Single market, not single rulebook: what Irish businesses get wrong about expanding into Germany, Austria and Switzerland

The point: the German speaking markets punish assumptions, not small budgets

An Irish shop selling to Germany sells inside the EU single market and customs union. Customs duties between Member States, and any charge with the same effect, are prohibited,¹ and Ireland and Germany pay in the same currency. On paper it is the easiest export an Irish business can make. The goods already flow the other way: Germany was Ireland's third largest source of imported goods in 2025, €16.0 billion, or 11.1% of everything Ireland imported.² Plenty of Irish shops sell back in the other direction and make it work.

The ones I see stall rarely stall for lack of money. They stall on a handful of assumptions carried over from Ireland. That Germany, Austria and Switzerland are one market. That the single market means no paperwork. That a translation is the same thing as a German shop. That a card checkout is a checkout. That the Irish price list can be copied across. That returns work the Irish way. That Irish terms keep Irish law. Each of those is a misstep, and each has a plain fix.

I take them one at a time, each with a worked example on one invented Kilkenny shop. The legal and tax setup has its own article, the cross border setup steps for Germany, and the detail on payments, delivery and consent has its own articles too. Here I stay on the mistakes and link to the detail rather than repeat it.

This is guidance from someone who builds these shops, not legal or tax advice. Check your own case with a German Steuerberater (a tax adviser licensed in Germany) and your own accountant at home, and, for the terms, a German lawyer.

The example shop, a yarn studio in Kilkenny

Nore Valley Yarns is made up. Siobhán runs it from a small unit in Kilkenny, dyes yarn by hand and sells online at norevalleyyarns.example. Two products matter here: skeins of 100 g at €18 each, and knitting kits at €45.

Knitters in Germany and Austria found her through Instagram. Her typical German basket is four skeins, €72 including VAT. Every number about Nore Valley in this article is invented so that every step can be shown, and every figure about the markets is sourced.

Misstep one: treating DACH as one market

DACH is the shorthand for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, from their country codes D, A and CH. It is a useful word for a slide and a misleading one for a plan, because it hides three countries with two currencies, three VAT rates and two customs regimes.

Start with size. Germany had 83,298,787 residents on 30 June 2026.³ Austria had 9,217,573 on 1 July 2026, a preliminary figure.⁴ Switzerland had 9,048,900 permanent residents at the end of 2024.⁵

The bars run along the three countries and up in millions of residents. Germany is about nine times the size of either neighbour, and the two neighbours together are less than a quarter of Germany. The takeaway: when someone says "DACH", more than eight in ten of the people they mean live in Germany.

The people are online, too. In 2025, 86% of people in Germany aged 16 to 74, the age range of the official survey, had ever bought something online for private use, and 70% had done so in the last three months.⁶

Now the differences that change your shop. Germany charges 19% standard VAT, Austria 20%, and Ireland 23%.⁷ Germany and Austria are in the EU and use the euro, like Ireland. Switzerland is not in the EU and uses the Swiss franc. A parcel into Switzerland meets Swiss import VAT at 8.1%, and tax amounts of up to CHF 5 are simply not levied.⁸ German is the main language of more than 60% of the Swiss population, not all of it, because Switzerland has four national languages.⁹

Worked example: Siobhán's "DACH launch" becomes two launches

Step one, count the markets. Three countries, two currencies (euro and franc), three VAT rates (19%, 20% and 8.1%), two customs regimes (the EU's and Switzerland's).

Step two, test her typical basket against Switzerland. At an assumed 0.94 francs to the euro, €72 is CHF 67.68. Swiss import VAT on the goods alone is 8.1% of that, which is CHF 5.48. That is above the CHF 5 line, so it is levied, and unless Siobhán sets up to collect Swiss VAT herself, her Swiss customer pays it when the parcel arrives.

Step three, decide. Germany and Austria share the EU rules, the euro and one setup, the same rules and currency she already trades under at home, so they launch together. Switzerland waits until the German side pays for itself. If you would rather learn in a smaller market first, that is a strategy of its own, and I wrote it up in bridge markets before Germany.

Misstep two: thinking the single market means no paperwork

A line I hear often: "Sure, it's the EU, I can just post it." Half of that is true. There are no customs between Ireland and Germany, no import VAT at the door and no proof of origin.¹ Goods that came into Ireland from outside the EU travel on just as freely, once they have been cleared and any duty paid here.¹⁰ The new flat duty of €3 per item category, charged since 1 July 2026 on small parcels entering the EU, is for sellers outside the EU.¹¹ It is not yours.

