Inkasso in Germany: What a Debt Collection Agency Can and Cannot Do

A letter arrives from a company you have never heard of, demanding payment for a debt you may or may not recognise, with a deadline and a threat of further steps if you do not pay. This is an Inkassoschreiben, a debt collection letter, and it is one of the most common pieces of frightening mail people in Germany receive. The honest, useful thing to know first is that a collection agency's actual legal power is narrower and slower than the letter usually makes it sound.

This page works through who is legally allowed to send these letters, what a collection agency can actually charge you and what is commonly overcharged, why it cannot itself take anything from you, and what to do if the debt is wrong, disputed, or simply too old to collect.

Information last verified on 20 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Who is actually allowed to collect a debt on someone else's behalf

Collecting debts for another person or company as a business is a Rechtsdienstleistung, a legal service, under the Rechtsdienstleistungsgesetz (RDG). § 10 RDG requires anyone providing Inkassodienstleistungen commercially to be registered for that specific purpose, and registration is not automatic: an applicant has to show the relevant expertise, and the registering authority can attach conditions to protect the people the debtor and the wider legal system.

Since 1 January 2025, the Bundesamt für Justiz maintains the Rechtsdienstleistungsregister, the public register that lists every registered legal service provider, including collection agencies. Checking a specific company costs nothing and takes only the company's name. An entry confirms the company is authorised to do this work. No entry at all, for a company that claims to be a registered Inkassounternehmen, is a genuine warning sign rather than a technicality.

What a collection agency can actually charge you

The fee an Inkassounternehmen adds to what you owe is not whatever figure happens to appear on its letterhead. § 13e RDG caps the collection costs a creditor can pass on to the debtor at the amount a lawyer would be entitled to charge for comparable work under the statutory attorney fee schedule (the RVG). A collection letter demanding a fee well above what a comparable legal letter would cost is demanding more than the statute allows the creditor to recover from you, whatever the agency's own contract with the creditor says.

On top of the underlying debt and any lawful collection fee, a creditor can generally claim default interest once you are genuinely in default. § 288 BGB sets that rate at five percentage points above the statutory base rate for an ordinary debt, and higher for transactions between businesses where the debtor is not a consumer. A separate flat fee of 40 euro under § 288 Absatz 5 BGB exists for commercial transactions, but it only applies where the debtor is not a consumer, so it should not appear tacked onto an ordinary consumer collection letter.

Worked example

Say an original invoice was 300 euro, unpaid and now genuinely in default. The creditor can claim the 300 euro principal, default interest calculated from the point default actually began, and a collection fee capped at what a lawyer would charge for recovering a 300 euro claim, which at that value is a modest, schedule bound figure rather than a large flat markup. A letter demanding several hundred euro in collection fees alone on top of a 300 euro debt is a letter worth questioning against § 13e RDG rather than assuming is correct simply because it arrived on official looking letterhead.

The single most important fact: an Inkasso agency cannot take anything from you

A debt collection agency is not a court, is not a bailiff, and has no legal power to seize your wages, freeze your bank account, or take property, no matter how the letter is worded. German enforcement law reserves that power to the courts and to the Gerichtsvollzieher, the court bailiff, and only once a creditor holds an actual enforceable court title against you, such as a judgment or a Vollstreckungsbescheid. § 753 ZPO is explicit that enforcement, where it is not handled by the courts directly, is carried out by court bailiffs, not by private parties acting on their own.

What this means practically is that a collection letter, on its own, is a request for voluntary payment backed by the threat of a future court process, not a step that itself has any seizure power. A letter that implies otherwise, warning of immediate account freezes or wage deductions before any court has ever been involved, is describing a step that has not yet happened and may never happen if the debt is genuinely disputed. That does not mean the letter can be ignored forever: if the underlying debt is real and undisputed, the creditor can eventually obtain a court title, most commonly through the Mahnbescheid and Vollstreckungsbescheid process, and enforcement becomes a real possibility at that later stage, not at the Inkasso letter stage itself.

What to do if you dispute the debt, or think it is wrong

Disagreeing with a debt a collection agency is chasing is a legitimate response, and there is no need to prove your case to the agency's satisfaction before saying so. A short written response stating plainly that you dispute the claim, or that you do not recognise the underlying contract, shifts the practical position: a collection agency cannot simply escalate a disputed claim to enforcement on its own authority, since it has none, and a creditor who wants to press a disputed claim further generally has to go through a court to get an enforceable title.

Where the debt is genuine but you believe it is simply too old, raising limitation (Verjährung) explicitly matters, because German courts generally do not apply a limitation defence on their own initiative. If you never raise it, a court can still enter a judgment against you on a claim that would otherwise have been time barred.

How long a debt actually stays collectible

Most everyday contractual debts, an unpaid invoice, a subscription, a private loan between individuals, fall under the standard limitation period in § 195 BGB: three years. § 199 BGB fixes when that period actually starts, and it is not simply the invoice date. The clock begins at the end of the calendar year in which the claim arose and the creditor knew, or should reasonably have known without gross negligence, both the facts giving rise to the claim and who owes it.

Worked example

An invoice becomes due and unpaid in March 2024, and the creditor already knows exactly who owes it. The three year limitation period does not start counting from March 2024. It starts on 31 December 2024, the end of that calendar year, and runs through to 31 December 2027. A collection letter arriving in early 2028 chasing that same invoice is chasing a claim that is very likely already time barred, and a debtor who raises that explicitly, in writing, is entitled to rely on it.

Some claims run on different, longer periods, including claims already confirmed by a final court judgment or an enforceable title, which is a separate question covered on the Mahnbescheid and Vollstreckungsbescheid page. The three year rule above is the default for an ordinary, un-litigated contractual debt, not a universal rule for every claim.

If you cannot pay a debt you do owe

Where the underlying debt is genuine and simply cannot be paid in full, a collection letter is often the point at which it is worth talking to a recognised debt counselling service about a payment plan or, where debts have become unmanageable across several creditors, the structured route described on the personal insolvency page. General background on German civil law is at German law explained.