Girocode — QR Code standard

Overview

Girocode is the German national branding of the pan-European EPC QR / Stuzza standard — the same EPC069-12 BCD-format payload, locally promoted by Die Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft (DK) under a distinct German name since 2018 ^{1, 2, Germany report}. It is widely used on German invoices for one-scan SEPA Credit Transfer initiation in mobile banking apps. Girocode is mandatory-compatible across all major German banks (three-pillar system: private commercial, Sparkassen, cooperatives) ^{Germany report}.

In strict technical terms, Girocode == EPC QR Code — there is no Germany-specific payload extension; the difference is only the branding name DK adopted to promote the standard domestically ^{1, 3}.

History

The underlying EPC QR / Stuzza standard was pioneered by Austrian payment-standards body STUZZA in 2012 and published as EPC069-12 by the European Payments Council in February 2013 ^{3, 4, Austria report}. Country-by-country adoption followed:

Year	Country	Brand
2012	Austria	Stuzza QR / Zahlen mit Code ^{Austria report}
2013	EPC publishes EPC069-12	—
2015	Finland	EPC QR
2015	Germany	Initial Girocode availability
2018	Germany	Girocode brand actively promoted by DK ¹
2016	Netherlands, Belgium	EPC QR

The 2018 active promotion by DK ¹ marks Girocode's transition from a niche option to a mainstream invoice-payment standard in Germany — coinciding with smartphone QR-scanning capability becoming ubiquitous and the iOS Camera app gaining native QR detection.

Recent context (2024–2025) affecting Girocode's deployment landscape ^{Germany report}:

31 December 2024 — Giropay (a separate online banking redirect product, often confused with Girocode) discontinued.
July 2024 — Wero launched in Germany (P2P first, online commerce summer 2025, NFC POS 2026). Wero is an EPI (European Payments Initiative) product positioned to gradually replace several legacy national payment instruments — though Girocode for invoice payment remains active.
January 2025 / October 2025 — SEPA Instant Credit Transfer mandatory receiving / sending dates in Germany. SEPA Instant on the rail behind Girocode means scanned-invoice payments now settle in seconds rather than next day ^{Germany report}.

Technical specification

Girocode uses the identical BCD (Beneficiary Credit Data) payload format as the pan-European EPC QR / Stuzza standard ^{3, 4}. The payload is plain text with 11 newline-separated fields:

#	Field	Max length	Required
1	Service Tag	3	Yes — always `BCD`
2	Version	3	Yes — `001` or `002`
3	Character set	1	Yes — `1`–`8` (1 = UTF-8)
4	Identification	3	Yes — always `SCT` (SEPA Credit Transfer)
5	BIC	11	Mandatory in v001; optional within EEA in v002
6	Beneficiary name	70	Yes
7	IBAN	34	Yes
8	Amount	12	Optional, format `EUR<value>`
9	Purpose code	4	Optional, ISO 20022 purpose codes
10	Structured reference (RF)	35	Optional (mutually exclusive with field 11)
11	Unstructured remittance info	140	Optional (mutually exclusive with field 10)

QR symbology [epc-ref]:

Underlying symbology: QR Code (ISO/IEC 18004)
Error correction level: M (mandated)
Maximum QR version: 13 (i.e. ≤ 331 bytes of payload)
Encoding mode: Byte

Sample German Girocode payload ^{Germany report}:

BCD
002
1
SCT
DEUTDEFF
Max Mustermann GmbH
DE89370400440532013000
EUR150.00
RINV

Rechnung Nr. 12345

German IBAN structure ^{Germany report}:

DE + 2 check digits + 8-digit bank code + 10-digit account number
Example: DE89370400440532013000 (22 characters)

Common German BICs ^{Germany report}:

Deutsche Bank: DEUTDEFF
Commerzbank: COBADEFF
DZ Bank: GENODEFF

Use cases

Girocode is invoice-payment infrastructure — single-purpose by design, but the deployment surface in Germany is broad ^{Germany report}:

Printed utility bills — electricity, gas, telecom, internet invoices. Pre-printed Girocode on the invoice; consumer scans with banking app camera.
Government and tax notices — federal Steuerbescheide (tax assessments), municipal fees (Gebühren), social-insurance contributions.
Donation requests — NGOs, religious organisations, charities print Girocode on flyers and mailings.
Health insurance and other recurring billers — premium reminders carry Girocode.
B2B supplier invoices — printed or PDF invoices with Girocode payable in one scan, often using SCOR structured reference (RF format) for accounting matching ³.
POS-adjacent use cases — some German cash registers print Girocode on receipts for split-the-bill / pay-later workflows; relatively niche compared to invoice usage.

German banking-app coverage ^{Germany report}:

Sparkasse app — most-downloaded German banking app (9M+ downloads); Girocode scan + Photo Pay (camera scan of paper invoices).
Deutsche Bank app — Smart Transfer with camera; Girocode scan + photo capture of PDF/JPG invoices.
Commerzbank, VR Banking (Volksbanken/Raiffeisenbanken), ING Germany, N26 — all support Girocode scan natively.

