For Anna Steigemann, the transition has been tough. “Now I’m in a situation where I go to [natural supermarket] Bio Company and buy a single pretzel or roll and pay [for] even that with a debit card because they ask for it,” she says. “Since I’m always paying with debit, I have no idea how much money I’m actually spending right now…. It’s a very unstable and insecure time now anyway and losing control over my account right now makes me even more insecure.”
Following historical precedent, Germans appear to be responding to the current crisis by spending more carefully – and saving. Hauer says an internal bank survey found that 55% of Germans (taken from a sample of 10,000 people across the bank’s main markets) had “already changed their financial priorities for 2020”. About two-thirds of respondents said they were putting aside more money than before the crisis.
Thomas Giese and Marion Coulondre opened Bichou Cafe, a French comfort food outpost in Berlin’s gentrifying, eclectic southern district of Neukölln, in 2016. "When we opened, very few businesses in Neukölln were offering card payment,” Coulondre says. "People were totally used to paying cash, and as we were a small neighbourhood café, this was not an issue at all to not accept cards. It was just more simple for us and cheaper to start off like this.”
They started taking cards at the beginning of 2019. And, while they continue to accept cash, have seen more customers than ever pay by card during the pandemic – even regulars who always use cash. Yet, income is down. “At the moment we have as many card payments as on a regular day but sometimes half the revenue,” Coulondre says. Looking to the future, she anticipates an increase in card payments as the trend she's seen over the last two years continues.
Post-Covid: back to cash?
It’s hard to imagine cash regaining its former throne in German consumer life. In Hauer’s view, Covid-19 provided a nudge that society was ready for. “All this together helped drive a change in behaviour: the speed and magnitude of the change tells us that it wasn’t difficult to make, but people needed a strong reason to break an old habit.”
He says N26 believes that Covid-19 will “accelerate” the way to a future in which “cash payments are the exception rather than the norm”. Ingo Limburg, head of the German Payment System Initiative, told DW on 7 May he expects greater card use to continue: "We assume that the trend toward card payments will increase disproportionately.”
At MINE, Gottschalk is sticking with cash for the moment – with hand sanitiser ready at the cash register – but he's open to change. “I don’t think people will actually go back to cash as often as they were,” he says. "It's true now that [card payment is] starting more and more, and it’s definitely something we might have to consider in the future. I don’t think we can keep on going using cash only.”
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Will coronavirus change Germans' love of cash? - BBC News
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