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3.1. Secure money – Who sees our payments and how they use them

Cover Digitalgelddickicht 3.1. Wer unsere Zahlungen sieht und sie wie nutzt
Cover Digitalgelddickicht 3.1. Wer unsere Zahlungen sieht und sie wie nutzt

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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Cookies, AirTags, metadata: Where does tracking lead?

Das Coverbild des Digitalgespräch-Podcasts. Folge 16 mit Matthias Hollick
Das Coverbild des Digitalgespräch-Podcasts. Folge 16 mit Matthias Hollick

We are potentially tracked wherever we use software. Whether we are surfing the internet or jogging with a smart watch on, we are aware of the fact that data about us and our behaviour are collected and processed for a variaty of purposes. Some of these are indeed intended to benefit us, for example when it comes to monitoring our health or when personalised services are supposed to make our lives more comfortable. Often, however, there are simply financial interests of third parties in the background: companies which make money from our data traces, criminal activities – or in the worst case surveillance measures of authoritarian governments. However: The full potential of increasingly elaborate tracking techniques unfolds only in the progressive networking and interconnectedness of our IT systems. This applies to the supposed benefits just as much as to the risks of misuse.

Matthias Hollick teaches and researches computer science at TU Darmstadt where he heads the Secure Mobile Networking department. In this episode of the ZEVEDI-Podcast “Digitalgespräch”, the expert explains which technologies are already being used today to collect and analyse data about us, which actors are behind those activities and what purposes they pursue. He discusses with hosts Marlene Görger and Petra Gehring the dynamics of the development of potential surveillance technologies, the tension between the benefits and risks of the tracking infrastructures that surround us, where and how regulations might make sense, and what perspectives this opens up for liberal, democratic societies.

Episode 16 of Digitalgespräch, feat. Matthias Hollick of Technische Universität Darmstadt, 25 January 2022

Further information:

Link to the website of Matthias Hollick’s department Secure Mobile Networks:
https://www.seemoo.tu-darmstadt.de/

all episodes of Digitalgespräch

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The podcast is in German. At the moment there is no English version or transcript available.

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Putting surveillance to measure

The cover image of the Digitalgespräche-podcast. Episode 1 with Ralf Poscher

In 2010 the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) made clear that state surveillance must be limited in a democratic society: Authorities have to make sure that not too much surveillance is carried out when introducing new measures. Since then, the scientific community has been faced with a difficult question: how can surveillance be estimated quantitatively? Legal scholar Prof. Dr. Ralf Poscher is, among other things, Director of the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, where he has taken on this task. His conviction: it is possible to quantify the state’s surveillance activities, and we should do so – using tools and possibilities offered by digitization. The goal could be to develop a “surveillance barometer” that would allow us to keep an eye on surveillance in the future. In this first episode of Digitalgespräch, Ralf Poscher explains to hosts Marlene Görger and Petra Gehring how this could be achieved, what benefits it would have, and what surprises the objective figures of surveillance hold.

Episode 1 of Digitalgespräch, feat. Ralf Poscher of the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, 26 May 2021

Further information:

Link to the expert report on surveillance scenarios relevant to the “surveillance barometer” (in German):
https://www.freiheit.org/de/ueberwachungsgesamtrechnung-wie-der-staat-buerger-ueberwacht

all episodes of Digitalgespräch

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The podcast is in German. At the moment there is no English version or transcript available.