Photo Payment is a German-specific adjacent capability: bank apps that scan paper invoices using OCR (not Girocode QR specifically) — useful for invoices issued before Girocode adoption. Photo Pay and Girocode coexist in the same banking-app UI ^{Germany report}.

Implementations

Girocode shares the EPC QR / Stuzza implementation ecosystem — any EPC-QR library generates Girocode-compatible payloads.

Encoder libraries:

JavaScript — d13nde/EPC-GiroCode — JavaScript Girocode generator ⁵.
Python — Segno — high-quality QR library with segno.helpers.make_epc_qr() helper that produces a Girocode/EPC-QR payload ⁶.
PHP — smhg/sepa-qr-php — 51★, 2020 — generates SEPA / EPC QR codes (Girocode-compatible) ⁷.
PHP — RikudouSage/QrPaymentEU — broader EU payment library including Girocode ⁸.
.NET — DevExpress XtraReports ships QRCodeEPCGenerator as a barcode component ⁹.

German-specific tooling:

easybill, billbee, lexware, Datev and other German billing/accounting software packages generate Girocode on invoices automatically ¹.
Hosted generators — girocodegenerator.com and similar German-language services ¹.

Bank apps (canonical production scanning implementations) — see Use cases section above ^{Germany report}.

Comparison

vs. EPC QR / Stuzza (pan-European parent standard) — Strictly identical at the payload level. Girocode is a German brand for EPC QR, not a technical variant. The same Girocode payload is readable by Austrian Stuzza-QR-aware apps, Finnish bank apps, etc. The branding choice was DK's marketing decision to make the German payment landscape more recognisable to consumers ^{1, 3, Austria report}.

vs. Swiss QR-bill (Switzerland's national invoice QR) — Both serve the invoice-payment niche in DACH (German-speaking Europe) but with markedly different design choices. Swiss QR-bill uses an ISO 20022 pain.001-derived payload with 31–34 fields including QRR 27-digit reference and structured billing-info; Girocode uses an 11-field BCD payload (much simpler) ^{Switzerland report, 3}. Switzerland is non-EU and built its own; Germany adopted the pan-European one. Both standards are used heavily in the German-speaking world but for different countries.

vs. HUB3 (Croatia's invoice barcode) — Different symbology entirely: HUB3 uses PDF417 not QR Code. HUB3 is mandatory in Croatia for domestic payment slips; Girocode is non-mandatory in Germany but de facto universal [hub3-ref].

vs. earlier German alternatives:

Photo Payment / Smart Transfer — German banks' OCR-scanning of paper invoices. Coexists with Girocode in the same banking-app UI; Photo Pay handles invoices without Girocode, Girocode is the structured fast path when present ^{Germany report}.
Bezahlcode (older German alternative, mostly superseded) — a pre-EPC QR-payment proposal from the early 2010s with its own format, never gained traction once EPC QR / Girocode arrived.

Fun facts

The "Girocode" brand name reflects a deliberate alignment with Germany's existing Girokonto (current/checking account) terminology — making the standard immediately legible to German consumers as "the QR code for your Giro account" ¹. Most other countries kept the EPC QR name; Germany localised the branding.

The standard is technically identical to Austria's Stuzza QR ^{Austria report} — a German consumer scanning an invoice from an Austrian supplier in their German banking app gets the same auto-populated SEPA Credit Transfer experience as scanning a domestic Girocode. The pan-European single-format was the explicit EPC design goal.

Germany's three-pillar banking structure (private commercial banks, Sparkassen savings banks, Volksbanken/Raiffeisenbanken cooperatives) historically slowed payment-standard adoption — every change required consensus across three sub-sectors with different governance ^{Germany report}. Girocode's cross-pillar promotion by DK starting 2018 was a notable demonstration that consensus was achievable; all three pillars' apps support Girocode scanning today ^{Germany report}.

Status

Active, widely deployed. Most recent context ^{Germany report}:

All major German banks (across the three-pillar system) support Girocode scanning in their apps
Actively promoted by Die Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft (DK) since 2018
Used by all major billing categories (utilities, government, B2B, donations)
Underlying SEPA Credit Transfer rail now settles instantly via SEPA Instant (mandatory in Germany Jan / Oct 2025) ^{Germany report}
1 300+ German institutions offering SEPA Instant (highest in Europe) — improves Girocode-initiated transfer settlement speed ^{Germany report}

Future trajectory ^{Germany report}:

Wero (European Payments Initiative, launched in Germany July 2024) may eventually overlap Girocode's invoice-payment niche — Wero's QR code feature is on the 2025 / 2026 roadmap. No formal Girocode deprecation planned; the two are expected to coexist for the medium term.
EPC QR specification continues to evolve (current v2.10, June 2024) — Girocode tracks the latest revision automatically as a re-brand rather than a fork [epc-ref].

Sources

Deployments

Found in the following country reports (grep across reports/countries/):

DE — DE-germany.md