The best payment orchestration platforms in Germany

Germany has a complex payments ecosystem, with cards making up only 11% of payments in the country. And with 82% of German shoppers at risk of abandoning their purchase if their preferred payment method isn’t available, businesses in Germany need to be able to add and maintain multiple payment options to their checkout process. 

On top of that, every in-scope transaction requires 3D Secure (3DS) authentication under the EU’s payment regulation PSD2, and you’re likely selling cross-border into other countries, which has its own obstacles.

In this post, we’ll break down the complexity of payments in this market and how you can choose the best payment orchestration platform as a German merchant. 

The complexity of the German payment market 

• PSD2 and SCA apply to EU card transactions. PSD2 (the EU's Second Payment Services Directive) requires Strong Customer Authentication on in-scope online transactions, which in practice means 3DS on card payments. The complication for merchants with multiple processors is that 3DS is typically tied to the processor that handled the transaction. If a payment fails and retries with a second processor, the customer has to authenticate again, which creates friction and can result in an abandoned purchase. 

• The market has shifted recently. The once-popular giropay was shut down in 2024, and SOFORT has merged into Klarna Payments. 
• German consumers don't default to cards. Cards account for only about 11% of online purchases. Top preferred payment methods include PayPal, invoice/Kauf auf Rechnung, SEPA direct debit/Lastschrift, Klarna, and digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay.
• Cross-border adds another layer. If you're selling from Germany into France, the Netherlands, Spain, or Italy, each market has its own dominant payment methods (iDEAL, Bancontact, Carte Bancaire). Acquirer performance also varies by market, card type, and scheme rules, so routing to a local acquirer can help but isn't a blanket guarantee.

Evaluating payment orchestration platforms for the German market 

There are multiple payment orchestration platforms that you may want to consider as a German merchant, including Primer, Gr4vy, and Spreedly.

When choosing between them, these are the features and criteria we recommend focusing on: 

“When choosing a platform, you absolutely need to focus on the accessibility of the data and the fact that it should be easy,” explained Primer’s Product Manager Christophe Smol. “Because if it's complicated, it adds an extra layer of complexity and time spent for the payment manager."

How Primer works for German merchants 

Primer is a Unified Payment Infrastructure that sits between you and your payment processors so you can add new payment methods fast, maintain them easily, and clearly understand what fees you’re paying and why.

Here’s how it can help:

• Primer 3DS and Fallbacks: Primer runs 3DS above the processor layer, which means the customer can authenticate once and the result will carry to your chosen Fallback processor. This keeps you compliant with SCA but doesn’t add any friction to the customer experience. 
• Payment method activation: Your payments team can activate methods from Primer’s dashboard without any engineering work, so adding Klarna or Paypal can take just a few minutes. This matters in Germany, where customers are deeply attached to their preferred payment methods and you may need to expand quickly into cross-border markets, too.
• Workflows: No-code routing rules based on factors like issuing country, card type, BIN range, currency, or transaction value. You can test routing changes by splitting live traffic between two strategies, so you can make your decisions based on real performance data.
• Costs Overview: Get settlement data from every connected processor in one format so you can see fees in absolute amounts and as a percentage of total processed volume. This can give you a clear view of what each processor is actually charging.
• Observability: Discover authorization rates between different payment processors, which can help you decide if you need to change routing rules or even add local acquirers. 

Manage German payment complexity seamlessly with Primer 

Germany’s current payment environment demands more than a standard single processor setup. Between SCA compliance, local payment preferences that don’t center around cards, and cross-border complexity from EU neighbors, your payment stack can either enable revenue growth or slow down market expansion.

Primer gives your payments team a single platform where you can handle agnostic 3DS, activate payment methods without engineering work, route by issuing country, and compare performance costs in one dashboard. We can help you simplify management, reduce costs, and get better visibility all at once.

Book a demo to see how Primer handles 3DS, local payment method activation, and EU cross-border routing for your German payment stack.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about payment orchestration platforms in Germany

Is 3DS mandatory for all payments in Germany?

3D Secure (3DS) is required for in-scope online card transactions under PSD2’s SCA regulation, which applies across the European Economic Area. 

That said, there are several exemptions that include:

• Low-value exemption for transactions under €30
• Low-risk exemption, which are issuer-applied for transactions considered to be a low fraud risk
• Whitelisting exemption, which allows existing payers to add you to a “whitelist” to skip the SCA on subsequent payments 
• Recurring payments exemption, which includes subscription payments for set amounts 

How does cross-border interchange differ from domestic interchange in the EU? 

When a card is processed through an acquirer in the same country as the card issuer, the interchange fee (which is paid to the issuing bank) is typically lower. This is because it falls under domestic interchange rates.

In cross-border transactions, the acquirer is in a different country than the card issuer, which often results in a higher interchange. The EU caps interchange at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit on consumer cards.   

What should you look for when evaluating a payment orchestration platform as a German merchant? 

When evaluating a payment orchestration platform as a German merchant, you should look at the following:

• How the platform handles 3DS, including whether it runs its own 3DS or pass it through to the processor
• Whether you can route by issuing country for EU cross-border transactions
• Whether it offers the right mix of payment methods you need
• If fallback retries carry the original 3DS authentication so customers don’t need to re-authenticate