Cash is still (mostly) king in Eurozone
Laura Watkins
Executive Producer
People have been predicting the death of cash for years. And depending on who you talk to, the future is either just around the corner or will never quite happen.
A typical Swedish person (who makes three times the number of card transactions than the average of European) can probably imagine that future. But if you talk to anyone in Germany – a company with a historic affinity to cold hard cash – they might look at you funny.
A recent report from the European Central Bank has gathered up data on how households use cash across European countries in the Euro (bear with us, it’s more interesting than it sounds). Surprisingly, it’s the first serious investigation into cash usage since 2008.
What’s slightly more bizarre is the gender split of cash and card use. Men make more card and cash payments per day than women. Men over 40 are also much more likely to use cash than anyone else.
Perhaps more interestingly, the use of cards is lowest for young people between 18 and 24 and people with lower levels of education. On average, they were hitting about 1.6 card payments per week. We can speculate that this is due to a general lack of access, lack of need and perhaps a lack of funds, keeping their transactions down.
Cash is still (mostly) king in Eurozone
For those of you who aren’t interested in a 60-page report, here’s the TL:DR:- 79% of all payments at at point of sale devices were made with cash
- 19% with cards
- 2% of payments were made with what the report enigmatically calls ‘other payment instruments’.
- 54% of transaction value is made with cash,
- 39% by card and
- 7% by those shady ‘other instruments’.
Who’s using all this cash?
So who’s to blame/thank for the delay in the ‘inevitable’ shift towards a cashless society? Cash was least used in the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland, where its share in the number of transactions ranged between 45% and 54%, and these are the countries that “cashless” headlines tend to focus on most, along with the rest of Scandinavia, who do not feature in this study as they do not use the Euro. However the countries most reliant on cash were: Greece, Cyprus and Malta which were hitting above 70% of cash usage (in terms of value). Unsurprisingly, it’s the countries that had bank runs during the financial crash which have an aversion for banks and use of bank cards. In terms of volume, the southern European countries are joined by Germany, Austria and Slovenia in their dependence on cash.Demographic divide
What’s slightly more bizarre is the gender split of cash and card use. Men make more card and cash payments per day than women. Men over 40 are also much more likely to use cash than anyone else.
Perhaps more interestingly, the use of cards is lowest for young people between 18 and 24 and people with lower levels of education. On average, they were hitting about 1.6 card payments per week. We can speculate that this is due to a general lack of access, lack of need and perhaps a lack of funds, keeping their transactions down.
