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What the credit check means for newcomers
Written by
Janine El-Saghir
Janine El Saghir is an editor at How-to-Germany.com, where she specializes in the practical aspects of daily life and integration for expatriates. With years of...
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Erkan Boga
Erkan Boga is the founder and CEO of qmedia GmbH, the publishing house behind How-to-Germany.com. He established the platform with the clear vision of creating...
Edited by
Sadie Voss
Content Lead & Editor
Sadie Voss is the Lead Editor for How-to-Germany.com. As an expat who carved her own way into Berlin from the United States, Sadie is deeply...
No credit check, no bank account, no minimum term: these prepaid packages are the product a newcomer without a German credit history actually gets. Each card leads to the provider’s order page:
€0 per 28 days
€4.99 per 28 days
€9.99 per 28 days
€14.99 per 28 days
€19.99 per 28 days
€79.99 per 28 days
€0 per 28 days
€9.99 per 28 days
€14.99 per 28 days
€19.99 per 28 days
€74.99 per 28 days
€5 per 28 days
€7 per 28 days
€10 per 28 days
€12 per 28 days
€16 per 28 days
€4.95 per 28 days
€9.95 per 28 days
€14.95 per 28 days
€19.95 per 28 days
€99.95 per 28 days
Advertising notice: provider links in this overview are affiliate links — we receive a commission from the provider for sign-ups made through them.
- Postpaid contracts – mobile plans billed monthly, home internet, homespots, device instalments – usually involve a creditworthiness check with SCHUFA, Germany’s main credit bureau. Prepaid SIM cards, prepaid data plans and travel eSIMs do not.
- SCHUFA’s score runs from 100 to 999 points and is built from twelve criteria; the same score is used for banks, telecommunications and online retail. Around 62 percent of people in Germany sit in the top class.
- A newcomer has no SCHUFA record – which is not a bad record, but an unknown one. Some providers decline unknown profiles; a prepaid card or a monthly cancellable plan is the way in until you have Anmeldung, a bank account and a few months of payment history.
- Every telecom inquiry counts: the criterion “inquiries outside banking” gives full points for at most one inquiry in twelve months and zero points from four – so do not apply to four providers in a row. Inquiries within 28 days are counted once.
- You are entitled to a free copy of your SCHUFA data (Article 15 GDPR); it arrives within about a week and shows the base score and the inquiries of the last months.
The identity check that every German SIM card goes through is not a credit check. The credit check is a second, separate step, and it only happens when a provider gives you something on credit: a monthly invoice, a router on loan, a smartphone paid in instalments. That is why the same person can activate a prepaid card in ten minutes and be declined for a contract the next day.
Knowing which products involve the check and which do not turns a rejection from a dead end into a detour: the German number comes from a prepaid card today, the 24-month contract comes after Anmeldung, a bank account and a few months of paid bills – and the free data copy shows what the provider saw.
What SCHUFA is – in one paragraph
SCHUFA is a private credit bureau that stores contract and payment data on most adults in Germany and calculates a score from it. Banks, telecommunications providers and online retailers ask SCHUFA before they enter into a contract with a payment risk; SCHUFA answers with the score and, where relevant, with recorded payment defaults. The bureau’s new score, introduced as a single transparent score for all industries, runs from 100 to 999 points and is built from twelve criteria whose points simply add up. SCHUFA publishes the classes: “excellent” from 776 points (around 62 percent of people), “good” from 709 (around 20 percent), “acceptable” from 642 (around 8 percent), “sufficient” below that (around 2 percent), and “insufficient” without a score for people with open payment defaults (around 8 percent). The bureau itself, its history and how to correct wrong entries are covered in our guide to SCHUFA explained.