The other half is where Irish shops trip. Three things still apply.

VAT. While your sales to consumers in all other EU countries stay at or under €10,000 a year, without VAT, you charge Irish VAT as at home. Once you go over, or if you opt in earlier, each German sale is taxed in Germany at 19%, and you declare it through the One Stop Shop (OSS) with Revenue instead of registering in Germany.¹²¹³

Packaging. Every box and padded envelope you send to a German household is packaging. A business in another Member State that sells packaged goods directly to end users in Germany counts as the producer there, and must appoint one authorised representative in Germany.¹⁴¹⁵ The producer must also register with the German packaging register before first making packaging available there.¹⁶

Consumer law and the Impressum, which come up in misstep four and misstep seven.

Switzerland is the exception to all of the above: it is outside the EU, so a parcel there needs a customs declaration and meets Swiss import VAT, as in misstep one.⁸ The VAT routes, the packaging licence, the representative and the order to do it all in are in the cross border setup steps. I will not repeat them here.

The misstep is starting German ads before that setup exists, so the first orders arrive at a business that cannot legally ship them yet.

Worked example: Siobhán's first German parcel

Step one, the VAT route. Her €72 basket holds €60.50 of net price after 19% German VAT. The threshold of €10,000 divided by €60.50 is 165.3, so on German orders alone she would pass it at about the 166th order of the year, early in the second quarter at her pace. Rather than switch halfway through a quarter, she opts in to German VAT from her first German order and registers for the OSS with Revenue. That binds her for two calendar years, which suits a shop that plans to grow.¹²

Step two, customs. None for Germany or Austria. Her undyed yarn comes from a mill outside the EU, but it was cleared into Ireland and the duty was paid here, so it is in free circulation and goes to Köln like anything made in Kilkenny.¹⁰ No forms, no fee at the door, no origin question.

Step three, the packaging register. She registers before the first parcel leaves, not after the first complaint, licenses her packaging with a scheme and appoints her one representative in Germany.

Misstep three: translating the shop instead of writing it in German

Most Irish shops localise by translating. The words change, the thinking does not. In my experience German buyers read a product page for facts first and charm second, and an Irish page is often all charm.

There is a second layer. German is not one standard. Austria has its own words and its own conventions, and Switzerland writes ss where Germany writes ß. I covered those differences in the bridge market article, and why easy English language warmth can read as flippant in German in why a breezy English brand tone often undermines trust in DACH.

The fix is to have the German pages written, not translated, by someone who writes German for a living, from a brief that lists the facts a German buyer looks for.

Worked example: one skein, two product pages

Siobhán's Irish copy reads: "Squishy, sunset bright and dyed by hand in Kilkenny. You'll want to cast on tonight." A faithful translation keeps every word and loses the reader. It is vague, and the joke about casting on tonight lands as a sales line.

Step one, list what a German knitter checks before buying yarn: fibre content, weight, Lauflänge (the length of yarn per skein), recommended needle size, washing instructions, and whether skeins from different dye lots match.

Step two, write those first, as facts: 100% superwash merino, 100 g, 400 m, needles 2.5 to 3.5 mm, hand wash or wool cycle at 30 degrees, and a plain note that hand dyed lots vary, so buy enough for one project at once.

Step three, keep one line of warmth at the end, written in German by a German writer, not translated. The personality stays. It just stops standing in front of the facts.

Misstep four: leaving out the signals German buyers check before they trust you

A German shopper meeting an unknown Irish shop looks for proof that a real, reachable business stands behind it. In my experience the first place they look is the footer.

Part of that is law. In Germany, anyone running a commercial website must keep certain information easy to find, directly reachable and always available: the name and address, the legal form and the people who represent the company, contact details including an email address, the register and registration number, and the VAT identification number where there is one.¹⁷ That page is the Impressum. Strictly, a shop established in Ireland falls under its home rules for this, by the country of origin principle,¹⁸ and regulation 7 of the Irish E Commerce Regulations of 2003 asks for almost the same list.¹⁹ German customers still look for a page called Impressum, so you give them one. Austria has its own version in the E Commerce Gesetz, and the Austrian Chamber of Commerce notes that an email address alone is not enough there, and that webshops must give a phone number as well as an email address.²⁰

The other part is habit. A full returns page, a delivery time in days and a real address do quiet work. A shop with a contact form and no address looks like a shop that does not want to be found.

