For a year and a half, the rapper Smudo has had a new nickname on Twitter.

The 53-year-old band member of the Fantastischen Vier is called "Milck of Fortune".

It's not meant as a compliment.

Sarah Obertreis

Editor in Business.

  • Follow I follow

When the musician tells the story of how he came to invest in Luca and - thus inevitably his new nickname - then he says he wanted to find a solution for the fallow public life in Germany, for the event industry and the restaurateurs. Money-making – well-known IT experts and prominent data protectionists write on Twitter. "Only noble motifs," says Smudo about his investment. An old acquaintance of his came up with the idea for Luca, a club manager. The system should simplify contact tracing for the health authorities - no more paperwork - and thus make more concerts, more restaurant visits and parties possible than at the beginning of the pandemic. "It was at least partially successful," says Smudo.

What can also be said now, around 14 months after Luca's official launch: There are only a few apps that are currently more popular.

According to the Luca makers, 40 million Germans have already used them to have their contact details and vaccination status recorded in a restaurant, in the theater or at the fair.

At the same time, says Smudo, his investment has not been lucrative so far.

“We want to be at the forefront of the digital movement”

That could change step by step if the plan that Luca's developer, the young IT company Nexenio, announced this Monday works out. Luca, says Nexenio's boss Patrick Hennig, should by no means disappear after the pandemic. “In Germany in particular, we have a unique opportunity not to leave future digital tools to Google or Facebook. We want to be at the forefront of the digital movement here,” he explains.

So far, the Luca makers have remained vague when it comes to using Luca's popularity for other entrepreneurial activities. Now Hennig is getting more specific. Nexenio plans to help the catering and event industry with the much-needed digitization. Hennig can imagine a digital payment system that is cheaper for restaurateurs than the Visa or Mastercard system and works directly via the Luca app. Unlike the check-in and verification function that Luca is currently offering, these digitization services should then no longer be free for operators and organizers.

Such a second financial pillar will be existential if Luca continues like this.

What you have to say now, a good year after the start, is that the speculations about a possible end are not out of thin air.

The former purpose of the app has become obsolete at a time when the national average incidence is over 500.

No health department then manages to trace back the origin of the individual infections.

Especially since there were a number of health authorities that had difficulties switching to a new system like Luca, and data protection officials and politicians still disagree to this day as to whether Luca has one of the most secure IT architectures in Germany or the opposite.

Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein end the contractual relationship

This is one of the reasons why it became known last week that two federal states are ending the contractual relationship with Nexenio: Schleswig-Holstein and Bremen.

A total of 13 federal states have concluded a contract with the Luca provider, and the health authorities in Thuringia, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony use the system in isolated cases.

Eleven countries are still examining whether to extend their Luca contracts.

They will gradually expire until April.

If the countries decided against it as a whole or only extended it individually, the Luca project would have a problem.

So far they are the only ones who pay for Luca's functions.

A total of around 20 million euros in taxpayer money was spent on the system, part of which are monthly installments that the health authorities pay for the operation of the software, certificates and the support hotline.

Nexenio announced on Monday that it would halve these monthly installments in the future: to 750 euros per health department.

In addition, the countries should now be able to cancel monthly in the event of an extension and then start again as required.

Hennig thinks that this is the best way to react to local outbreaks as soon as the incidences are lower again.

So far there has probably not been any clear feedback from the countries on these changes.

Only from Bremen it says: Despite the new conditions, you will not continue to work with Luca.

"I just block the really hard hate directly"

Even if contact tracking no longer makes sense, Hennig sees Luca as an important tool. Since this summer, the health authorities have also been able to send automated warning messages to users' cell phones. Unlike the federal corona warning app, these instructions show where and at what time the risky contact took place.

Nevertheless, many IT experts and politicians advocate using only the Corona warning app instead of Luca.

They are bothered by the fact that Luca stores user data centrally.

The fact that they are encrypted several times is not enough for them.

However, Hennig now wants to go one step further and give Luca users the option of also saving their ID cards in the app.

This should eliminate the need to look through your wallet whenever a 2G Plus ID is required in a restaurant.

The criticism that Luca will probably reap for this has already become a kind of routine for Smudo and him.

"I just block the really hard hate directly," says Smudo.

He knows the accusation of making money from earlier, when he started doing hip-hop in German with the Fantastischen Vier.