According to a study, more and more consumers in Germany are withdrawing cash when shopping. The reasons are convenience and, above all, the trend towards bank branch closures.
Withdrawing money when paying in the supermarket is becoming increasingly popular among German consumers. The total volume of payouts rose last year by a good 20 percent to 12.31 billion euros, shows a study by the Cologne retail research institute EHI. It includes data from around 420 companies with 100,000 businesses from 35 industries.
The number of branches is shrinking rapidly
“It is convenient for customers because it saves them additional trips,” explains study author Horst Rüter. Another reason for the growing demand for cash at the checkout is the declining number of ATMs. For example, Deutsche Bank recently announced that it would soon stop offering financial services from its subsidiary Postbank in post office partner branches.
However, the trend towards branch closures and fewer ATMs has not only been observed at Postbank, but across the industry for years. For example, the number of Volksbank and Raiffeisen Bank branches in Germany shrank rapidly – from 13,211 in 2012 to 7,512 ten years later. In 2022, the number of ATMs reported for Germany fell by almost five percent.
The companies that offer cash distribution at the checkout include the food retailers Rewe and Edeka, drugstores such as dm and Rossmann and also hardware stores. According to the study, they give more than 13 percent of the cash they collect back to their customers.
Almost 26 percent more fees paid
However, as usage increases, so do the fees that companies have to pay to banks. According to EHI, these are between 0.1 and 0.2 percent of the paid out amount per transaction. As a result, last year retailers paid 17.23 million euros, 25.7 percent more than the previous year.
The cash payment option was introduced by the first retailers around 20 years ago. Since then, usage and distribution have increased rapidly. In 2019, the volume of cash payouts was 2.23 billion euros.
When paying, however, consumers are using the Girocard more than ever. Whether at the bakery, at the gas station or in the supermarket: last year they used the Girocard more often than ever to make cashless payments. The Frankfurt institution EURO Kartensysteme counted 7.48 billion payment transactions with plastic cards. That was 11.5 percent more than in the previous record year of 2022.