Link, the UK's ATM network, and Zentraler Kreditausschuss, a German banking community and operator of girocard scheme, have signed an agreement through EAPS, an alliance of European debit card schemes, to facilitate pan-European ATM and POS transactions.
The agreement will allow holders of German debit cards – known as girocards – to withdraw cash from ATMs across the UK. The UK’s Link ATM network has opened all 63,000 UK cash machines to all users of the German card scheme (more than 92 million) operated by the Zentraler Kreditausschuss.
Edwin Latter, managing director of Link Scheme, said: “Through this new agreement we have been able to open up Link’s UK cash machine network to cards from elsewhere in Europe. This allows us to offer the same nationwide access that in the past only UK cardholders have enjoyed to debit cardholders from other European countries. Germans can now use their girocards to withdraw cash across the UK. No other scheme can match this breadth of access or convenience in the UK.”
Bernd Fieseler, managing member of the board of Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband (German Savings Banks Association) which currently chairs the Zentraler Kreditausschuss, said: “The new partnership enables customers to withdraw cash from an additional 21,000 ATMs in the UK with their German ‘girocard’. This marks an improvement of 34% in the acceptance of German girocards compared to today.”