As bike leasing continues to grow across Europe, the German bicycle industry is introducing a neutral and standardized approach to service eligibility verification in workshop and service workflows.
The initiative, called “Leasing-Check”, was developed jointly by industry stakeholders to simplify fragmented service workflows between bicycle retailers, workshops and leasing providers.
The system is intentionally designed as neutral industry infrastructure rather than a commercial platform.
Today, service processes in bike leasing are often handled through a wide range of separate provider portals, contract logics and verification systems. As a result, retailers and workshops frequently need to switch between multiple leasing environments during daily service operations in order to verify contract status, maintenance budgets or service eligibility.
Leasing-Check introduces a standardized, read-only verification layer that allows authorized retailers and workshops to check whether a leasing contract is active and which service entitlements, budgets or maintenance packages are currently valid.
The project is coordinated by DiBike | Digitize Bike Business together with Zukunft Fahrrad and was developed in exchange with stakeholders from bicycle retail, leasing, software infrastructure and industry organizations across the German market.
Leasing-Check does not process transactions, payments or bookings. Instead, it focuses on a minimal and interoperable service verification mechanism for workshop processes.
“Many service workflows in bike leasing are still highly fragmented. Leasing-Check is intended as a practical and lightweight interoperability layer that helps retailers and workshops verify service eligibility across different leasing systems while remaining compatible with existing provider infrastructures” said Nick Becker, Managing Director of DiBike.
The technical architecture is based on standardized APIs and supports integration via a dedicated web portal as well as POS and dealer management systems. Depending on the leasing provider, information can either be displayed directly within Leasing-Check or accessed through secure deeplinks into existing provider systems.
The German bike leasing market is currently the largest in Europe, with an estimated leasing fleet of more than two million bicycles and annual market volumes exceeding EUR 2.5 billion. The project partners believe that operational standardization and interoperable infrastructure will become increasingly important as leasing markets mature internationally. Multiple leasing providers active in the German market are already participating in the implementation phase.
“As bike leasing markets mature, interoperability becomes increasingly important for retailers, workshops and leasing providers alike. Open and neutral infrastructure can help reduce complexity while maintaining competition and provider diversity,” said Wasilis von Rauch, CEO of Zukunft Fahrrad. “Bike leasing has become a key pillar of the bicycle industry and an important driver for broader cycling adoption. As an association, we want to ensure that all stakeholders benefit as much as possible and that the process runs smoothly.”
While Leasing-Check was initially developed for the German market, the underlying architecture is intentionally designed as an open and transferable framework that could support similar service verification workflows in other European markets in the future.
The first production version of Leasing-Check is scheduled to go live in September 2026.
Further information, technical background and project updates are available at: dibike.org/en/leasing–check