Cash payments becoming more popular in Germany

A YouGov poll has found that the majority of people in Germany still prefer to pay in cash rather than with a card, and that cash is becoming even more popular.

73 percent of Germans prefer cash

A representative YouGov poll of 2.000 people has found that 73 percent of adults in Germany still prefer to pay in cash rather than with a card. Compared with 2024, the share of respondents who prefer cash increased by 4 percentage points, indicating that cash payments are becoming more popular among the German population.

Cash payments are similarly popular in other German-speaking countries. In Austria, 71 percent of respondents said they prefer paying in cash and in Switzerland, 61 percent of respondents. In Ireland, 51 percent of respondents said they prefer cash, 51 percent in France and 46 percent in the Netherlands. But cash is being used less regularly in all of these countries. 

Scandinavian countries are using cash the least. In Finland, 42 percent of respondents said they prefer cash, 32 percent in Denmark and 25 percent in Sweden. A whopping 27 percent of respondents in Sweden said they never use cash, compared to just 2 percent in Germany.

Cash payments are important, says Verbraucherzentralen

While an increasing number of people in Germany prefer to pay in cash, self-service checkouts that do not accept cash are also becoming a more common feature in supermarkets and other shops.

According to figures from the EHI retail research institute, just 16.000 of the total 71.000 checkouts in Germany were self-service checkouts in 2023, but the share of self-service checkouts jumped to 38.650 by 2025.

In January 2026, the Federal Association of Consumer Protection Agencies (Verbraucherzentralen) said the declining ability to pay with cash was a worrying trend as it restricted access to public life for certain groups, such as children and older people.

According to a Deutsche Bundesbank study of 2.000 shops in Germany, cash payments are still possible in 98,7 percent of cases. But the Verbraucherzentralen has urged the government to introduce a quota of cash-accepting ticket machines, self-service checkouts, or staffed checkouts per shop so that cash payments will be possible in future.