Following up on its 2021 survey, the European Central Bank took a fresh look at what consumer-facing businesses in the EU think about cash, detailed in its survey report, “Use of cash by companies in the euro area in 2024 (European Central Bank/Eurosystem, September 2024). The ECB found companies think extremely highly of cash, favoring it for security, privacy, and reliability; yet a growing percentage of stores, restaurants, and hotels aren’t accepting it. The contradictory results reinforced the Eurosystem cash strategy “to ensure that cash remains widely available, accessible and accepted as both a means of payment and a store of value,” and for cash to remain innovative, secure, and environmentally friendly.
The survey found that cash remains the most accepted means of payment in the EU and is welcomed by the vast majority of shops (90%), cafes (89%) and hotels (84%). By comparison, online and mobile payments are accepted by a significantly lower share (around 37%) of companies. However, compared to 2021, more EU businesses are not accepting cash payments, data show.
“The percentage of companies who do not accept cash has increased strongly, from 4% to 12%,” the report notes. The decrease in cash acceptance has affected all sectors and company sizes, with the largest decrease experienced in hotels and large companies (-13%). The main reasons given for not accepting cash is that it is not used enough by customers (39%), “other” (25%), inconvenience of depositing or withdrawing cash (22%), and security risk (21%).
It is our mission to make sure that cash remains widely available, accessible and accepted as a means of payment. It is easier for us to do this if we have a good understanding of how cash is used in the euro area. — European Central Bank, Sept. 2024
Despite more businesses not accepting cash, the preference for cash has remained stable and the opinion businesses have of cash hasn’t changed. In terms of overall costs, transaction speed, ease of handling, reliability/sensitivity to malfunctioning, security, and privacy, cash rated much better or slightly better in all these features in comparison with cards (both with and without contactless technology) and mobile payments. “Companies generally consider cash to be better in terms of overall costs, reliability and privacy compared with other payment methods (cards and mobile payments),” the ECB report concludes.
In the wake of the survey results, the ECB reiterated the importance of Euro banknotes and coins in the euro area from a consumer perspective. “Cash is [an] important payment instrument for ensuring that consumers have the freedom to choose how they pay, and it is essential for the financial inclusion of all groups in society.”
Other survey findings:
Staff at risk. Most retail-facing companies in the EU manage cash over the bank counter (51%) or via ATM withdrawals (49%), while CIT services are less used in general. Only 21% of companies that withdraw cash and 17% of companies that deposit cash use these professional cash service providers and CIT is not the most frequently used withdrawal method in any country. Despite the stated concern over security risk, the vast majority of companies report that they use their own staff to withdraw and deposit cash.
More is better. Cash is most widely accepted in Ireland, including 96% of small and medium-sized enterprises, and acceptance is also high in France (94%), and Italy (93%). In the restaurants and cafes sector, the cash acceptance rate is above 90% for 18 of the 20 euro-area countries, with the Netherlands (85%) and Luxembourg (86%) being the two exceptions. The survey notes that the higher the volume of cash usage in a country, the lower the unit cost.
Room to get smarter. Two out of three businesses surveyed have not automated their cash operations (e.g., smart cash tills) and an overwhelming majority (85%) said that they're not planning to do so.