Germany: Consumer Protection & APP Fraud

Consumer Protection & APP Fraud

Germany has enacted the Act implementing Directive (EU) 2023/2225, the recast EU Consumer Credit Directive, extending the scope of general consumer-credit law to forms of credit that have historically sat outside mainstream consumer-credit regulation: microcredit, interest-free financing and Buy-Now-Pay-Later models. The Act was adopted and published as BGBl. 2026 I Nr. 139 on 18 May 2026. Its commencement clause provides that the Act enters into force, subject to a paragraph 2 exception, on 20 November 2026, which is when most of its substantive provisions take effect.

The practical consequence for BNPL and microcredit providers active in the German market is that products which previously operated outside the general consumer-credit regime - precisely because they were structured as short-term, interest-free, or small-value credit - now fall within it. This is a scope extension rather than a wholesale rewrite of consumer-credit law: the existing general consumer-credit framework, with its established obligations around pre-contractual disclosure and creditworthiness assessment, is being applied to a wider set of credit products rather than a new, separate regime being built for BNPL specifically. Firms offering BNPL or microcredit to German consumers that have not previously treated themselves as subject to consumer-credit law will need to assess, ahead of 20 November 2026, whether their products now sit inside that scope.

Outlook

The operative date to track is 20 November 2026, when most provisions of the implementing Act become applicable. The paragraph 2 exceptions referenced in the commencement clause were not detailed in the material reviewed and should be treated as a residual area requiring separate confirmation before that date. No supervisory enforcement record yet exists under the extended scope, since the regime has not yet reached its main commencement date.