country costs more and
       succeeds less often: redo the calculation for each country.

Chapter 3. girocard in store: two contracts, not one.

Opening a store checkout in Germany takes two signatures, and that is where the cost is decided. The first contract is with the Netzbetreiber, the network operator: terminal, protocol, authorization, end-of-day batch upload. The second is the acceptance contract itself, with the bank or acquirer. A single provider can hold both. The pricing still has two sets of line items, and a quote that shows only one is hiding the other.

A bit of history helps more than a sales pitch here. Until 2014, the girocard merchant fee was set jointly by the banking associations at 0.3% of the amount, with a €0.08 minimum. The Bundeskartellamt made the parties’ commitments binding in a decision of April 8, 2014, and the uniform rate disappeared in November 2014, replaced by bilaterally negotiated fees. Since then, the girocard rate has been open to negotiation. Many merchants still don’t know this and accept the first number offered.

Austria’s map is simpler. PSA Payment Services Austria GmbH runs the Bankomat debit scheme, the ATM network, and a clearing house. That means one national counterpart, plus an acquiring contract to negotiate with the acquirers active in the market. Because Bankomat means both the card and the ATM, remove the ambiguity in the contract before you sign.

Switzerland works differently. No EU interchange cap applies, since the country is outside both the EU and the EEA, so card acceptance costs are negotiated with no regulatory anchor. TWINT comes through a separate channel. Merchants sign up through the merchant portal or a provider, with no required terminal and no fixed monthly fee, and pricing is set by the acquirer, not by TWINT (TWINT AG, merchant FAQ, accessed 2026). The trade press puts the fee at around 1.3% to 1.7% depending on the acquirer (moneyland.ch and SRF, 2026). A market stall can accept TWINT with nothing more than a printed QR code.

Chapter 4. Recurring direct debit: SEPA-Lastschrift and the end of LSV+.

Direct debit is the cheapest rail in German e-commerce, at 0.65% on average (EHI, 2026). It is also the most regulated. Four prerequisites govern the first collection, none of which you can get in a day, and missing just one gets the whole batch rejected. Plan the go-live backward from these prerequisites, not from the commercial launch date.

• Creditor identifier. In Germany, the Gläubiger-Identifikationsnummer is issued by the Deutsche Bundesbank; in Austria, by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank. It identifies the creditor permanently and travels with every direct debit.
• The mandate and its reference. Each mandate carries a reference that is unique to the creditor. That reference, combined with the identifier, forms the key that authorizes the debit, and the key on which any reject will be contested.
• Pre-notification. The rulebook requires notice of 14 calendar days before the due date, unless otherwise agreed with the debtor. A payment schedule provided at sign-up counts as pre-notification for every installment of a fixed-amount subscription.
• Submission by D-1. The creditor’s bank submits to the clearing system no later than one business day before the due date. It also cannot submit more than 14 calendar days before that date.

That leaves the returns file, which nobody reads until the first incident. A rejected direct debit comes back with a standardized reason code. The codes call for different responses, and treating them all the same is expensive. Retrying a closed account produces a second reject and a second bank fee, while retrying an underfunded account three days later often succeeds.

<PmtInf>
  <PmtMtd>DD</PmtMtd>
  <PmtTpInf>
    <SvcLvl><Cd>SEPA</Cd></SvcLvl>
    <!-- CORE or B2B: the choice determines the refund right -->
    <LclInstrm><Cd>CORE</Cd></LclInstrm>
    <!-- FRST has not been mandatory since the November 2016 version
         of the rulebook: RCUR is accepted from the first collection -->
    <SeqTp>RCUR</SeqTp>
  </PmtTpInf>
  <!-- due date: submit no later than D-1 (business day) -->
  <ReqdColltnDt>2026-09-15</ReqdColltnDt>
  <Cdtr><Nm>Muster Handel GmbH</Nm></Cdtr>
  <CdtrSchmeId>
    <Id><PrvtId><Othr>
      <!-- identifier issued by the Bundesbank (DE) or the OeNB (AT) -->
      <Id>DE98ZZZ09999999999</Id>
      <SchmeNm><Prtry>SEPA</Prtry></SchmeNm>
    </Othr></PrvtId></Id>
  </CdtrSchmeId>
  <DrctDbtTxInf>
    <PmtId>
      <!-- EndToEndId: the only reference that comes back in the camt.053 -->
      <EndToEndId>ABO-2026-004471</EndToEndId>
    </PmtId>
    <DrctDbtTx><MndtRltdInf>
      <MndtId>MND-88213</MndtId>
      <DtOfSgntr>2026-02-11</DtOfSgntr>
    </MndtRltdInf></DrctDbtTx>
  </DrctDbtTxInf>
</PmtInf>

Chapter 5. Choosing a button for the guarantee it provides.

