Nevertheless, coins should be minted, albeit less than in previous years. More and more people are paying without contact, so just in passing.
Despite the increasing use of cashless payment options, the euro countries want to continue to produce large quantities of euro coins in 2022. However, at around 1.8 billion euros, the volume approved by the European Central Bank (ECB) for 2022 is again lower than a year earlier. For 2021, the central bank had promised the 19 countries in the currency area that they would issue new euro coins with a volume of just under two billion euros; in 2020 it was just over 2.1 billion euros. Of the coin production planned for 2022, a volume of 1,321.76 million euros is intended for daily use. There are also collector coins amounting to 475.23 million euros.
Germany wants to produce most of the coins again. The volume in Europe’s largest economy amounts to 583 million euros, of which 212 million euros are collector coins. With a total volume of 249 million euros, France has the second highest value of new coins.
The ECB sets an annual upper limit for the issue of coins based on the needs reported by the 19 euro countries. Within this framework, the federal states are then allowed to have coins minted. “Bills and coins are still very popular,” stated Bundesbank board member Johannes Beermann. But the trend towards paying without cash, for example by card or smartphone, which has been observed for years, has intensified in the corona pandemic.
In 2020, according to the ECB, almost 102 billion payments (previous year: 98 billion) were processed cashless in the common currency area. The value of these transactions rose by 8.7 percent over the previous year to a good 167 trillion euros. In 2020, Germany’s consumers made cashless payments with the Girocard more often than ever before. Euro card systems counted almost 5.5 billion transactions, around one billion more than in the previous year.
Contactless payment in particular, which retailers advertised for hygiene reasons during the pandemic, is enjoying increasing popularity. The purchase is paid for in passing.