Bar or with a card?: Study: Map payment in retail continues to grow

The trend towards payment continues. Around 63.5 percent of retail sales of 495 billion euros were paid in 2024 with a card – an increase of 1.7 percentage points compared to the previous year. This is shown by a study by the EHI Cologne Commercial Research Institute, which is available to the German Press Agency.

The proportion of cash dropped to 33.8 percent to the same extent. The remaining shares are primarily due to financing and invoice purchases as well as vouchers. For comparison: In the pre-corona year 2019, more than 46 percent of retail sales were paid in cash.

Measured by the number of transactions, cash remains the most popular payment method for the time being, said study author Horst Rüter. In 2024 banknotes and coins were still used in more than half of the approximately 20 billion transactions (54.6 percent).

During Corona, the number of purchases in retail stores in Germany had dropped to up to 16.6 billion. In 2024, the value was back at pre-pandemic level. With more than 44 percent of purchases, customers recently paid a card. The proportion has doubled in five years. The market leader for card payments remains the Girocard.

Increasing: smartphone instead of wallets

According to the study, the proportion of mobile payment processes via smartphone or smartwatch has increased again. More than one eighth (12.9 percent) of all card -based payment processes would now be handled, for example with Apple Pay or Google Pay. In 2023 the proportion was 7.5 percent.

Consumers also often took advantage of the opportunity to withdraw cash while shopping. The total volume of the payments rose in the previous year by a good ten percent to 13.57 billion euros.

According to the information, data from 499 companies were evaluated for the EHI study. This corresponds to around 100,000 companies from 35 industries with a gross turnover of 314.8 billion euros, it said.