Worked example: what Siobhán puts in her footer

Step one, the Impressum. Nore Valley Yarns Ltd, the registered office in Kilkenny with Co. Kilkenny and the Eircode, the legal form, Siobhán's name as director, an email address and a +353 phone number, the Companies Registration Office (CRO) with the company number, and her Irish VAT number.

Step two, the pages beside it: delivery and returns in German, the withdrawal notice, the privacy notice and the terms.

Step three, the product page itself: "Lieferzeit 4 bis 6 Werktage nach Deutschland" (delivered in four to six working days), so nobody has to guess what "dispatched within 48 hours" means for Köln.

Misstep five: a card only checkout

This is the misstep with the clearest numbers behind it. Irish shoppers pay by card. German shoppers mostly do not, at least not online.

The Deutsche Bundesbank's payment behaviour study asks people to keep a diary of every payment. Its latest edition covers 2025, with 6,070 interviews run by the research institute forsa between 8 September and 2 December 2025.²¹ For purchases made online, online payment services such as PayPal, Klarna and Apple Pay account for 50% of transactions. Direct debit and bank transfer together account for 30%, credit cards for 15% and debit cards for 4%.²¹ Measured by money instead of count, direct debit and transfers lead with 45% of online turnover, ahead of the payment services with 32% and credit cards with 19%.²¹

The EHI Retail Institute measures the same thing from the retailers' side, using the turnover of a panel of 172 retailers with €50.7 billion of net online sales. Its figures for 2025 tell much the same story.²²

The bars run along the payment methods and up as a share of German online retail turnover. PayPal and purchase on invoice are close together at the top, and between them they carry more than half. Cards, the default of almost every Irish checkout, carry 13.7%, about one euro in seven. The takeaway: a card only checkout is built for the minority method.

Purchase on invoice (Kauf auf Rechnung) means the customer receives the goods and pays afterwards. For a small Irish shop it is usually offered through a payment provider that carries the risk of not being paid, rather than by sending invoices yourself. Which methods to offer, at what cost, is the subject of pricing and payment preferences in Germany, and how I wire them into a shop is in DACH payments in Solidus.

Worked example: how much of the German market Siobhán's checkout covers

Siobhán's Irish checkout takes cards and Apple Pay. The share of German online turnover that goes through the methods she offers is the sum of their shares:

$$S = \sum_{i} s_i$$

Here $S$ is the share of turnover covered by the checkout, and $s_i$ is the share of each payment method $i$ that the checkout offers. Shares of one whole add up as long as no payment is counted twice, which is how Foundations: percentages treats parts of a total.

Step one, today:

$$S = 13.7 + 1.3 = 15.0$$

With $s_{\text{cards}} = 13.7$ and $s_{\text{Apple Pay}} = 1.3$, her checkout covers $S = 15.0$% of German online turnover.

Step two, with PayPal and invoice added through a provider:

$$S = 13.7 + 1.3 + 28.7 + 26.1 = 69.8$$

Now $S = 69.8$%, more than four times as much.

Step three, the honest caveat. This is a share of turnover, not the share of customers who would walk away. Some German buyers will pay by card if they must. But in my experience a missing PayPal or invoice option is one of the most common reasons a German basket is abandoned on an English language shop, and it is the least expensive of all these fixes to test.

Misstep six: pricing like Ireland and copying the price list across

Irish prices are already in euro, so the price list looks ready to go. It is not quite. Prices in Germany follow the Price Indication Ordinance, the Preisangabenverordnung (PAngV). Three of its rules catch Irish shops.

First, consumers must be shown the total price.²³ Second, a shop selling at a distance must state that the price includes VAT and other price components, and whether delivery costs come on top, with the amount where it can be calculated.²⁴ On a German shop that is the familiar line "inkl. MwSt., zzgl. Versandkosten" (VAT included, plus delivery). Third, goods sold by weight, volume, length or area need a unit price next to the total price, clearly legible.²⁵ The unit is one kilogram, one litre, one cubic metre, one metre or one square metre.²⁶ A kit made of different products not mixed together is one of the exceptions.²⁵

Then the VAT inside the price. Once Siobhán is on the OSS, her German orders carry German VAT at 19% and her Austrian orders Austrian VAT at 20%, not the Irish 23%.⁷ If you show one euro price in both Germany and Austria, the price the customer pays is the same, but what stays with you is not. The net price is the gross price divided by one plus the VAT rate:

$$p = \frac{g}{1 + t}$$

Here $p$ is the net price, what stays with the shop before costs, $g$ is the gross price the customer pays including VAT, and $t$ is the VAT rate as a decimal, so 0.19 for Germany and 0.20 for Austria. Taking a percentage off a total that already contains it is explained in Foundations: percentages.

