The European Central Bank (ECB) recently released a report on digital payments, comparing them with cash payments. While crypto payments remain a small share, overall digital payments are rising. At the same time, cash is king.
The report outlines payment acceptance among euro area companies shows:
- 92% of companies selling goods and services at physical locations accept cash, up from 90% in 2024
- 88% accept physical card payments, compared with 87% in 2024
- Mobile payment acceptance has jumped from 36% in 2024 to 68% in 2026
- Cash acceptance is highest in Greece and Italy at 99%, and lowest in Belgium at 81% and Cyprus at 76%
Pratiksha Pathak, Partner and Head of Payments at RedCompass Labs, shared her opinion on the report, noting that last year everyone wondered if cash would survive the arrival of instant payments. She says data shows mobile payment acceptance has almost doubled, while cash acceptance has edged higher. Pathak says that digital payments are growing rapidly without pushing cash out.
“Cash continues to set the benchmark for privacy, reliability and resilience, and those are qualities the digital euro and other new forms of money will have to reproduce. The future of European payments increasingly looks less like a cashless economy and more like a multi-rail economy, where cash, instant payments and new forms of digital money coexist.
“For banks, trying to predict which form of money will ultimately win is the wrong strategy. The priority should be building payment infrastructure that can move seamlessly between cash, bank deposits, instant payments, CBDCs, tokenized deposits and stablecoins as the ecosystem evolves.”