PAYONE vs Unzer

PAYONE

SEPA Direct Debit and Klarna are documented with real per-method detail — country lists and currencies, down to instalment and B2B variants — which is what I plan mandates against in the DACH region. But the headline pitch stops at 'all common payment methods' plus cards and contactless, and I found no public information on Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL, Bancontact or other named local methods. Cards surface only indirectly through the exemption engine's American Express, Mastercard and Visa references.

Unzer

The pricing page tells merchants they can "choose flexibly which payment methods" to offer, but no method is named on the captured pages — we found no public information on which methods, countries or currencies a European customer could actually pay with, including whether SEPA Direct Debit is supported at all.

PAYONE

The exemption strategy is engineered and public: low-value exemptions with the 30 € and 100 € limits and the five-consecutive rule, acquirer transaction risk analysis, automatic skip or rollout of 3-D Secure per transaction, and automatic Soft Decline recovery when frictionless is refused — with merchant liability for exemptions written plainly. Hosted Checkout Page and server-to-server modes, webhooks and a test environment with documented test cases are there too. I found no public information on an embedded checkout, network tokens or account updater, or authorisation-rate reporting, and PCI scope is only promised as 'Low PCI requirements'.

Unzer

The pricing page carries PSD2 strong-customer-authentication and PCI DSS badges and raises fraud protection as an FAQ question, which is more than silence. But we found no public information on hosted or embedded checkout options, SCA exemption handling, or what happens when a legitimate payment declines — the thing that decides my conversion.

PAYONE

Mandate management is the strongest piece: a separate mandate-creation route, reuse of an existing mandate reference for card-on-file, a RECURRING mandate valid for an indefinite number of subsequent transactions, a dedicated revoke endpoint, automatic revocation after 36 months, and a contestation period cut to 8 weeks for valid mandates. I found no public information on dunning with smart retries, subscription logic such as trials, proration or plan changes, a card account updater — and, most critically for me, any documented process for exporting payment tokens to another provider. Failed-SEPA guidance exists, but recovery looks left to the merchant.

Unzer

For a subscription business this is the make-or-break surface and the captured pages say nothing about it: we found no public information on stored cards, SEPA mandate handling, subscription logic, dunning, or whether payment tokens can ever be exported to another provider. A provider that keeps the tokens keeps my customer base hostage, and there is nothing published here to say otherwise.

PAYONE

The developer side is real — documented endpoints, webhooks and a test environment with test cases — but the finance side is opaque to me: payouts appear as FAQ topics ('When will I receive my payouts?') with no cadence or delay stated on the captured pages, and payout limits or fees are a question without values. Transaction pricing reads 'ab 0,09 € + Disagio' with no visible breakdown of the Disagio, and I found no public information on per-transaction fee itemisation, payout-to-transaction reconciliation reports, accounting exports, API versioning or idempotency.

Unzer

Footer links to developer documentation, a help centre and a platform status page suggest an API exists, which is more than nothing. But we found no public information on payout schedule or currencies, per-transaction fee breakdowns, or reports that tie a payout to its transactions — my finance team could not close a month on this.

PAYONE

The regulated entity is fully named: PAYONE GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, licensed and supervised by BaFin as an E-Geld-Institut, registered at Amtsgericht Frankfurt under HRB 116860 — that part is solid. I found no public information on safeguarding of merchant funds, reserve or rolling-hold limits with release timelines, chargeback fees, a notice period for ordinary termination, or the PCI DSS level; chargebacks appear only as FAQ guidance and termination as a self-service link. The bad-day terms are not written down where I can check them.

Unzer

The legal notice is unusually complete on who holds the money: Unzer E-Com GmbH named as a BaFin-supervised payment institution under register number 122914, Unzer S.A. on the CSSF list under Z00000009, plus complaint routes to both supervisors. The bad day is open — we found no public information on safeguarding of merchant funds, reserve or freeze conditions, chargeback fees or termination notice periods.

PAYONE

The contracting and regulated entity is German and the ownership is European — Worldline, seat in Paris, and the DSV group per the imprint — with all group companies stated to sit within the EU/EEA and SCCs plus adequacy decisions covering the disclosed third-country transfers, which are website analytics and hosting rather than payment processing. What I found no statement on is where core transaction and cardholder data are processed and stored, and the published subprocessor list covers the website, not the payment chain. For a subscription business handing over every customer's mandate, that silence matters.

Unzer

German and Luxembourg licensed entities contract with the merchant, which is the right starting point. But we found no public information on where payment and cardholder data are processed or which subprocessors are involved, and the vendor's own website runs on Netlify in San Francisco — with a notice that the USA is not a safe third country under EU data protection law.

PAYONE

Package prices are public and quoted exactly: Starter with '49,00 € einmalige Einrichtungsgebühr', '0,00 € monatliche Grundgebühr' and '0,99 € + Disagio' per transaction; Pro with '99,00 €' setup, 'ab 19,00 € pro Monat' and 'ab 0,09 € + Disagio'; and downloadable price lists exist for the POS tariffs. But the effective fee is unknowable: the captured pages give no breakdown of the Disagio, and I found no public information on cross-border or currency conversion costs, chargeback, refund or payout fees, contract term, or whether the model is blended or interchange++. The Individual package prices every component as 'individuell'.

Unzer

There are no prices on the pricing page: it pitches an "All-in-One" price and a custom offer with services "always included", and every actual rate comes through a contact form. For my card and country mix the effective fee is a sales conversation, so I cannot budget a single renewal against it.