Worked example: Siobhán's skein in Germany and Austria

Step one, Germany. With $g = 18$ and $t = 0.19$:

$$p = \frac{18}{1.19} = 15.13$$

With $g = 18$ and $1 + t = 1.19$, the net price is $p = 15.13$. So €15.13 stays with Siobhán and €2.87 is German VAT.

Step two, Austria. With $g = 18$ and $t = 0.20$:

$$p = \frac{18}{1.20} = 15.00$$

With $g = 18$ and $1 + t = 1.20$, the net price is $p = 15.00$. So €15.00 stays with Siobhán and €3.00 is Austrian VAT. On the €72 basket the gap is €60.50 against €60.00, 50c an order. Across 400 Austrian orders a year that is €200, small, but it belongs in the price list on purpose rather than by accident.

Step three, the unit price. The skein weighs 100 g, so the price per kilogram is the price scaled up to 1,000 g:

$$u = P \times \frac{1000}{w}$$

Here $u$ is the unit price per kilogram, $P$ is the price of the pack, and $w$ is its weight in grams. Scaling a number to a common base so different sizes compare fairly is the rate idea in Foundations: ratios and rates. With $P = 18$ and $w = 100$, $u = 18 \times 10 = 180$, so €180 per kilogram. On the German page both numbers appear side by side, the skein price and the price per kilogram. The kit is yarn, needles and a pattern packed together but not mixed, so it falls under the exception and needs no unit price.

Step four, the price points. There is no exchange rate to manage, which is a real advantage over a British shop. The one choice left is whether to keep €18 in every country and accept the 50c gap in Austria, or to set Austrian prices of their own. Siobhán keeps one price and writes the gap into her plan, so it is a decision rather than a surprise.

Misstep seven: running returns the Irish way

Irish consumer law comes from the same EU directive and also gives a 14 day cooling off period, so Irish shops assume they know this part. The German rules are close, but the details carry money.

A consumer buying at a distance can withdraw within 14 days, and needs to give no reason.²⁷ For goods, the period starts when the customer receives them, and it does not start at all until the customer has been informed as the law requires.²⁸ The right then runs out at the latest 12 months and 14 days after delivery.²⁸

When a customer withdraws, the shop must refund within 14 days, and that includes what the customer paid for standard delivery.²⁹ The refund goes back through the same payment method, unless agreed otherwise at no cost to the customer.²⁹ The shop may hold the refund until the goods are back or the customer shows they were sent.²⁹ And the customer pays the direct cost of sending the goods back only if the shop told them so in advance.²⁹

Two buttons complete it. The final order button must say "zahlungspflichtig bestellen" or something just as clear, or no contract comes about.³⁰ And a shop must now offer an online withdrawal function, labelled "Vertrag widerrufen" or equivalent, with a confirmation step and a receipt sent straight away.³¹ The setup article shows how both are built.

The cost of returns per order is an expected value: how often it happens times what it costs when it does.

$$E[C] = r \times c$$

Here $E[C]$ is the expected return cost per order, $r$ is the share of orders that come back (the return rate, as a decimal), and $c$ is the cost to the shop of one return. This is the expected value from Foundations: expected value, with only one outcome that costs money.

Worked example: who pays for Siobhán's returns

Step one, the invented inputs. Assume 8% of German orders come back, so $r = 0.08$. A return costs Siobhán the outbound postage she paid and cannot recover, €9.50, plus €1.50 to check and repack the yarn. If she pays the return label to Kilkenny as well, that is another €11.00.

Step two, if her German withdrawal notice says nothing about return costs, she pays the label, so $c = 9.50 + 1.50 + 11.00 = 22.00$:

$$E[C] = 0.08 \times 22.00 = 1.76$$

With $r = 0.08$ and $c = 22.00$, the expected cost is $E[C] = 1.76$: €1.76 on every German order, returned or not.

