Debit card again the most important means of payment ahead of cash
Published: Thursday, Feb 22nd 2024, 09:20
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In 2023, the debit card was once again the most important means of payment in Switzerland, ahead of cash. In third place are mobile devices such as cell phones, tablets and smartwatches. In 2022, cash had displaced the debit card from the top spot after two years.
The number of cash payments thus fell for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, according to the tenth Swiss Payment Monitor published on Thursday by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and the University of St. Gallen.
Cash payments fell by 3.2 percentage points and still accounted for a quarter of transactions. Payments via devices followed close behind cash at 23.3%. Debit cards continued to lead the way with 29.3% in 2023 - after 29% of sales in the previous year.
Debit card ahead in face-to-face business
The debit card was ahead both in terms of on-site payments (41.2%) and the number of transactions (37%). Credit cards followed with a share of 29.1% when it came to making payments on the spot, i.e. face-to-face transactions, and were in third place in terms of transactions.
This includes transactions with e-wallets such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, where a debit or credit card is stored. One in three credit card payments and 13 percent of debit card payments are now made on mobile devices.
At 29.2 percent (down 2.9 percentage points), customers were the second most likely to pay with cash on site. Twint payments from bank accounts - mobile payments in the true sense of the word - increased only slightly to 7.2% in face-to-face business. According to the monitor, there was strong growth in this area between November 2022 and May 2023.
Poorer access to cash
84% of those surveyed for the Monitor rated access to cash as good. However, 46 percent noted a deterioration in recent years, as the Monitor authors also reported.
When it came to the question of abolishing cash, the proportion of undecided respondents fell significantly. 44.3% were clearly against the abolition of cash, with the proportion being higher among older people. However, rejection also increased significantly among younger people. 61 percent welcomed the introduction of an obligation to accept cash. A representative sample of 1,700 people were surveyed for the Monitor.
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