PAYONE Review

PAYONE is a Frankfurt-based card acquirer and payment service provider for businesses in Germany and Austria. It is a joint venture of Worldline, which holds 60%, and the DSV Group, the payments arm of Germany's savings banks (Sparkassen), which holds 40%. PAYONE GmbH holds the merchant agreement itself and is supervised by BaFin as an e-money institution. It says it serves 277,000 customers and processes over 7.65 billion transactions a year. Small-business prices are published in euros, as of October 2026. Tap on Mobile, which turns a phone into a card reader, has no monthly fee or contract and costs 1.90% per Visa or Mastercard credit card payment and 0.89% per debit card payment, with a €0.15 minimum. Terminal plans run from a pay-as-you-go option with a 24-month device term to flat-rate packages from €29.90 to €44.90 a month on 36- or 60-month contracts. Online plans start at 2.49% + €0.99 with no monthly fee. PAYONE's price list says all fees are subject to VAT. Fixed-term contracts renew for 12 months unless cancelled three months before the end. The main concern is regulatory: in 2023 BaFin barred PAYONE from processing transactions for certain merchants in a high-risk e-commerce portfolio, in January 2025 it announced higher capital requirements and a special representative, and in December 2025 it announced fines totalling €95,000 over anti-money-laundering failings.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using PAYONE’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What PAYONE is

PAYONE is a card acquirer and payment service provider headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. It serves shops, restaurants, service businesses, online merchants and large enterprises in Germany and Austria. The company calls itself the leading payment provider in both countries. It says it has 277,000 customers, processes over 7.65 billion transactions a year and employs about 1,400 people (company figures, October 2026). The contracting entity is PAYONE GmbH (Frankfurt Local Court, HRB 116860), which BaFin licenses and supervises as an e-money institution. Ottmar Bloching is CEO.

The brand has a long lineage. The original PAYONE was a payment service provider in Kiel. The Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe took a majority stake through the DSV Group from 2015, and in 2017 it merged PAYONE with B+S Card Service, its Frankfurt card-acceptance business, to form BS PAYONE. In 2019 PAYONE became a joint venture with Ingenico, which took 52% while DSV kept 48%. After Worldline bought Ingenico, the two partners reorganised: from 1 March 2021, Worldline contributed its German and Austrian merchant services to PAYONE and moved PAYONE's Swiss business into Worldline. Worldline now owns 60% and DSV 40%. PAYONE's June 2026 press release on a new chief risk officer still describes it as the joint venture of Worldline and the DSV Group, and we found no later change of ownership. Because the founding dates of the predecessor companies vary by source, we do not give one founding year.

Why we list PAYONE as a platform / acquirer

PAYONE holds the merchant relationship directly. Its General Terms describe it as a licensed acquirer of the card organisations, and the merchant's acceptance agreement is with PAYONE GmbH, which settles card transactions to the merchant and carries the chargeback risk back to them. It is not an ISO or reseller selling someone else's acquiring, nor a payment facilitator onboarding sub-merchants under its own master account.

What it costs

PAYONE publishes prices in euros for its small-business products, as of October 2026. The product pages do not say whether VAT is included. The List of Prices and Services (status 09/2026) says all fees are subject to value added tax at the applicable rate, so read the prices as net.

• Tap on Mobile (phone as card reader): €0 a month, no contract, 1.90% per Visa or Mastercard credit card payment and 0.89% per Maestro or V Pay debit payment, with a €0.15 minimum per transaction.
• All Time Flex (rented terminal, no monthly fixed fee): from €19 one-off, 1.90% credit and 0.89% debit and girocard, with a €0.15 minimum, on a 24-month term.
• PAYONE Classic: €50 setup, €0.08 per transaction plus 1.49% for international credit cards or 0.26% for girocard, with optional terminal rental from €12.90 a month.
• All Card Flat: a monthly flat rate for a set card volume. On a 36-month contract it costs €34.90, €39.90 or €44.90 a month for €1,000, €2,000 or €3,000 of monthly card turnover; 60-month contracts start at €29.90. A wireless terminal adds €3 a month and a SIM card €5.
• E-Com Starter: €49 one-off, no monthly fee, €0.99 + 2.49% per payment. E-Com Pro: €99 one-off, €19 a month, from €0.09 + 1.09–1.49%, minimum 12 months.
• PAYONE Link and PAYONE MOTO: €99 one-off, from €0 a month, from €0.09 + 1.49–2.49% per transaction, on 12- and 36-month contracts respectively.

The English All Card Flat page also advertises a free first year for businesses new to card payments, after which it cites a €22.90 monthly base fee with €1,000 of included volume. That does not match the 36- and 60-month table on the same page, Both the English and German pages headline the plan as "from €0.00" a month, but the German page does not explain that figure. Get the figure for your contract in writing.

