Apple Pay reaches 49 percent of German online shops as Wero starts at 3 percent

The EHI Retail Institute published its E-Commerce-Report Deutschland 2026, a content analysis of the 1,000 most important German business-to-consumer online shops, hybrid and pure marketplaces and app-only providers. At least one wallet is offered by 97.2 percent of them and a credit card by 96.6 percent. Inside the wallets PayPal leads at 96.3 percent, Apple Pay has risen to 49.0 percent from 37.8 percent a year earlier and Google Pay to 32.0 percent from 23.1 percent.

Wero is listed separately for the first time, at 3.0 percent. Visa is accepted by 94.3 percent, Mastercard by 94.1 percent and American Express by 52.3 percent. Invoice purchase holds at 81.7 percent and instalment or financing offers reach 45.9 percent.

These are the acceptance numbers behind a German checkout's blended cost. Apple Pay and Google Pay gaining eleven and nine points in a year moves volume onto tokenised card rails, which carry card interchange and scheme fees rather than reducing them, so a wallet-heavy checkout is not a cheaper checkout. Wero at 3.0 percent puts a number on what German retailers have so far only said informally: the account-to-account alternative that is meant to undercut card costs is not yet in the checkouts that matter, while the user base has passed 50 million. Amex at 52.3 percent is the other fee line worth reading, since it sits outside the interchange cap.

Whether Wero's 3.0 percent moves once one of the ten largest German online retailers integrates it, whether Apple Pay's run rate continues into 2027, and whether the share of invoice purchase finally falls as wallets grow.

• ehi.org
• etailment