After the debacle with the Justpay payment card, the Eintracht Frankfurt association and its sponsors Deutsche Bank and Mastercard are offering a new mobile payment system for purchases in the stadium and elsewhere.
The new digital payment offer is called "Mainpay" and is a secure alternative to cash transactions and prepaid cards, said Axel Hellmann, CEO of Eintracht AG.
Technically, it is a purely digital debit credit card with which you pay via smartphone app and which is then debited directly by direct debit from the stored bank account.
Falk Heunemann
Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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The club announced that it could not only be used in the stadium, but also on all NFC-enabled point-of-sale terminals that accept Mastercard worldwide. NFC is a radio standard for contactless data transmission over very short distances, for example at the cash register. To pay by smartphone, the digital credit card can be stored in payment apps such as Apple or Google Pay. An account with Deutsche Bank is not necessary. There is currently a daily limit for transactions of 500 euros. The card can be requested via the Eintracht Mainaquila app. According to the association, there is no annual fee for the Mainpay credit card; a fee of 1.5 percent of the respective amount is only due for payments in a foreign currency - for example when traveling to a European Cup game outside of the currency union.
Tens of thousands of fans affected by provider bankruptcy
In 2017, the operator of the Frankfurt stadium payment system, Justpay, went bankrupt.
At that time, 370,000 cards that had to be topped up before they could be used were in circulation in Frankfurt alone.
However, only 70,000 of them were actively used and had an average credit of eight euros on them, the stadium management said at the time.
Until the summer of 2017, cardholders could have the value of the lost credit reimbursed for food, drinks or fan shop vouchers from the club.
Cashless payment should shorten waiting times in the stadium.