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Karlsruhe (dpa) - An extra fee for paying by PayPal or instant transfer?
It is still unclear whether some companies are right to ask their customers to checkout when shopping or booking on the Internet because of the chosen payment method.
Today the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) will decide the question.
(Az. I ZR 203/19).
The competition headquarters is behind the test case.
In order to create legal clarity, she has sued the Munich long-distance bus company Flixbus on behalf of the company.
She says: Customers shouldn't just run into surprising additional costs when paying.
And the same terms and conditions should apply to all companies.
The reason for the uncertainty is a new regulation with which the German legislator implemented an EU requirement at the beginning of 2018.
Section 270a in the German Civil Code prohibits payments for payments by bank transfer, direct debit or credit card.
Paypal and Sofortüberweisung are not mentioned.
But still meant?
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Paying by PayPal works with electronic money, both sides need a PayPal account for this.
If the payer does not have enough credit, PayPal will collect the amount by direct debit or credit card debit.
The Sofortüberweisung is basically a bank transfer.
However, the provider, Sofort GmbH, intervenes, informs the recipient about the customer's creditworthiness and initiates the transfer.
This should make it faster.
For both services, the retailer initially pays per transaction.
Sofort GmbH, which has been part of the Swedish Klarna Group since 2014, says it has no influence on the form in which these costs are passed on to the customer.
PayPal, on the other hand, attaches importance to the fact that payment is free of charge and refers to its general terms and conditions, which were changed in January 2018.
Since then, retailers have been banned from charging their customers surcharges.
According to the competition headquarters, there are still violations.
Flixbus had asked for a fee for both payment methods, the amount was staggered according to the ticket price.
The District Court of Munich I prohibited this in December 2018.
The Munich Higher Regional Court, on the other hand, declared the fees to be permissible in October 2019.
According to its own information, Flixbus does not charge any more fees at the moment.
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The highest civil judges in Karlsruhe now have the final say.
At the hearing in December, Senate Chairman Thomas Koch had said that the decisive question would be whether the money would be required for the pure transfer or direct debit - or for an additional service.
The former would be forbidden, the latter not.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210325-99-962042 / 2