Consumer advocates
Cash is popular – access must be secured
Still popular with many: cash in your wallet. Photo: Monika Skolimowska / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The importance of cash is dwindling more and more in everyday life. According to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, credit card providers, digital corporations, banks and parts of the retail sector are driving this forward.
According to a survey, three quarters of people in Germany do not want to miss cash as a payment option.
According to the published survey, however, the proportion of those who said they had at least occasional problems with withdrawing cash in everyday life has increased: from 24 percent in 2019 to 29 percent in autumn 2021.
The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv), which commissioned the survey, is concerned about this development: “Credit card providers, digital corporations, banks and parts of the retail sector are promoting cashless payments – at the expense of cash,” analyzed the head of the vzbv financial market team, Dorothea Poppy. This is not in the interests of consumers.
Around a third (32 percent) of those surveyed who reported frequent or occasional difficulties in obtaining cash in everyday life named a missing ATM nearby as the most common hurdle in the survey.
A good one in ten respondents (11 percent) stated that they had only ever been able to pay by card because a retailer did not accept cash. The vzbv warned that, on the one hand, consumers should be able to withdraw cash easily, and on the other hand, retailers and restaurants would have to accept banknotes and coins across the board.