In 2016, consumers in the euro area made 124 billion POS payments with cash (ECB, 2017)

calendar iconMay 29, 2019

Source
The statistic comes from the European Central Bank's study on Cash Use by Household in the Euro Area, published in November 2017.

The report presents estimations of the number and value of cash transactions in all 19 euro area countries in 2016, based on survey result as well as figures on main payments by demographic.

'To pay for their POS* purchases, euro area consumers made 124 billion cash payments, 30 billion card payments and 3 billion payments by means of other instruments, such as cheques, direct debit, credit transfers and mobile payments.'
"p. 18ECB Occasional Paper Series No 201 / November 2017Henk Esselink, Lola Hernández

*What is POS?

Point-of-Sale or POS, are the kind of payments made in shops for day-to-day items (restaurants and petrol stations, as well as street merchants and shops for durable goods); POS transactions make up 96% of all payments. Non-POS payments include charity donations, payments between friends or family, etc.

Read more about the study here

Last Updated: Feb 12, 2020