Which telecom contracts trigger a check – and which do not
| Product | Credit check | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile contract with 24-month term (Telekom, Vodafone, O2, 1&1, congstar and others) | Usually yes | Monthly invoice by direct debit, often with a smartphone in instalments – the provider carries the risk of two years of unpaid bills. |
| Monthly cancellable postpaid plan (Telekom Flex, O2 Flex, fraenk, SIMon mobile) | Expect one | Still billed after use; the risk is one month instead of 24, which is why these plans are the friendlier option for unknown profiles. The providers do not publish their criteria. |
| Home internet (DSL, cable, fiber) and postpaid homespots | Usually yes | Monthly invoice plus a router on loan. |
| Prepaid SIM cards, prepaid eSIMs, prepaid data and router options (Aldi Talk Home & Go) | No | You pay before you use – there is nothing to owe, so nothing to check. Only the identity check applies. |
| Travel eSIMs (Holafly, Airalo) | No | Paid in the app in advance; no German contract at all. |
| Sources: SCHUFA’s description of inquiries from the telecommunications industry, the providers’ tariff pages and our own product database, retrieved on 24 September 2026. Providers decide case by case whether to ask SCHUFA. | ||
SCHUFA’s own explanation is worth quoting in substance: whether a company asks at all depends on factors such as whether you are a new customer, whether you order unusually often, and on the amount involved – and each company decides for itself whether the contract goes ahead. In practice, a first 24-month contract from a new customer without a German address history is exactly the case in which a provider asks.
What the check looks at when you have just arrived
For a newcomer, three of SCHUFA’s twelve criteria matter more than the others:
- Inquiries outside banking in the last twelve months. This is where telecom applications land, alongside online shops and insurers. None or one inquiry gives the full 99 points, two give 71, three give 40, four or more give zero. Several inquiries within 28 days count as one – so comparing two providers in the same week is harmless, applying every month for half a year is not.
- Identity check. Once a contract partner reports that your identity was verified – a bank does this by law when you open an account – the score improves by 38 points. A German bank account therefore helps twice: it gives you the SEPA IBAN providers ask for and a first positive entry.
- No record at all. A person SCHUFA has never heard of is not “insufficient” – that class is reserved for people with open payment defaults. But an empty file gives the provider nothing to judge, and a provider that cannot assess the risk may decline or ask for a deposit rather than take it.
What the check does not look at: your credit history at home. SCHUFA has no access to foreign credit bureaus, and a spotless record abroad does not transfer.
Rejected? What it means and what to do
A rejection at a telecom provider says that this provider did not want to carry the risk on the day – nothing more. It does not appear in your SCHUFA file as a negative entry; only the inquiry itself is recorded.
- Ask the provider. Some accept a deposit or a first payment by card, some approve the same plan in a shop with the physical documents. The provider’s decision is its own, not SCHUFA’s.
- Do not shotgun applications. Every further application within the next months is another inquiry outside banking and costs points; three in a year already halve the points for that criterion.
- Take the product that needs no check. A prepaid card gives you the German number today, a prepaid router option gives you home Wi-Fi; both can be replaced by a contract later without losing the number, because porting is free by law.
- Try a monthly cancellable plan. fraenk, SIMon mobile and the Flex plans of the network operators carry one month of risk instead of 24 – an easier decision for the provider.
- Order the free data copy to see what the provider saw, and correct anything that is wrong.
- Come back with history. After Anmeldung, a bank account and a few months of paid bills, the next application is a different case.
Third-party sites sell the free data copy for a fee. The copy under Article 15 GDPR is free of charge and ordered directly from SCHUFA; SCHUFA states an average processing time of four to seven days and includes the base score and the inquiries of the last months. The paid “BonitätsAuskunft” is a different product for landlords and is not what a telecom provider needs.
Your free SCHUFA data copy
Article 15 GDPR gives everyone the right to a copy of the personal data a company holds. SCHUFA issues it free of charge, on average within four to seven days, in some cases after an additional identity check. The copy lists the contracts and inquiries recorded about you, the base score as an orientation value and the scores transmitted to companies in the last months. Order it once after your first rejection and once a year afterwards: wrong entries – a contract that is not yours, an inquiry you never made – are corrected on request.
Building a German credit history
There is no shortcut, but the sequence is short:
- Anmeldung. The registered address is the anchor of every German contract; providers and SCHUFA work with it.
- A bank account. It brings the SEPA IBAN for direct debits and the reported identity check that adds 38 points. Our bank account guide lists accounts that open without a residence history.
- A first contract, paid on time. A prepaid card builds nothing; a monthly cancellable plan or a first small contract, paid without a hitch, is the first positive entry from the telecom side.
- Few inquiries. One application at a time, and not more than a couple a year.
- Consistency. The same name and address on every application – a spelling variant creates a second file rather than a better one.
