[HIGHLIGHTS] Supermarkets soon facing cash problems? “Trade would have to stock up on additional money”

Cashless payments with Girocard are becoming increasingly popular in Germany. A new study suggests this could put pressure on affected retailers.

Retailers paid out 2.23 billion euros to customers in 2019, and in 2023, it was already more than 12.3 billion. The offer can be used at Rewe, Edeka, dm, and Rossmann, among others. The Frankfurt institution Euro Kartensysteme counted 7.48 billion payment transactions with plastic cards in 2022. That was 11.5 percent more than in the previous record year of 2022, as shown in the figures published on Tuesday. The use of cash withdrawals from retailers has risen sharply, according to a current study by the Cologne retail research institute EHI. The banks received fees of 17.23 million euros from dealers last year. EHI payment expert Rüter assumes that this amount will continue to rise due to high demand. “If the cash quota continues to decline, it will in some cases be difficult for retailers to fully maintain this service and meet demand. Then cash would have to be bought from suppliers, ” says EHI study author Horst Rüer.