DACH bank-rail acceptance · pay-by-bank
Sofort (now delivered under the Klarna group as "Pay Now") is the German-market bank-rail standard for one-off checkout payments. On topropay it surfaces on the same hosted checkout, hosted fields or SDK as card, wallets, SEPA, iDEAL and Bancontact — and settles into the same reconciliation feed.
Key benefits
Four properties that show up the moment Sofort is enabled on a German, Austrian or Swiss merchant's checkout alongside card.
Sofort gives the merchant access to German, Austrian and Swiss buyers who prefer paying directly from their online banking rather than entering card details. The method ships on the same hosted checkout as card and wallets.
Sofort settles on the bank rail — payments are pulled from the buyer's bank account in a single push-flow rather than authorised on a card. There's no card-style chargeback window, which keeps dispute exposure lower than CNP card.
Sofort receipts normalise into the same reconciliation feed as card, SEPA, wallet and crypto — tagged by method, currency, country and connected provider. Finance reads one ledger across the method mix.
Sofort surfaces on the hosted checkout, the embedded hosted-fields surface, or the SDK — the merchant picks the integration shape. The method's per-market availability is a dashboard toggle, not a re-integration.
How sofort online payment works
What happens between the buyer selecting Sofort at checkout and the row landing in the merchant's reconciliation feed.
Sofort appears in the per-market method list — Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other supported European markets surface it by default; markets where it isn't available filter it out.
The buyer is redirected to the Sofort / Klarna Pay-Now-branded surface to select their bank and authenticate via their online-banking credentials and SCA flow.
The buyer's bank handles strong customer authentication (PSD2 SCA) — typically via app or SMS — and authorises the transfer.
Sofort confirms the authorisation to topropay; topropay fires a signed webhook to the merchant; the buyer is redirected back to the merchant's success page.
Funds settle on the bank rail per scheme timing. Settlement files normalise into the unified ledger with tags by method, currency, country and connected provider.
Main use cases
Five recurring merchant shapes that benefit from offering Sofort on their DACH checkout — DTC, cross-border European, B2B invoicing, travel and donations.
Brands with German, Austrian or Swiss buyer bases surface Sofort alongside card on their checkout. Bank-first buyers don't bounce because card isn't their preferred rail.
A pan-European checkout shows Sofort to DACH visitors, iDEAL to Dutch visitors, Bancontact to Belgian visitors and SEPA SDD to everyone else — all from the same hosted surface.
B2B sellers send hosted invoice pay links that surface Sofort as the bank-rail option for German buyers — settlement is direct from the buyer's bank account.
Travel and ticketing in Germany lean heavily on Sofort because the chargeback window doesn't apply. Lower dispute exposure means cleaner reconciliation for the merchant.
Where the merchant is a licensed donation-collecting entity, Sofort is a low-friction bank rail for one-off contributions from DACH supporters.
Platform features
Twelve capabilities the platform ships once and reuses for Sofort acceptance — the primitives that keep the bank-rail method on the same operational footing as card.
Germany, Austria and Switzerland in full coverage; other European markets where the Klarna group has surfaced Sofort.
Sofort surfaces in the per-market method list on the hosted checkout, hosted fields or SDK — no separate integration.
Strong customer authentication is handled by the buyer's bank during the redirect flow; the merchant doesn't ship a separate SCA integration for Sofort.
Sofort is delivered through the merchant's connectivity to Klarna's payment infrastructure (the Klarna group acquired Sofort GmbH; the brand operates within that group).
Sofort settlements normalise into one ledger alongside card, SEPA, iDEAL, Bancontact and other methods.
Lifecycle events (authorisation, capture, settlement, refund) fire as signed webhooks per the same shape used for card.
Refunds against Sofort transactions reverse the original transfer through the same connectivity; refund timing depends on scheme rules.
EUR primary; CHF on Swiss-side; merchant can configure currencies per market.
Every status transition logged with timestamp and rail response; exportable via API or CSV for finance and audit.
Dashboard toggles let the merchant enable or disable Sofort per market — useful for trials, A/B tests, or compliance-driven scope changes.
Sofort sits alongside SEPA SDD, iDEAL, Bancontact and Giropay on the same surface; bank-rail-first merchants can order them per market.
Sub-merchants on the aggregation model inherit Sofort acceptance without filing their own scheme paperwork.
Industry relevance
topropay's Sofort posture targets licensed merchants serving DACH and the wider European Sofort footprint. Core coverage centres on Germany; Austria and Switzerland complete the DACH region; additional European markets where the Klarna group has rolled out the surface are configurable per merchant.
