whats-best.ai
Search Sign in

Payment

Novalnet

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 2 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Novalnet AG · www.novalnet.de

Report an error on this page Is this your product? →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Knows the headline rate covers the cheapest card in the cheapest country. Reads for the currency conversion markup, the chargeback fee, the payout delay and the clause that lets the provider freeze funds without a reason — and treats a missing licence number as an answer.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Skeptic

Payment methods & local coverage

How this is scored

Which methods a European customer can actually pay with — cards and wallets, SEPA Direct Debit, and the local methods that decide conversion per country — judged on the named list per market rather than on a method count.

0 — Cards only, or a method list with no statement of which countries and currencies each one covers.

3 — Major cards and wallets plus one or two European methods, with local coverage stated vaguely ("many local methods") and no SEPA Direct Debit.

5 — Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, SEPA Direct Debit, and the main local methods for DACH and Benelux (iDEAL or Wero, Bancontact, Klarna or invoice) listed by name with the countries they serve.

8 — Broad EU coverage named per country — including methods such as BLIK, TWINT, Przelewy24, EPS and Wero — multi-currency acceptance with settlement currencies stated, and which methods support refunds and recurring charges documented per method.

10 — Coverage is documented as a matrix a merchant can plan against: every method with its countries, currencies, refund, partial-capture and recurring support, and the provider's own acquiring versus third-party routing stated per method.

Report an error

The Skeptic

Cards, wallets and SEPA Direct Debit are named, and the local list is real — iDEAL|Wero, paydirekt, TWINT, PostFinance, Multibanco and MB Way each tied to their country — but I found no public information on Bancontact for Belgium, or BLIK, Przelewy24 or EPS for Poland and Austria. The 150-method headline is a count, not a matrix a merchant can plan against: refund support is undocumented per method and recurring support is stated only for card, SEPA, PayPal and invoice. 1 6 7 9

Report an error

Checkout, SCA & fraud

How this is scored

The path from basket to authorised payment under PSD2: hosted and embedded checkout options, 3-D Secure and SCA exemption handling, fraud screening, and what the provider documents about keeping legitimate payments from failing.

0 — A single redirect page with no statement on 3-D Secure, SCA or fraud screening.

3 — Hosted checkout with 3-D Secure 2 mentioned, fraud screening as an unexplained add-on, and no word on exemptions or declined-payment handling.

5 — Hosted and embedded checkout options, 3-D Secure 2 with SCA handled by the provider, configurable fraud rules, and the resulting PCI DSS scope for each integration type stated.

8 — SCA exemptions (low value, transaction risk analysis, merchant-initiated) applied and documented, fraud tooling with rules and risk scores exposed to the merchant, network tokens or account updater, and liability shift explained per flow.

10 — Authorisation is engineered and shown: exemption strategy documented, soft-decline retry handled, authorisation-rate reporting by method and issuer country, and a checkout the merchant can run in their own domain while staying at the lowest PCI scope.

Report an error

The Skeptic

Hosted, inline, overlay and redirect checkout are real options, and the payment form is hosted in a PCI DSS Level 1 environment that relieves the merchant of own PCI compliance — but I found no public statement on 3-D Secure, SCA exemptions or declined-payment handling, only a homepage claim of being SCA-compatible. Fraud screening is one line about AI-based fraud management, with no rules or risk scores exposed to the merchant. 1 8 9 11

Report an error

Subscriptions & recurring payments

How this is scored

Charging the same customer again: card-on-file and merchant-initiated transactions, SEPA mandates, subscription logic and dunning — and whether the stored payment credentials can leave with the merchant.

0 — No stored payment methods; every charge needs the customer to pay again.

3 — Card-on-file tokens for repeat charges, but no SEPA mandate handling, no subscription logic, and failed-payment handling left entirely to the merchant.

5 — Stored cards and SEPA Direct Debit mandates, merchant-initiated transactions documented, and basic subscription plans with scheduled charges and failed-payment notifications.

8 — Subscription billing with trials, proration and plan changes, smart retries and dunning, card account updater, mandate management with pre-notification, and a documented process for exporting payment tokens to another provider.

10 — Recurring revenue is a first-class product: usage-based and invoice-based billing, dunning with measurable recovery, token migration in and out documented with a stated timeline and format, and recurring support stated for every local method that allows it.

Report an error

The Skeptic

Recurring is genuinely built: tokenised charges across SEPA Direct Debit, card, PayPal and invoice, a subscription API with interval and tariff parameters, trials and tiered pricing, intelligent retries with dunning, and an end-customer cancellation portal. But I found no public information on SEPA mandate pre-notification, proration, card account updater, or — the one I always look for — any process for exporting payment tokens to another provider. 9 11

Report an error

Settlement, reconciliation & API

How this is scored

Getting the money and knowing what it was: payout cadence and currencies, fee itemisation per transaction, reports that match a bank statement, and an API and webhooks a team can build finance processes on.

0 — Payouts on an unstated schedule, one net amount per payout, and no API or report beyond an on-screen list.

3 — A stated payout schedule and CSV exports, but fees netted invisibly into payouts and an API with thin documentation.

5 — Payout frequency and delay stated, per-transaction fee breakdown in reports, a documented REST API with webhooks and a test mode, and exports that link each payout to its transactions.

8 — Configurable payout schedules and settlement currencies, reconciliation reports that match bank lines, accounting integrations or exports named, a versioned API with idempotency and published rate limits, and a public status page with incident history.

