In 2024, the number of payments made with cards issued by German payment service providers increased by 11 percent compared to the previous year. This amounted to approximately 13 billion transactions over the past year. Card payments accounted for 40 percent of all payments made by non-banks. Direct debits also remained widely used, rising by three percent to 9.9 billion transactions. Despite this growth, their market share fell from 34 percent to 31 percent. Credit transfers grew by four percent to 7.6 billion transactions, while their share of all payments remained unchanged at 24 percent. These figures are based on the Deutsche Bundesbank’s payment statistics.
SEPA instant credit transfers rose by 37 percent year-on-year, reaching 337 million transactions. Their share of all electronically initiated credit transfers thus increased by one percentage point to 4.9 percent.
Looking at the value of transactions, credit transfers continued to dominate with a total of €64 trillion, representing a 90 percent share of all payments. Direct debits remained at €5.9 trillion, with a share of eight percent.
The number of ATMs in Germany continues to decline. In 2024, the number of ATMs operated by German payment service providers fell by three percent to around 49,750, down from approximately 51,300 the previous year. Similarly, the number of self-service terminals for initiating credit transfers dropped by three percent, from about 23,200 to around 22,500 units.