Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Austria is still one of the eurozone's most cash-minded countries, but the card is catching up. The Oesterreichische Nationalbank's payment study, published in June 2026, found that cash made up 55% of payments at the point of sale in 2025, down from 63% in 2022, while cards rose from 33% to 39%. By value, cards have already overtaken cash: 48% against 45%.
The card most Austrians pay with is the debit card they still call the Bankomatkarte. Since 2019 the old Maestro cards have been replaced step by step with Debit Mastercard and Visa Debit, the OeNB says, and how a provider prices those cards is most of what a shop pays. Here is what each option costs, read from the providers' own Austrian pages on 26 October 2026, and the rules on surcharges, cash registers and cash.
Austria applies the EU Interchange Fee Regulation, which caps the interchange a card issuer receives at 0.2% of a consumer debit card payment and 0.3% of a consumer credit card payment. Business cards are not covered, and three-party schemes such as American Express generally are not. Viva.com's Austrian price list states that the interchange applied to domestic transactions is 0.20% on debit and prepaid cards and 0.30% on credit cards.
On top of interchange come the card schemes' own fees. Worldline's indicative schedule for Austria, dated October 2026, lists a Mastercard volume fee of 0.065% on Mastercard consumer cards and 0.049% on Maestro and Debit Mastercard, among other charges. Everything else is the provider's margin, which is where Austrian offers differ.
Other providers sell to Austrian merchants on quotes only. Unzer (B-) offers an individual quote, and Nexi (B) says its Austrian transaction fees are agreed individually. Larger merchants can negotiate interchange-plus pricing from Adyen (A-).
Take a shop that takes 1,000 card payments a month of €20 each, all on Austrian consumer debit cards: €20,000 of takings. On the published prices, before VAT on any subscription:
Two things stand out. Viva.com's debit rate is far below the other pay-as-you-go prices, so a shop whose customers mostly pay by Bankomatkarte should price it first; PAYONE's Pro plan only beats it on payments above about €85. Its credit card rate of 1.69% is ordinary. And a flat bundle like PAYONE's All Card Flat only pays off when your takings sit close to the tier you buy: below it you pay for volume you did not use, above it every euro costs 1.99%. Credit and business cards change the picture for every plan, so run the sums on your own card mix.
Online, eps is the Austrian bank-transfer method, run by the Austrian banks; Stripe says it has an 18% market share in Austria. Merchants can sign up for it through their own bank or through a payment provider. The providers' published Austrian prices are:
Austrian banks are also preparing for Wero, the European wallet that is replacing iDEAL in the Netherlands. Erste Bank Oesterreich, Raiffeisen Bank International and three Raiffeisen regional banks joined the European Payments Initiative in June 2026, but as of October 2026 the banks had named no launch date for Wero in Austria, and nothing published says it will replace eps.
Section 56(3) of the Payment Services Act 2018 (ZaDiG 2018) says a payment service provider may not stop a business from offering a discount or other incentive for using a particular payment instrument, and that charging a fee for the use of a particular payment instrument is not permitted. That goes further than the EU minimum, which bans surcharges only on consumer cards whose interchange is capped and on SEPA transfers and direct debits. In Austria a surcharge on a business card, on American Express or on any other payment instrument is not allowed either, and business customers cannot contract out of the rule.
Austria's Registrierkassenpflicht, in section 131b of the Federal Fiscal Code (BAO), requires a cash register from €15,000 of annual turnover per business once its cash sales exceed €7,500 a year. The same section says payment by Bankomat or credit card counts as a cash payment, so a shop that takes only cards still needs a register. Separately, every business that takes cash or card payments must issue a receipt, which can be electronic.
Euro banknotes are legal tender, and the OeNB says section 61 of the National Bank Act requires them to be accepted at face value, though whether a shop can exclude cash in advance with a clear notice is disputed and some shops do. Austria has also debated putting the right to pay cash into its constitution. In January 2026 the minister answering a parliamentary question said that was neither necessary nor would it have legal effect, because the EU's proposed regulation on the legal tender of cash would apply directly and rank above Austrian constitutional law. That regulation would oblige merchants to accept cash and stop them excluding it; as of October 2026 it was still being negotiated between the EU institutions. The OeNB has said it supports a strict and broadly comprehensive duty to accept cash.
Neighbouring countries apply the same EU interchange rules with different local prices; see our guides to Germany and Switzerland.
