Accessibility in Digital Payments: Inclusion That Pays Off

For a long time, accessibility was seen as an add-on feature – somewhere between “we should get to this at some point” and “it’s on the roadmap anyway.” But in digital payments, it’s not about comfort – it’s about economic self-determination and therefore a core aspect of every individual’s autonomy.
People with visual, motor, cognitive, or auditory impairments often face barriers that remain invisible until you try to navigate a complex interface without a mouse, without vision, or without reading skills.

In this sense, accessibility means:

It’s not just about usability. It’s about nothing less than the very foundation of digital participation.

With the introduction of the German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG), together with the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2) that has been in place since 2019, it has become clear that policymakers have begun to recognize the importance of accessible design. The connection is striking: a payment ecosystem that functions inclusively is the basic prerequisite for individual independence. However, there is still a massive gap between regulatory intent and operational implementation. Because many systems have evolved over time, they are not modular enough to simply “add” accessibility as if it were just another feature. Both banks and many fintechs primarily focus on speed, scaling, and conversion — and accessible design far too often falls by the wayside. Many teams simply do not know what accessibility by design looks like, let alone how to implement it. Regulation creates incentives and obligations. But real transformation will only happen once companies themselves rethink their approach.

Accessibility in the payment process does not mean making buttons bigger or increasing contrast. It means understanding design as a social process.
To ensure good accessibility, several aspects need to be taken into account:

Accessibility therefore does not just mean making systems “simpler,” but making them more understandable, more transparent, and ultimately more comprehensively human.

Screen readers, voice interfaces, Braille displays, and AI-supported OCR tools: assistive technologies are not created to cover up design flaws, but to make complex systems accessible. What makes this particularly exciting today is that AI continues to massively expand this field.
AI can automatically adapt input assistance (e.g., dynamic text enlargement), optimize contrast in real time, formulate transactions more clearly (for example by providing dynamic explanations in plain language), make anomalies understandable instead of merely warning about them, and personalize user journeys without complicating them. In this way, accessibility becomes a kind of dynamic sensory system — technologies learn to better understand what users truly need, and users can rely on the support provided by technical systems.

Payments are highly sensitive actions. Trust is therefore the true currency of digital transactions. Accessible systems create significantly more trust. Not only can they provide clear feedback that cannot be misunderstood — they also acknowledge needs that would otherwise remain invisible and give users the sense of staying in control throughout the entire process. The ultimate goal is not only a highly functional payment flow, but one free of fear. Especially when it comes to financial self-determination, mistakes can be costly.

As digital payment processes continue to expand, and as autonomous systems together with AI are gradually entrusted with more responsibility, the level of accessibility will determine who can truly participate. To ensure that no one is left behind as digitalization accelerates, accessibility must be placed at the center. This applies especially to a fair payment ecosystem:

for banks,
for fintechs,
for regulators,
for development teams,
and last but not least: for end users.

The future is created where technology does not shine for its own sake, but rather connects people sustainably.

It’s not about making digital payment systems look good; they must be designed to be usable, secure, and fair. Accessibility should therefore not be viewed as a mere cost factor or an annoying add-on, but rather as an investment in stable, trustworthy, and universally applicable systems.
If we take accessibility seriously, we create something the financial sector has been missing for years: a humanization of digital payments. Neither obligations nor excessive regulation should be the driving force. It should be an act of conviction.

As part of the Digital Euro Innovation Platform, we positioned ourselves as socalled "visionaries" and highlighted precisely these aspects of accessibility. You can find our corresponding proposals in the preliminary final report of the first phase.