EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignPaymentsHeadquarters: DE

PAYONE: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

PAYONE is a payment service provider for merchants and service providers, mainly in Germany and Austria, covering in-store, mobile and online payments. Its offering includes card readers and apps, point-of-sale systems from partners, e-commerce payment modules and payment links, MOTO payments for mail and phone orders, and omnichannel solutions for larger customers. Besides cards, mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported. The services are delivered as terminals, apps and online services from the vendor.

PAYONE has an address in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and is a joint venture. In the 2021 restructuring, Worldline, a French payment company headquartered at La Défense, took the majority stake. The other partner is the DSV Group, the payments competence centre of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. Ultimate control therefore sits in France, not outside the EU. PAYONE is not open source, and the sources do not state where data is hosted. For a European organisation this means a German provider with a French majority shareholder, both within the EU, and a dependence on the vendor for processing.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with PAYONE pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
71 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-3100
    EU-only hosting
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked July 2, 2026
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent companyFRVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEUVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalAMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryPayments
TypeProduct
Websitepayone.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to PAYONE

The European alternatives to PAYONE come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

99 European Payments vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is PAYONE one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with PAYONE

PAYONE is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data. The ultimate owner is based in FR, also within Europe.

Data is hosted exclusively in the EU, so PAYONE scores best on data residency.

PAYONE is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs PAYONE together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to PAYONE?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to PAYONE include Adyen, Alma and Autopay. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to PAYONE?

Our list of EU alternatives to PAYONE is mostly commercial options. Browse the category on the map for open-source choices.

Is PAYONE GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

PAYONE is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes PAYONE an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on July 2, 2026.

Sources

This record was checked via the vendor's website and legal notice during the full audit of June and July 2026. Source links have been recorded per record since 20 September 2026.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Payments

Payments: Payment services, payment gateways, online payments and financial transactions. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Payments page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to PAYONE — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score