Cash remains important, in spite of digital payments

Despite the great promise of mobile payment solutions, cash money will remain important in the coming years. There are some Western European countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden for example, where the role of cash money changes the most. This appears from a newly published research by PYMNTS.

If predictions are to believed, the first cashless societies are in the making. A major step in this is the embrace of digital payment instruments. In the near future, a large part of consumers is expected to switch to paying by using their mobile phone. Although this implies that cash money will be used less and less, figures do not indicate this. This is shown by a report from PYMNTS in which it looks ahead over the next five years.

Compared to those Western European countries, the share of cash money in the Netherlands is relatively small. Just over seven percent of the total. There are only two Western European countries where people pay even less by using cash money. These countries are Sweden, where the share of cash is only six percent, and Switzerland, where cash is used in only five percent of all payments.

The fact that the share of cash money is not that big does not mean that cash is disappearing. The payment company that commissioned the report also let PYMNTS look at the actual use of cash. With the growth of economies, the use of cash also increases considerably. The use of cash money will increase with 0.7 percent until 2021 in the fifteen Western European countries. This trend is not equally observed in all countries. In some countries, the use of cash money grows extensively and in other countries, the use of cash is decreasing.The two Western European countries where the use of cash decreases most are Ireland and Finland. As the European Central Bank (ECB) concluded last year, mobile payments are on the rise. However, three-quarters of all payments at European cash registers are still made in cash.