"By card, please" - payment with physical money is becoming increasingly rare.
In the Corona year 2020, the quota of cash purchases fell to around 41 percent.
The EC card was used more often than before.
Cologne - Cash is playing an increasingly less important role when shopping in Germany.
In the Corona year 2020, according to a study published on Thursday by the Cologne retail research institute EHI, only 40.9 percent of sales were paid in cash in stationary retail.
For comparison: a year earlier it was more than 46 percent.
On the other hand, the Girocard, formerly an EC card, was used much more frequently in shops.
After all, 40.1 percent of sales were paid for with their help - an increase of 6.5 percentage points compared to the previous year.
When online trading is included, the share of sales made up of cash even shrinks to 35.1 percent.
The giro card does not play a major role in online purchases either and therefore only accounts for 34.3 percent of sales when all shopping channels are taken into account.
Another 9 percent of sales were paid for with credit cards, 7.9 percent by direct debit or direct debit.
Other payment methods, such as payment on account or with PayPal, played a major role online, but in the retail sector they only had a share of sales well below 10 percent.
According to the EHI, a total of 510 billion euros in physical goods in brick-and-mortar and online stores were sold in German retail last year. While sales in shops and department stores fell from € 445 billion in 2019 to € 435 billion, online retail increased its sales from € 61 billion to € 75 billion. dpa