Digital payments have long been part of everyday life—whether we pay by card, cell phone, or PayPal. But every time we make a payment, we leave behind data tracks. In this opening episode of the season “Secure Money” we ask: Who actually sees this data? Why is payment data so much more sensitive than other data tracks? And how is it used, in particular by the current players in the payment market? Is a vague unease or indifference justified – because proper knowledge about what happens in the background is no given.
The episode discusses the difference between security and privacy, and which players use payment data for personalized offers, services, or other purposes. It highlights the data usage and business models of PayPal, Klarna, Mastercard, Visa, Google, and Apple Pay, traditional commercial banks, and the Wero initiative, and asks which payment options are more “data-light” and which are more “data-intensive.” Finally, we ask what risks could arise from the concentration of payment and user data at Big Tech – and why the handling of payment data is not only relevant on an individual but also on a societal level.
Digitalgelddickicht Season Secure Money – Who sees our payments and how they are used| 30 October 2025
Gäste
Marek Jessen was a member of the ZEVEDI project Money as a Data Carrier and now works as a consultant for strategy and business of the digital euro at the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV). He has also worked for the Association of German Banks (BdB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS).
Carolina Melches is an economist and consultant for digitalization and financial innovation at the Finanzwende Recherche. Among other things, she has addressed the risks and regulatory gaps associated with Big Tech in Finance in the study More Money, More Power: Big Tech in Finance (2024). Otherwise she is concerned with digital payments and banking, and digital central bank money. She was previously a research assistant in the German Bundestag.
Markus Montz is an editor at c’t (Heise), where he focuses on financial IT, electronic payments, online banking, and payment fraud.
Antonia Steigerwald is a research assistant at the Sociology Department of the University of Lucerne and a doctoral candidate in the SNF project Digital payments: Making payments personal and social. In this project, she is investigating how value is created from retail and payment data and what social consequences this has for users.
Dr. Markus Unternährer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Sociology Department of the University of Lucerne and a member of the SNF project Digital payments: Making payments personal and social. Having already dealt with the digital economy in his doctoral thesis, he is now researching the convergence of money and data transfers, the role of fintechs and payment infrastructures, and the negotiation processes between banks, payment providers, and users.
Weiterführendes
Marek Jessen: Teilt Paypal meine Daten, nur nicht mit mir? Eine Datenabfrage und die Grenzen des Auskunftsrechts, eFin-Blog, 6 November 2024 (German only).
Carolina Melches: Big Techs im Finanzwesen. Warum wir klare Regeln für Alipay, Apple Pay und Co brauchen, eFin-Blog, 10 July 2024 (German only).
Carolina Melches and Michael Peters: More Money, More Power: Big Techs in Finance, Finanzwende Recherche, Berlin 2024.
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