Step three, if the notice says the customer pays for the return, $c = 9.50 + 1.50 = 11.00$:

$$E[C] = 0.08 \times 11.00 = 0.88$$

With $r = 0.08$ and $c = 11.00$, $E[C] = 0.88$, so €0.88 per order. On 500 German orders a year, that one sentence in the notice is worth €440.

Step four, the bigger risk sits outside the formula. A notice that is wrong does not just cost postage. It stops the 14 days from starting at all. The logistics side, the returns address and the carriers, is in shipping, fulfilment and returns in Germany.

Misstep eight: believing Irish terms keep Irish law

Many Irish shops publish their Irish terms in German with the line "governed by the laws of Ireland" left in. It does less than they think.

Under the Rome I Regulation, a consumer contract with a business that directs its activities to the consumer's country is governed by the law of the country where the consumer lives. The parties may choose another law, but that choice cannot take away the protection of the consumer's own mandatory rules.³² So the German withdrawal rules, the price rules and the button rules apply to German customers whatever your terms say.

The same care goes for tracking. Ireland and Germany share the EU rules on consent, but a banner set up for Irish visitors is not automatically the one German and Austrian visitors need. That has its own article: cookies and consent for German and Austrian traffic.

Worked example: Siobhán's terms

Step one, she keeps the choice of Irish law, which is allowed.

Step two, she has the German terms written against German consumer law, reviewed by a German lawyer, with the official model withdrawal notice filled in correctly.

Step three, she sets up a separate cookie banner for German and Austrian visitors, rather than the Irish one with a German label.

Two missteps that belong in other articles

If you sell software to companies rather than goods to consumers, the big misstep is a different one: expecting an Irish sales cycle from a German buyer who, in my experience, brings a procurement team, a legal review and more people to every decision. That is B2B SaaS sales in Germany.

And if your plan is to copy your Irish campaigns into German, the platforms behave differently there, in ways I covered in Meta ads for DACH, Performance Max in Germany and cross border PPC.

The order I fix them in

The missteps are not equal. Some stop you trading, some cost you sales, some cost you margin. I fix them in that order.

Read it from the top. The first two steps decide whether you may trade at all. The middle steps decide whether a German buyer trusts you enough to pay. The last check decides whether the orders you win stay won. Ads come last, because every euro spent before that point shows German buyers a shop that is not ready for them.

What I would do on Monday

If I were Siobhán, I would spend one day on the checks that cost nothing. Look at the checkout through a German customer's eyes and count the payment methods. Read the footer and ask whether a stranger could find a phone number and an address. Open a product page and ask whether a German knitter could buy without emailing a question. Then I would book my own accountant about the OSS and a Steuerberater about the German side, and appoint the packaging representative, because those take longest and everything else waits on them.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland are not harder than Ireland. They are different in a handful of knowable places, and the shops that do well there found those places before their customers did.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, article 28, EUR Lex, 2016, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12016E028

2. Central Statistics Office (CSO), Goods Exports and Imports December 2025, key findings (imports by region, Germany €16.0 billion or 11.1% of total imports), CSO, 17 February 2026, https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-gei/goodsexportsandimportsdecember2025/keyfindings/

3. Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), Current population, population by nationality and sex, quarterly figures (83,298,787 on 30 June 2026), Destatis, 2026, https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Population/Current-Population/Tables/liste-current-population-basis-2022.html

4. Statistik Austria, Population at the beginning of the year and by quarter, preliminary result for 1 July 2026 (9,217,573), Statistik Austria, 2026, https://www.statistik.at/en/statistics/population-and-society/population/population-stock/population-at-beginning-of-year/quarter

5. Federal Statistical Office (FSO), Switzerland's population passed the 9 million mark in 2024, press release of 3 April 2025 (9,048,900 permanent residents on 31 December 2024), Swiss Confederation, 2025, https://www.admin.ch/en/nsb?id=104703

6. Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), Einkäufe von Personen über das Internet zu privaten Zwecken 2025 nach Alter (online purchases for private use by age, 2025), Destatis, 2026, https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkommen-Konsum-Lebensbedingungen/IT-Nutzung/Tabellen/onlineeinkaeufe-privatezwecke-alter-mz-ikt.html

7. European Union, Your Europe, VAT rules and rates, table of standard rates by country, European Union, 2026, https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-rules-rates/index_en.htm

8. Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (FOCBS), Online shopping, mail order, importation by companies (8.1% standard rate, tax amounts up to CHF 5 not levied), Swiss Confederation, https://www.bazg.admin.ch/en/courier-by-post-online-shopping-mail-order-importation-companies

9. Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), About Switzerland: Languages, Swiss Confederation, https://www.aboutswitzerland.eda.admin.ch/en/language

10. Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, article 29, EUR Lex, 2016, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12016E029

11. Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Zollbefreiung für Warensendungen unter 150 Euro entfällt (the end of the customs duty relief for consignments under 150 euros), BMF, 2026, https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Standardartikel/Themen/Zoll/wegfall-der-150-euro-zollfreigrenze.html

12. Council Directive 2006/112/EC on the common system of value added tax, consolidated text, article 33(a), article 59c and articles 369a and 369b, EUR Lex, 2025, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:02006L0112-20250101

13. Revenue, Tax and Duty Manual: VAT and intra Community distance sales of goods, sections 2, 3 and 5, Revenue, 2025, https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/value-added-tax/Part04-place-of-taxable-transactions-place-of-supply/distance-sales/vat-and-intra-community-distance-sales-of-goods.pdf

14. Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste (PPWR), article 3(1) point 15, article 44, article 45(3) and article 71, EUR Lex, 2025, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32025R0040

15. Verpackungsrecht Durchführungsgesetz (VerpackDG), § 5 Beauftragung Dritter und Bevollmächtigung, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/verpackdg/__5.html

16. Verpackungsrecht Durchführungsgesetz (VerpackDG), § 6 Registrierung, zuständige Behörde, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/verpackdg/__6.html

17. Digitale Dienste Gesetz (DDG), § 5 Allgemeine Informationspflichten, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ddg/__5.html

18. Digitale Dienste Gesetz (DDG), § 3 Herkunftslandprinzip, Abs. 2 and 3, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ddg/__3.html

19. European Communities (Directive 2000/31/EC) Regulations 2003, S.I. No. 68 of 2003, regulation 7, Irish Statute Book, 2003, https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2003/si/68/made/en/print

20. Wirtschaftskammer Österreich (WKO), Informationspflichten nach dem E Commerce Gesetz, dem Unternehmensgesetzbuch und der Gewerbeordnung, as of 7 November 2024, WKO, https://www.wko.at/internetrecht/informationspflichten-nach-dem-e-commerce-gesetz--dem-unte

21. Deutsche Bundesbank, Payment behaviour in Germany in 2025, sections 2.4, 4.5 and annex 2, Deutsche Bundesbank, July 2026, https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/997852/1b30fa6978e2f05229d91beceeaf78cc/472B63F073F071307366337C94F8C870/zahlungsverhalten-in-deutschland-2025-data.pdf

22. EHI Retail Institute, Smartphone statt Portemonnaie: Mobile Payment boomt, press release on the study Zahlungssysteme im Einzelhandel 2026, section on online payment, EHI, 5 May 2026, https://www.ehi.org/presse/smartphone-statt-portemonnaie-mobile-payment-boomt/

23. Preisangabenverordnung (PAngV), § 3 Pflicht zur Angabe des Gesamtpreises, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pangv_2022/__3.html

24. Preisangabenverordnung (PAngV), § 6 Preisangaben bei Fernabsatzverträgen, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pangv_2022/__6.html

25. Preisangabenverordnung (PAngV), § 4 Pflicht zur Angabe des Grundpreises, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pangv_2022/__4.html

26. Preisangabenverordnung (PAngV), § 5 Mengeneinheit für die Angabe des Grundpreises, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pangv_2022/__5.html

27. Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), § 355 Widerrufsrecht bei Verbraucherverträgen, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__355.html

28. Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), § 356 Widerrufsrecht bei außerhalb von Geschäftsräumen geschlossenen Verträgen und Fernabsatzverträgen, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__356.html

29. Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), § 357 Rechtsfolgen des Widerrufs von außerhalb von Geschäftsräumen geschlossenen Verträgen und Fernabsatzverträgen mit Ausnahme von Verträgen über Finanzdienstleistungen, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__357.html

30. Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), § 312j Abs. 3 and 4, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__312j.html

31. Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), § 356a Elektronische Widerrufsfunktion bei Fernabsatzverträgen, Bundesministerium der Justiz, gesetze im internet, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__356a.html

32. Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 on the law applicable to contractual obligations (Rome I), article 6(1) and 6(2), EUR Lex, 2008, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32008R0593