A payment confirmation is worth different things depending on which button issues it. Establish what it’s worth before any integration, because it determines your shipping policy. Some confirmations commit the customer’s bank. Others only record that an order was placed, and the gap between the two is measured in days of risk on every parcel you ship.

The Austrian row deserves a closer look. eps-Überweisung, run by PSA Payment Services Austria with STUZZA since 2005, relays a confirmation issued by the payer’s own bank. Once checked and accepted, the order is executed irrevocably, and the reference passed to the merchant cannot be changed (eps-ueberweisung.at, accessed 2026). Reconciliation is immediate and the parcel can ship. That is why large Austrian orders, which cards don’t capture, go to eps.

In Switzerland, the list order flips. TWINT is accepted by about 86% of the country’s online stores and 81% of its brick-and-mortar stores (TWINT AG, January 2026). Merchants sign up through the merchant portal or a provider, with no terminal and no monthly commitment; a printed QR code is enough for a market stall. The fee is set by the acquirer, not by TWINT, so it is negotiable like any other acceptance line item.

Chapter 6. VAT and invoicing: three regimes in one ERP.

The border that matters is a customs border, not a language border. Germany and Austria share the EU VAT system and the OSS one-stop shop, while Switzerland has its own tax, its own rates, and its own register. The same item sold in Berlin, Vienna, and Zurich gets three tax treatments, and the ERP must handle all three from the first order, not from the first tax audit.

RULE   Import tax is not collected when the amount due does not
       exceed CHF 5. Such a shipment is a “Kleinsendung.”
       Source: Swiss Federal Tax Administration, estv.admin.ch,
       mail-order rules, accessed 2026.

CORRESPONDING VALUE OF GOODS
  at the standard rate of 8.1%   5 / 0.081  =  61.7 CHF   -> about 62 CHF
  at the reduced rate of 2.6%    5 / 0.026  = 192.3 CHF   -> about 193 CHF

REGISTRATION THRESHOLD
  Once these small consignments add up to CHF 100,000 in
  revenue over a year, the seller, Swiss or foreign, must
  register for Swiss VAT.

WHAT CHANGES AFTER REGISTRATION
  1. the seller charges Swiss VAT on its deliveries
  2. it deducts the import tax it has paid
  3. it must prevent double charging: otherwise the customer
     pays VAT at checkout AND THEN import tax to the mail carrier

SINCE 2025  mail-order platforms are deemed the supplier
            to the buyer once they exceed the same
            CHF 100,000 threshold.

Crossing the Swiss threshold isn’t something you discover at year-end. Monitor it continuously, because registration changes the price the customer sees. A seller who switches over without having prepared Swiss VAT-inclusive pricing triggers two effects at once: customers perceive a price increase, and some get charged twice. Set up the configuration before crossing the threshold, not after.

• The German format. An e-invoice must comply with the European standard EN 16931. XRechnung (pure XML) and ZUGFeRD from version 2.0.1 onward both qualify, except for the MINIMUM and BASIC-WL profiles, which fall short (Federal Ministry of Finance).
• What’s exempt. Invoices to consumers and low-value invoices of up to €250 are exempt from the e-invoice issuing requirement.
• Austria. E-invoicing is mandatory for invoices to the federal government, in ebInterface format. Austrian B2B invoicing has no format requirement, and PDF invoices remain valid.
• Switzerland. The QR-bill carries the structured reference inside the code, which automates reconciliation. Two reference formats coexist: the QRR reference, specific to the Swiss system, and the ISO 11649 creditor reference (SCOR), the only one that also carries through SEPA credit transfers.