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Fiserv and Deutsche Bank form merchant acquiring joint venture in Germany

Fiserv and Deutsche Bank form merchant acquiring joint venture in Germany

Fiserv and Deutsche Bank have formed a joint venture for payment acceptance in Germany.

The joint venture, which will combine Fiserv's Clover eftpos device with Deutsche Bank’s integrated banking services, will serve small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the German market from a base in Frankfurt, pending regulatory approval.

“By combining Fiserv payment solutions with our banking products, we will be able to deliver accounts, payment solutions and banking services to our SMEs,” says Stefan Hoops, head of corporate Bank at Deutsche Bank. “Today, no other provider of such services in Germany can offer this in depth combination of acceptance solutions with banking services being a true “one-stop-shop” for our clients. This will translate into a better client experience, lower costs and reduced complexity for clients."

The joint venture expects to serve several thousand clients from the start. Deutsche Bank, together with units Postbank and Fyrst brands, has around 800,000 SMEs clients to market the JV to. The joint venture will also offer services to non-Deutsche Bank-clients and is expected to employ a low triple-digit workforce.

Comments: (1)

Ketharaman Swaminathan
Ketharaman Swaminathan - GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Pune 22 June, 2021, 15:34Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Does this imply that the existing 800K SME clients of Deutsche Bank cannot accept digital payments as of now? I'd be shocked if the answer to that question was a YES even for half of that installed base. When I was in Germany in the late 1990s and early 2000s, virtually every retail SMB used to accept debit card and stored value "cards" that were essentially chip embedded into debit cards that could store up to €25.

It was only when it came to credit card that acceptance was low: Let alone SMBs, even outlets of FORTUNE GLOBAL 500 companies refused to accept credit card. In one extreme case, an electronics chain store issued a cobranded credit card but refused to accept it in its own outlets. When I asked the cashier why his company even did a cobranded credit card, he replied, "Marketing gimmick"! 

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