The contracts you can get today – and tomorrow
| Your situation | Realistic product | Later |
|---|---|---|
| Just arrived, no bank account, no Anmeldung | Prepaid SIM or prepaid eSIM; prepaid router option for home Wi-Fi | Keep the number, port it to a contract later for free. |
| Bank account and Anmeldung done, no history yet | Monthly cancellable plan (fraenk, SIMon mobile, Flex plans); monthly cancellable homespot | First paid months become your history. |
| A few months of paid bills | 24-month mobile contract, home internet contract, phone in instalments | Compare on price – the check is no longer the obstacle. |
| Editorial assessment based on SCHUFA’s published score criteria and the providers’ tariff conditions, as of September 2026. | ||
Once the check is no longer the obstacle, the contract families of Telekom, Vodafone, O2 and congstar are the plans to compare – cheaper per gigabyte than prepaid, with a 24-month and a monthly cancellable version each:
€0 per 28 days
€4.99 per 28 days
€9.99 per 28 days
€14.99 per 28 days
€19.99 per 28 days
€79.99 per 28 days
€0 per 28 days
€9.99 per 28 days
€14.99 per 28 days
€19.99 per 28 days
€74.99 per 28 days
€5 per 28 days
€7 per 28 days
€10 per 28 days
€12 per 28 days
€16 per 28 days
€4.95 per 28 days
€9.95 per 28 days
€14.95 per 28 days
€19.95 per 28 days
€99.95 per 28 days
Advertising notice: provider links in this overview are affiliate links — we receive a commission from the provider for sign-ups made through them.
Identity check and credit check are two different things
The identity check is required by § 172 of the Telecommunications Act for every SIM card and eSIM, prepaid included; it confirms who you are with a passport, ID card or residence permit and has nothing to do with money. The credit check is the provider’s own risk decision for products on credit and uses SCHUFA. Passing the first does not mean passing the second – and failing the second does not stop you from getting a German number today. How the identity check works and what to do when it fails is explained in our guide to SIM card verification in Germany; the prepaid packages are compared on our prepaid SIM page, home internet on the internet provider page and the router route on the homespot page.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. A prepaid card is paid before use, so there is nothing to owe and nothing to check. The only requirement is the identity check under § 172 of the Telecommunications Act, which every German SIM card and eSIM goes through with a passport, ID card or residence permit.
Usually every product billed after use: mobile contracts with a 24-month term, monthly cancellable postpaid plans, home internet over DSL, cable or fiber, postpaid homespots and smartphones paid in instalments. Providers decide case by case; a new customer without a German address history is the typical case in which they ask.
No. SCHUFA’s “insufficient” class is reserved for people with open payment defaults. An empty file is simply unknown, and a provider that cannot assess the risk may decline a 24-month contract or ask for a deposit. Prepaid products and monthly cancellable plans are the way in until Anmeldung, a bank account and a few paid months have filled the file.
The rejection itself is not recorded as a negative entry; the inquiry is. Inquiries outside banking – telecom, online shops, insurers – are one of the twelve score criteria: none or one inquiry in twelve months gives the full 99 points, two give 71, three give 40, four or more give zero. Inquiries within 28 days count as one, so avoid applying to several providers over several months.
Order the data copy under Article 15 GDPR directly from SCHUFA. It is free of charge, arrives on average within four to seven days and lists your contracts, the inquiries of the last months and your base score. Third-party sites that charge for the “free” copy are unnecessary, and the paid BonitätsAuskunft is a product for landlords, not for telecom providers.
Anmeldung, then a bank account – the reported identity check adds 38 points to the score and gives you the SEPA IBAN every provider asks for – then a first small contract paid on time, for example a monthly cancellable mobile plan. Keep applications rare and your name and address identical on every form.
Sources and legal basis (as of 24 September 2026)
Laws (gesetze-im-internet.de, retrieved on 24 September 2026): § 172 TKG (identity verification before SIM activation) · § 56 TKG (contract term, 12-month alternative) · § 59 TKG (number portability free of charge).
SCHUFA (schufa.de, retrieved on 24 September 2026): The new SCHUFA score: scale, twelve criteria, industries · Score classes and shares of the population · Criterion: inquiries outside the banking sector · Criterion: identity check · Data copy under Article 15 GDPR: processing time and content · SCHUFA for the telecommunications industry.
Providers (retrieved on 24 September 2026): Vodafone CallYa: prepaid without minimum term · fraenk FAQ: monthly cancellable postpaid plan, payment methods · SIMon mobile: monthly cancellation · Aldi Talk: prepaid tariffs and Home & Go router options · our own product database for the comparison cards.