German bank Sparkasse brings Apple Pay support to its popular Giro debit card

Holders of Sparkasse’s popular Giro debit card in Germany, also known as the Sparkassen-Card, cano now add there card to the Wallet app and use it for Apple Pay.

According to a tweet this morning by Sparkasse, their savings account customers can now use Apple Pay with the “most popular card in Germany.”

AppleInsider has more:

While Sparkasse has enabled Apple Pay on accounts in the past, it wasn’t via a typical debit card. Previously, the Sparkassen-Karte Basis card worked, but required users to preload the card with a balance rather than taking funds directly from the user’s current account, as would be expected by a regular debit card transaction.

By using the Giro card, bank customers are able to use Apple Pay directly, without the extra preload step. This brings the bank in line with many others around the world in providing debit transactions via Apple Pay from a basic bank account.

Apple Pay launched in Germany, an 83 million people market, in December 2018 with initial support via Commerzbank and Sparkasse, among other financial institutions, for credit-based Visa and Mastercard transactions.

Other local banks supported at launch included boon, comdirect, Edenred, Fidor Bank, Hanseatic Bank and Vim Pay. All major card networks were available at launch with support for American Express, Visa, Maestro and MasterCard.

German savings bank association Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken launched Apple Pay support in April 2020. For the up-to-date list of countries where Apple Pay is available, check out Apple’s support document.