Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig pay1.de. NS
Answer
pay1.de. 5 NS edns1.ultradns.net.
pay1.de. 5 NS edns1.ultradns.com.
pay1.de. 5 NS edns1.ultradns.biz.
pay1.de. 5 NS edns1.ultradns.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0