FRANKFURT/BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – The negotiations between the savings banks and the Payback bonus system about cooperation are on the home stretch. In the future, savings bank customers will be able to collect Payback points directly when paying with their Girocard.
“We believe that the cooperation of these two big players in the market can create significant advantages for our customers – that’s why we’re doing it now,” said a spokesman for the German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DSGV) on Thursday when asked. The industry newsletter “Finanz-Scene” had previously reported. Accordingly, the collaboration could be contractually sealed in the coming days.
Payback users can collect bonus points when making purchases at gas stations, drugstores and supermarkets in order to later exchange them for rewards or vouchers. Anyone who is also a customer of a savings bank will not have to have their Payback card with them in the future. The points are automatically credited when paying with the Girocard.
This means that two heavyweights in the market are joining forces: with 47 million cards issued, the savings banks are the largest issuer of the Girocard, which many still call the “EC card”. According to its own information, Payback has around 31 million users in Germany.
It is therefore “obvious to intensively examine the overlaps here in order to ultimately simplify certain processes for our customers,” said a spokeswoman for Deutsche Sparkassen Verlag (DSV), which led the negotiations with Payback as a service provider for the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe has. She emphasized that data protection and voluntariness are central – both for customers and for the institutions: Each of the 353 savings banks in Germany decides for itself whether to use the offer or not. According to reports, between 250 and 300 savings banks have signaled that they want to offer their customers the payback function./ben/DP/jha