Where cash is (and isn't) king

Hi, this is Linus from the app team at Datawrapper. As the saying goes, cash is king. But is actual, physical cash king everywhere, and will it always be? Today, we’re taking a look at what happened to cash in Sweden and how the same trend may force cash to abdicate in Germany as well.

I used to live in Sweden, and still visit often. One thing that’s hard to miss when spending time there is that it’s almost impossible to pay or get paid in cash. Almost no one carries cash on them, and many merchants don’t accept cash at all. Instead, most transactions are carried out over the instant payment app Swish or by card. Where I live now, on Åland, using cash is more often possible, but you almost never have to use it and can get by with a card or the payment app MobilePay.

But I also visit Germany to spend time in the Datawrapper office quite often, and I'm always surprised by how much more common cash is there. Both between people, but it’s also much more common for merchants to only accept cash and no other payment method.

Are these payment preferences in Sweden and Germany long-term trends, and what could happen in the future? Let’s take a look!

Mobile alternatives have replaced cash in Sweden

When buying second-hand goods, you used to need cash (preferably even amounts!) to pay for it in person. In many places, this is still the norm. In Sweden, however, all you need is a phone number. You type the seller's number into an app together with the amount, confirm, and send the money. Trying to pay with cash would probably get you weird looks, and might not even be accepted, since it’s actually hard to use cash in many places in Sweden.

And it’s not just person-to-person transfers. Small salespeople, like farmers’ markets and fairs, typically only accept Swish, and many stores and food trucks accept it in addition to card. In Sweden, cashless payments have widely taken over.

Swish is a cooperation between all the banks in Sweden, and it's become popular for its simplicity. To make a payment, you only need the phone number of the recipient and your fingerprint to verify. (It even has the satisfying sound it’s named after: the money goes “swish” away from your phone. It’s easy to see why it’s so popular.)

However, it's not the only reason cash is going down in Sweden. Card payments have also been rising steadily. This can be seen in the usage of money-processing machines. Between 2005 and 2024, the number of registered payment terminals in Sweden rose by 20%, from 176,637 to 212,781, while the number of ATMs fell by 30%, from 2,814 to 1,947. Despite these changes, each existing ATM was doing a lot less work in 2024 than it did in 2005, while each payment terminal was used a lot more.

Slower change in Germany

So my feeling about Sweden seems to be correct. How about Germany?

While card usage has also increased, the change seems to be much slower than in Sweden, where people made more than three times as many card payments by 2021.

Still, when asked to keep a payment diary and report the share of payment methods, surveyed Germans reported using cash less often, for half of all transactions in 2023, compared to three-quarters six years earlier.

But instead of being dominated by a Swish equivalent, the decline translates to more frequent card usage and mobile payments. (Note that the data is from 2023, and other services, such as Wero, launched since then, might change the picture today.)

Looking ahead

Looking at the statistics, it seems like Germany might follow Sweden and be on its way to using less cash as well, but it’s not going nearly as fast. In addition to the increase in card usage we’ve seen here, since 2024 there exists an app called Wero, which has the potential to be a broader European Swish-type service.

At the same time, some people simply don’t trust payment methods other than cash, and in times of hybrid warfare, where risks of digital payment systems being disrupted are becoming more severe, this is increasingly true also on a national scale. Cash can be a great backup if all systems go down, but that requires stores to keep accepting it. So maybe instead of Germany getting rid of cash, it will have a comeback in Sweden? We can only wait and see.

That’s it for me this time. Come back next week for another weekly chart from my colleague Exo!