10 — Finance can close the month from the provider's data: interchange and scheme fees itemised per transaction, automated reconciliation to the ledger, a deprecation policy for the API, and full historical data exportable after the contract ends.

Report an error

The Skeptic

Payout cycles from a 3-day rhythm to monthly, 25 payout currencies, a gross-or-net payout choice, and a settlement file per payout with a transaction-level breakdown of all cost positions — that is the itemisation a finance team needs, plus MT940, IDoc and SOAP exports for SAP-class accounting and scheduled reports by email or SFTP. The gaps: I found no public information on webhooks, idempotency, rate limits or a public status page, and the delay between transaction and payout is not stated. 9 12 13

Report an error

Licence, risk & account terms

How this is scored

Who holds the merchant's money under which licence, and what the contract lets the provider do on a bad day: freezes, reserves, termination, chargebacks. Scored on what the terms and the imprint state, not on reputation.

0 — No regulated entity named; terms allow freezing funds and terminating the account at any time with no notice, reason or timeline.

3 — A licence mentioned without the entity, supervisor or register number, and terms that permit reserves and holds with no stated limits.

5 — The regulated entity named with its supervisor and licence type, safeguarding of merchant funds stated, chargeback fees and dispute process published, and a notice period for ordinary termination.

8 — Entity, supervisor, register number and passporting stated per country; reserve and rolling-hold conditions defined with limits and release timelines; freeze and termination terms with reasons and a route to appeal; PCI DSS level and attestation published.

10 — The bad day is written down: every regulated entity in the chain named with register links, reserve calculation disclosed, funds release timelines after termination committed, a documented complaint route to the supervisor, and exit terms that include handing back payment tokens and transaction history.

Report an error

The Skeptic

The licence side is unusually clear: BaFin register number 122702, the full ZAG licence catalogue with its statutory paragraphs, escrow accounts under §13 and §17 ZAG that are insolvency-protected with banks holding no set-off or pledge rights, and regular Bundesbank and BaFin reporting. But the bad day is silent — I found no public information on reserve or rolling-hold conditions, termination notice periods, chargeback fees, or any route to appeal a freeze. 4 9 13 14

Report an error

European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting and regulated entity is, and where transaction and cardholder data are processed and stored. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline. The card schemes are US-based for every provider, so the scheme layer is not held against any one vendor; the part the vendor controls is.

0 — Non-EU contracting entity, no statement on where payment data is processed, and subprocessors unnamed.

3 — An EU licensed entity contracts, but payment and customer data is processed outside the EU by default without an explained safeguard, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU contracting and regulated entity, EU processing stated for core payment data, but the group parent or significant parts of the chain (fraud scoring, support, analytics) are non-EU without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU entity and EU licence, payment and cardholder data processed and stored in the EU on named infrastructure, subprocessor list published with locations, and a DPA covering the processing the provider does as processor versus as controller.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, EU entity and licence, every processing location and subprocessor European, European rails (SEPA, Wero or national schemes) offered alongside cards, and certifications published.

Report an error

The Skeptic

The contracting entity is the German, BaFin-supervised Novalnet AG, data centres are exclusively in Germany with EU-only processing claimed, and a stack of ISO, PCI and IT-Grundschutz certifications is published. But the imprint also lists affiliated entities in the UK, the US and an India technology partner with no stated safeguard, and I found no subprocessor list, no ownership disclosure and no data processing agreement behind the marketing-page guarantee. 4 5

Report an error

Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a merchant can compute the effective fee for their own mix of cards, countries and methods — including cross-border and currency conversion markups, chargebacks, refunds, payouts and monthly fees — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every rate is a sales conversation.

3 — A headline percentage exists, but it is unclear which cards and countries it covers, and cross-border, currency conversion or chargeback fees are unstated — the effective fee is unknowable.

5 — Rates published per main method with domestic and international cards distinguished, but at least one commonly incurred cost (currency conversion markup, chargeback fee, payout or monthly fee) is missing or "on request".

8 — Every method priced publicly, cross-border and currency conversion markups stated, chargeback, refund and payout fees listed, minimum monthly fees and contract term given, and whether the model is blended or interchange++ said plainly.

10 — Complete fee computability: the effective rate derivable for a given volume, card mix and country mix — interchange++ with the markup published or a blended rate with every exception listed — plus volume tiers, reserves and every ancillary fee on a public page.

Report an error

The Skeptic

The pricing page is refreshingly concrete: per-method transaction fee plus disagio, domestic versus non-EU and commercial card rates distinguished at 0,24€ + 2,90 %, a 25€ monthly fee, a 99€ setup fee and no contract term. But the effective fee is still not computable — I found no public information on a currency conversion markup despite 25 payout currencies, no chargeback, refund or payout fee, and PayPal's 0,00 % carries a footnote that conditions depend on revenue and industry. 2 13

Report an error

European sovereignty — proven facts

2 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency EU only ⚠ unverified 3/3 pts 5 Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Do you know more about Novalnet? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (15)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.novalnet.de Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing page www.novalnet.de Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy www.novalnet.de Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Legal notice www.novalnet.de Checked 22 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Security / trust page www.novalnet.de Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Payment methods & local coverage — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Payment methods & local coverage — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Checkout, SCA & fraud — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Checkout, SCA & fraud — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Subscriptions & recurring payments — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Subscriptions & recurring payments — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Settlement, reconciliation & API — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Settlement, reconciliation & API — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Licence, risk & account terms — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  15. 15 Licence, risk & account terms — found from sitemap www.novalnet.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →