Card acceptance. The debit cards issued by payment service providers and bearing a girocard logo, as detailed in chap- ter 2.3 of the Technical Appendix, must be accepted at the Merchant‘s girocard terminals. Payment service providers may issue this debit card as a physical card or as a digital card for storage on a tele- communications, digital or IT device (mobile device). The activation of the contactless function and the associated acceptance of digital cards is optional. The Merchant remains free to grant discounts. Prior to payment, the Merchant must bring to the cardholder‘s attention the non-acceptance of any debit cards from payment service providers for lack of a fee agreement and do so by means of an adhesive label, electronically or in some other appropriate manner. As far as the Banking Industry has entered into relevant co-operation agreements with operators of or participants in guaranteed and PIN-based debit card systems (Co-operation Partners) where those operators or participants are based in other countries, the Merchant is also required to accept the debit cards issued by a payment service provider within the system of a co-operation partner for cashless payments at girocard terminals under the Terms and Conditions that apply to the girocard scheme. The network provider will notify the Merchant of co-operation partners‘ debit cards that are to be accepted within the scope of the girocard scheme and include these in the technical clearing and settlement process within the parameters of the girocard scheme. This does not affect the acceptance of cards from other systems at girocard terminals, provided that this does not impair the proper processing of the cards to be accepted under the girocard scheme. The Merchant has the opportunity to install automatic mechanisms in its girocard terminals for the cards accepted by the Merchant to default to a particular payment brand or payment application. However, this must not prevent the cardholder from overriding this default setting.
