The story
The idea for the founding emerged in 1872. On 4 January 1872 the imperial general post office through a writ of general postmaster Heinrich von Stephan encouraged the founding of Spar- und Vorschussvereinen (savings and advancement association) for postal clerk. 36 associations with 12067 were founded in 1872. These were financial institutions in the legal form of an economic association with one exception (Post-Spar- und Darlehnsgenossenschaft Saarbrücken). In 1879 they gained legal capacity as corporate bodies with a firm legal basis through governmental conferment.
In 1903 the Vorschussvereine (advancement associations) became the Post-Spar- und Darlehensvereine (PSpDV).
In the context of the German reunification the PSpDV associations which were located close to the new federal states of Germany expanded their business areas. For example, the PSpDV Frankfurt am Main (which up to that point was responsible for Hessen) took on Thuringia.
Until 1998 no PSpDVs were universal banks so not all bank services were offered. Also, up to that point only clerks and employees of the former Deutsche Bundespost (German Federal Post Office) as well as their relatives were accepted as customers and members of the banks. Up to that point a close co-operation existed with the Deutsche Postbank or its predecessors Postscheckämtern or Postgiroämtern. The co-operation enabled postal clerks who kept a check account with the Post Office to add an overdraft facility to their check account which was not offered by the Post Office itself.
Over the course of 1998/99 all 21 PSpDVs were opened bit by bit for non-postal clerk or employees. Except the PSpDV Hannover all associations introduced the universal bank business (check accounts, stock broking etc.) as part of this change. Because of the complicated legal form of an association the PSpDVs one by one also changed their legal forms. This is how the associations were gradually transformed into listed cooperatives. As now the label "post" as well as the label "association" in the name of the banks did not apply anymore the banks took on the already commonly used name PSD and henceforth called themselves PSD Bank.
In the following years 2000 until today a number of PSD banks merged so that today only 14 of the original 21 PSD banks exist.
Today Fiducia & GAD IT AG is the data center and IT service provider of the 14 PSD banks in Germany; prior it was the datacenter of the Sparda-Banks in Nuremberg. In August 2009 the PSD banks formed a collaboration with financial service provider Hypoport for process optimization and the development of collective products.
In 2015 a decision was made for the entire banking group to introduce video authentication. In the end of 2015 the PSD Bank Niederbayern-Oberpfalz eG withdrew from the Verband der PSD Banken e. V. (union of PSD banks) and therefore from the banking group.
From Wikipedia’s article on PSD Bank, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4