Germany: payment methods in retail 2022

The share of cash in Germany declined, whilst credit cards became more popular since the coronavirus pandemic. Cash was the most popular method used for POS transactions in Germany throughout these years, accounting for 40 percent of transactions in 2021. However, this is a decline from 2017, when it accounted for over half of payments (55 percent). It might be that cash became drastically less popular in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In neighboring country the Netherlands, for instance, contactless payments became significantly more important during the first half of 2020.

Market share of cash, credit cards, and other payment methods at point of sale (POS) in Germany in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022

Characteristic	2017	2019	2020	2021	2022
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-

Download

Source

Show detailed source information?

Already a member?

Sources

Use Ask Statista Research Service

Release date

March 2023

More information

Region

Germany

Survey time period

2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Special properties

* The source made changes to its categories in 2021, see the "Details" tab for more information.

Supplementary notes

In 2022, the source stated it made two changes to the categories used in previous years. These include a combination of "credit cards" with "charge/deferred debit cards" and the split of BNPL from "POS financing" (which itself was added as a new category in 2020). The latter change was made to atone for the "growing importance of BNPL". This seems to have been reverted for "POS financing" in the 2023 report - which covered the figures for 2022.

The figures have been taken from several publications. No figures were available for 2018 as the source did not release any reports that year.

Citation formats