The schedule of prices adds a long list of charges on top. Among them are a €69.95 activation fee for contracts shorter than 48 months, a €2.95 monthly fee per location and a €5.95 monthly minimum for card acceptance. On the Classic billing model there are surcharges of 1.59% for commercial cards and 1.79% for cards issued outside the European Economic Area, which IC++ contracts pass through as interchange instead. Other charges include 0.35% for e-commerce and MOTO transactions, 0.50% for transactions without 3-D Secure or at a non-contactless terminal, 0.35% for submitting transactions more than 48 hours late, 1.5% for currency conversion, €50 per chargeback and €14.90 per branch per month for PCI DSS non-compliance. How many of these apply to the flat-rate and app products depends on your contract, so ask for the full list of charges before you sign.

How it works

In-store merchants rent a PAYONE terminal, which can be a wired countertop unit or a portable Wi-Fi or SIM device, or they use the Tap on Mobile app on their own phone. Terminals connect to tills through the standard German ZVT or OPI interfaces, and PAYONE sells partner till systems from Tillhub, helloTESS! and ready2order. The terminal plans accept girocard, Germany's domestic debit scheme, alongside Visa, Mastercard and wallets; Tap on Mobile takes Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, V Pay and mobile wallets. Dynamic currency conversion is offered on most terminals. Online merchants use E-Com plugins for the major shop systems, payment links or a virtual terminal. Payment methods include cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Wero and secured invoice purchase. Merchants manage transactions, refunds and invoices in an online portal. For larger merchants PAYONE sells omnichannel acceptance, marketplace payments with split payouts, and REVOLV, which lets customers pay by contactless direct debit without a signature.

Contracts and termination

This is the part to read carefully. Under the General Terms and Conditions (09.2026), a fixed-term agreement renews for 12 months at a time unless you or PAYONE cancel in text form three months before it ends. The terms also exclude the merchant's statutory right under German civil law to end a payment services contract at any time. Product terms run 24 months for All Time Flex, 36 for MOTO, 36 or 60 for All Card Flat and at least 12 for E-Com Pro and PAYONE Link. Open-ended agreements can be ended by either side on 30 days' notice, and Tap on Mobile has no term at all. PAYONE can also end a fixed-term agreement on one month's notice if you make no transactions in its first six months, and its separate online-payments and AccountConnect terms set a default 36-month term with the same 12-month renewal and three-month notice unless the contract says otherwise. PAYONE promises that a merchant who closes their business can end the contract early by submitting the business deregistration. The terms also let PAYONE adjust service fees during the contract if its costs change, for example when card schemes raise their fees. It must give two months' notice of such changes, and you can terminate at no cost before they take effect.

Payouts, reserves and chargebacks

PAYONE does not publish a standard settlement time for its terminal contracts. Tap on Mobile pays out weekly, every Monday. Daily payout is an add-on that costs a 0.10% surcharge on the service fee per transaction. Card sales are paid in euros unless agreed otherwise, and payouts to accounts outside the SEPA area cost €7.50 each. The General Terms give PAYONE a lien over the amounts it owes you as security for chargebacks and fees, and let it demand security deposits if your risk profile worsens. The separate e-commerce terms provide that, where a rolling reserve has been agreed without other terms, it is 5% of a month's card and SEPA direct debit volume, held for six months. Chargebacks cost €50 each and are offset against your payouts.

Reputation, regulation and complaints

PAYONE's regulatory record is the main mark against it. On 26 July 2023 BaFin barred it from processing transactions for a high-risk e-commerce portfolio and from taking on new clients in that segment, citing serious anti-money-laundering failings. BaFin said some of those merchants' websites were linked to subscription fraud, phishing and fake shops. In January 2025 BaFin announced higher capital requirements, an order to fix anti-money-laundering deficiencies and a special representative to oversee the work. In December 2025 it announced two fines totalling €95,000, for a deficient anti-money-laundering monitoring system in 2023 and for due diligence not matched to risk. In June 2025 Der Spiegel and partner outlets reported that PAYONE had processed large volumes for adult and dating sites with weak controls. PAYONE said it ended those relationships after the 2023 order, and Worldline said it had tightened its standards since 2023.

On service, PAYONE won a 'Customer Service of the Year 2026' award after a mystery-shopping audit of its phone, email, web and social channels. The award is based on test enquiries, not customer reviews. We could not find a Trustpilot profile with reviews of PAYONE's merchant business, so we cite no review score. Complaints from payment service users are answered within 15 working days, with a final reply within 35. PAYONE no longer serves new UK contracts; its UK business is in contractual run-off.

Who PAYONE suits

PAYONE fits German and Austrian businesses that take most of their card payments in person, especially by girocard, and that value a large, bank-backed acquirer with published tariffs. Small traders and market stalls can start on Tap on Mobile with no monthly fee or contract. Steady retailers can compare All Card Flat with Classic once their monthly card volume is known. It fits poorly if you need a short or rolling terminal contract, trade outside Germany and Austria, or sell in a high-risk vertical, which PAYONE's terms and its 2023 BaFin order effectively rule out.