Yesterday, Germany witnessed the launch of Giropay. This is an e-commerce payment application (with a heavy involvement of the German Postbank) that brings the customer from the merchant's website to its own bank, where the traditional Internet-banking payment can be made. It's functionality is therefore similar to that of the Dutch I-deal.
What is different, is the introduction strategy. Giropay have chosen to make a deal with e-bay, so that customers can choose on e-bay whether to use Paypal (e-bay's payment mechanism) or Giropay. Quite a strong proposition actually, where the banks will benefit from e-bay's reach and vice versa.
