The over 800 cooperative banks in Germany offer consumers Visa, Mastercard, and girocard (domestic debit brand) credit and debit cards as well as merchant acquiring services. Collectively, those banks are known as Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken (VR banks), which are part of the Cooperative Financial Network (BVR). They use VR Payment, part of the DZ Bank Group, to provide cardholder account processing for 5 million Mastercard and Visa credit cards and 20 million girocards. Most of those debit cards are co-branded with Maestro (Mastercard) and V Pay (Visa). Annual cardholder spending gener...