Contactless payment has become established during the corona pandemic.
Image: Domenic Driessen
Cash is becoming less important, card payments are increasing but vulnerable. Digital currencies should make paying more modern, but they are weak in many areas. And now?
Et was the end of May when all of a sudden nothing worked anymore: a manufacturer’s payment terminals failed across the board. Across Germany, it was no longer possible to pay by card in numerous shops. Rossmann and dm were affected, as well as Aldi Nord. The Kamps and Ditsch bakery chains also had problems, as did Edeka markets in some regions, some branches of the discounter Netto and Deutsche Bahn travel centers and the so-called service stores. For card payers, this was primarily a disaster, as the problems didn’t last just one day. Sometimes nothing worked for weeks. Anyone who had gotten used to their card and card payments was lost.
Paying by card had become more popular during the corona pandemic. The number of payment transactions with bills and coins fell from 14.58 billion paid purchases to just 10.11 billion paid purchases within twelve months. Expressed as a percentage, the proportion of cash payments fell from 46.5 percent to 38.5 percent. Looking further back, the decline is even more dramatic. In 1994, the cash payment share was still 78.7 percent.
