BusinessNov 12, 2026, 12:29 AM UTC·2 min read

PayPal Fees Ban on Surcharges Draws Germany's Cartel Office

Germany's Bundeskartellamt preliminarily finds that PayPal's ban on merchant surcharges may breach competition law. PayPal rejects the assessment.

A shopper pays at an online checkout with the PayPal button shown on a laptop screen. — Image: t3n Magazin

Germany's Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) has issued a preliminary assessment that PayPal's pricing rules may harm competition among payment providers. The authority in Bonn says the company's terms of use could violate antitrust law.

The agency opened proceedings in January 2023. At issue is a clause that bars merchants offering PayPal in their web shops from charging customers a separate fee for using it. A final decision is still pending, and PayPal can now respond. A company spokesperson told the German news agency dpa: "PayPal does not share the Bundeskartellamt's preliminary assessment." The firm said it would continue to cooperate constructively.

Why the authority objects

PayPal charges merchants a fee for processing payments, and the amount varies, in some cases considerably. According to the Cartel Office, PayPal's fees are above average compared with other payment methods. "PayPal is a matter of course for many people shopping online. That makes it difficult for many merchants to do without PayPal," said agency head Andreas Mundt.

Because merchants cannot pass the cost on to PayPal users, they have to spread it across the prices of their goods and services, which means customers who do not use PayPal pay for it too. The ban also stops merchants from showing customers the cost differences between payment methods. That removes the incentive to favor cheaper services, and cheaper rivals find it harder to win business. In the authority's view, this could lead to higher prices for consumers.

Market context

PayPal says it has 35 million active customer accounts in Germany, making it the preferred provider. Klarna and Apple Pay are other well-known options. The bank-backed European Payments Initiative launched Wero more than two years ago and wants to build it into a European PayPal alternative. A representative survey for the comparison portal Verivox in July found that only 39 percent of respondents could correctly identify Wero as a payment service.

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Tags:paypalbundeskartellamtantitrustpaymentsgermanywero