Card and phone payments have grown steadily in Germany, yet notes and coins still account for a much larger share of everyday transactions than in comparable countries. The reasons are structural.
Privacy is treated as a payment feature
Cash leaves no record linking a purchase to a person, and that property is valued explicitly rather than incidentally. Surveys of payment preference consistently place it among the reasons given.
The same instinct shapes attitudes to data more broadly, and payment sits inside that wider position rather than standing apart from it. A card transaction creates a durable record held elsewhere.
This makes cash a considered choice for a substantial group of people, not merely a habit that has yet to be modernised away by a better alternative.
Small merchants face real card costs
Accepting cards involves a terminal, a contract and a fee on each transaction. On a small purchase the fee is a meaningful share of a thin margin.
Bakeries, kiosks and market stalls therefore set minimum amounts or decline cards entirely. Each such decision reinforces the expectation that a customer should carry notes.
Cash is not free for a merchant either, since counting, securing and banking it all cost time. The balance between the two costs simply falls differently for very small transactions.
Withdrawal remains easy and usually free
A dense branch and machine network, combined with cooperative arrangements between banking groups, means most people can withdraw without a fee close to where they live.
Supermarket cashback extends this further, turning a weekly shop into a withdrawal point. Where getting cash is frictionless, the incentive to abandon it never becomes acute.
Countries where cash use collapsed generally saw machines removed first. The convenience gap did the work, rather than any change in what people said they preferred.
Budgeting behaviour reinforces the habit
Physical money makes spending visible in a way that a card balance does not. Handing over notes registers as a loss in a manner that tapping does not replicate.
Households that manage a weekly budget in envelopes or a purse are using a control mechanism, and abandoning it means rebuilding that control through an app or a separate account.
For anyone who finds the tangible version effective, the digital equivalent is a downgrade rather than an upgrade, which slows adoption independently of technology.
Resilience arguments gained weight
Power cuts and payment network outages leave card terminals inoperable, and events of that kind have made the point vividly in several European countries in recent years.
Authorities in some places now advise households to keep a modest amount of cash for emergencies, which reframes it as infrastructure rather than as a relic.
That framing changes the terms of the debate. The question becomes how much cash acceptance a society should preserve deliberately, rather than how quickly it can be phased out.