Trust & compliance
One audited orchestration environment; PSD2 SCA handled by the buyer's bank; Sofort connectivity delivered through Klarna group infrastructure.
Ready to add Sofort
A 30-minute DACH review covers your existing method mix, the relevant connected provider, the per-market toggles, and a sandbox you can test against before any commercial commitment.
Frequently asked
Definitions, Klarna-group branding, country coverage, settlement timing, refunds and the practicalities of running Sofort alongside card and other European bank rails.
Sofort payment on topropay means accepting Sofort — a European bank-transfer / pay-by-bank method especially popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland — through the unified API. Sofort is now delivered under the Klarna group, and surfaces on the same hosted checkout as card, wallets, SEPA, iDEAL and Bancontact.
Payment sofort clears as a bank transfer initiated by the buyer through their online-banking credentials. The buyer authenticates with their bank's SCA flow during a redirect; the bank pushes the funds to the merchant's collection account; topropay receives the confirmation and fires a signed webhook to the merchant.
The sofort payment method historically traded as 'Sofortüberweisung' from Sofort GmbH; after the Klarna acquisition the brand was integrated and is often surfaced as 'Klarna Pay Now' on merchant checkouts. topropay supports the method under both labels — the underlying bank-rail flow is the same.
Sofort payment countries supported include Germany (the dominant market), Austria and Switzerland as the core DACH region. Additional European markets are available where the Klarna group has rolled out the surface — Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Poland and others, subject to per-merchant configuration and the connected provider's coverage.
Sofort online payment is a direct bank transfer — funds move from the buyer's bank account to the merchant's collection account, no card or PAN involved. That changes the dispute model (no card-style chargeback window), the settlement timing (bank-rail-specific, not T+1 to T+30 card timing) and the SCA shape (handled by the buyer's bank rather than a 3DS challenge).
Sofort payment klarna branding has been rolled out progressively. In many merchant checkouts the option appears as 'Klarna Pay Now' (Sofort) or under the Klarna umbrella; in some legacy or partner-specific deployments the 'Sofortüberweisung' label persists. The underlying rail and settlement flow are the same; topropay surfaces whichever label the connected provider exposes.
Sofort payment germany is the method's largest market by a wide margin. German buyers have historically high preference for direct bank-transfer payment over card, which is why Sofort sits alongside SEPA Direct Debit and Giropay on most DACH-focused checkouts. Merchants targeting Germany who omit Sofort typically see a noticeable conversion gap on bank-first buyers.
A dedicated sofort payment gateway isn't a separate product on topropay — Sofort is surfaced through the same unified payment gateway as every other method. Sofort-specific behaviour (the redirect flow, the bank-side SCA, the settlement timing) is exposed through the same endpoints, just gated by method selection and country.
Sofort settles per the underlying bank rail — typically same-day to T+2 for the funds to land in the merchant's collection account, then per the merchant's configured payout cadence to land in the merchant's own bank account. Specific timing depends on the buyer's bank, the connected provider's batching and the merchant's payout schedule.
Yes. Refunds against Sofort transactions reverse the original transfer through the connected provider. The buyer's bank typically credits the refund within a few business days; the merchant initiates the refund from the dashboard or via API exactly as for card.
Sofort is a one-shot push payment authorised by the buyer through their online banking at the moment of checkout. SEPA Direct Debit is a pull payment authorised by a stored mandate the buyer signed for recurring or scheduled debits. Sofort fits ad-hoc one-off purchases; SEPA SDD fits subscriptions and invoice cadences.
Yes — Sofort handles high-ticket DACH purchases well because the bank-rail flow has no card-style chargeback window, which reduces dispute exposure on big-ticket items. The merchant should still configure risk rules around unusual patterns, but the rail-level posture is favourable for high-ticket B2C and licensed B2B.
Yes. Sofort surfaces alongside Giropay (German bank-rail variant), SEPA Direct Debit (for subscriptions), card (universal fallback) and wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay) on the same hosted checkout. The merchant can order them per market to match buyer preference.
If the buyer's bank isn't supported by Sofort, the method gracefully fails on the Sofort surface and the buyer returns to the merchant's checkout to pick another method. The merchant's loss is one extra step in the checkout flow, not a hard error.
For merchants already on topropay with the relevant connected provider enabled, Sofort acceptance is typically a dashboard toggle — live within hours. For new merchants, the timeline includes KYB and any provider-side underwriting; typical end-to-end is 1–3 weeks depending on documentation completeness and merchant vertical.
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