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In Portugal, cash is used for 81% of Point-of-Sale payments (ECB, 2017)

Jul 5, 2019

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.

According to the findings from the European Central Bank's report, cash was used for 81% of point-of-sale payments in Portugal in terms of number of transactions (ECB, 2017).

Excerpt from ECB Working Paper

In terms of value of payments made at POS, in all countries the share of cash was much lower than in terms of number of payments.

'In Ireland, Portugal, Latvia and Germany the share of cash in value of payments was between 49% and 55%, while in the Benelux countries, France, Estonia and Finland the share ranged from 27% to 33%.'

"pp. 18-19 ECB Occasional Paper SeriesSeries No 201 / November 2017Henk Esselink, Lola Hernández

In Cyprus, Malta and Greece the share of cash in value of payments was the highest, ranging from 72% to 75%. In Lithuania, Slovakia, Austria, Spain, Italy and Slovenia the share ranged from 62% to 68%.