Companies across the euro area are adding payment methods faster than they are removing them, leaving finance functions to manage a broader mix of cash, cards and mobile transactions at the point of sale. ECB data show 92% of businesses taking payments at physical locations accept cash, up from 90% in 2024. Physical card acceptance edged from 87% to 88%, while mobile payment acceptance jumped from 36% to 68% in just two years. 

Businesses are layering new payment methods on top of existing ones. Instant payments and digital wallets are appearing at more checkouts while cash remains almost universal across the retail, hospitality and leisure businesses covered by the survey. For finance teams, that means receipts arriving through different settlement cycles and data feeds before they can be reconciled into a single cash position.

Commenting on the ECB findings, Pratiksha Pathak, partner and head of payments at RedCompass Labs, said: “Last year, the question on everyone's lips was whether Europe’s love of cash would survive the arrival of instant payments. The ECB’s latest data shows mobile payment acceptance has almost doubled, while cash acceptance has edged higher, suggesting digital payments are growing rapidly without pushing cash out.”

The ECB’s ‘Use of cash by companies in the euro area in 2026’ survey covered 8,205 businesses across all 21 euro area countries between 23 February and 10 April 2026. Respondents included owners, CFOs, finance managers and senior accountants in retail, accommodation and food services and arts, entertainment and recreation, sectors where consumer payments form a large part of day-to-day cash flow. 

More rails at the checkout

Mobile acceptance provides the clearest sign of change. Instant payments and digital wallets are the most frequently accepted mobile methods among companies that take mobile payments, while cards remain deeply embedded in the physical checkout. Online sellers show a similarly broad mix, with 82% accepting cards and 74% accepting credit transfers. Crypto-assets remain marginal at 0.2%. 

A retailer might take cash in stores, cards both in-store and online and credit transfers through its website. Each produces a different settlement record, leaving finance to reconcile several routes into one view of available cash.

Customer behaviour is helping determine which rails companies add. Asked to choose the single most important criterion when deciding whether to accept a payment method, 26% of businesses selected consumer preference. Security ranked second at 22% and ease of handling third at 15%. 

Merchant preferences offer little evidence that one payment type is close to taking over. A third of companies accepting payments at physical locations have no preferred method. Debit cards lead among those expressing a preference at 24%, followed by cash at 21% and credit cards at 14%. Large companies show less preference for cash than SMEs. 

Across a multi-site business, cash can remain in a till or safe until collection or deposit, while digital receipts follow their own settlement timetable. Finance has to bring those flows together quickly enough to produce a reliable cash position and reconcile the day’s sales.

Why businesses keep cash 

One reason cash has proved so durable is that companies do not see digital methods as clearly better on the measures they care about. Businesses accepting both cash and either cards or mobile payments were asked to compare the methods across overall cost, transaction speed, ease of handling, reliability, security and privacy. In net terms, the ECB found no category where companies regarded digital payments as clearly better than cash. Cash scored particularly strongly for reliability and privacy, while a high share of respondents also viewed it favourably on cost, speed, handling and security. 

Question design changed in 2026, so the ECB cautions that these attitudes cannot be compared directly with earlier waves. Even as a snapshot, the findings help explain why the spread of mobile payments has not translated into a retreat from notes and coins. 

Pathak believes newer forms of money will have to match those strengths: “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.”

Companies still see friction in handling physical money. Mistakes when giving change are the most common concern, cited by 32% of cash-accepting businesses. Safety follows at 29% and internal fraud at 20%. Such risks create controls around tills, storage, staff access and movement of takings before funds ever reach a bank account. 

Cash is unlikely to disappear from those operations quickly. Among companies that currently accept it, 92% expect to continue doing so over the next five years. Only 6% expect to stop, while 2% are unsure. 

Businesses that have already stopped taking cash show what can tip the decision. Low customer usage is the most common explanation at 36%, closely followed by the inconvenience or difficulty of depositing and withdrawing cash at 35%. The latter has risen sharply from 22% in 2024. Security concerns are cited by 29%. 

Cash handling extends beyond the counter

Some of the most revealing findings for corporate finance appear after the customer has paid. Nearly six in ten companies with physical payment locations deposit cash, while 22% withdraw it. Both proportions have declined since 2024, yet the channels used by businesses still moving cash through the banking system have shifted noticeably. 

Bank counters are the most widely used withdrawal route, chosen by 60% of companies that withdraw cash, nine percentage points more than in 2024. ATMs are used by 48%. Reliance on cash-in-transit companies has fallen sharply, from 21% to 7%. 

Most withdrawals are simply about keeping tills working. Some 82% of companies need coins and lower denomination banknotes to provide change, while almost 30% withdraw cash to pay suppliers. A payment method that looks immediate at the till can therefore create a continuing requirement to source, hold and physically move liquidity. 

Cash then has to travel back into the banking system. Among companies depositing cash, 58% use bank counters and 55% use cash-in machines. Bank counters have overtaken cash-in machines as the most commonly used route after the latter led in both 2021 and 2024. Another 17% use bank night vaults, while use of cash-in-transit companies has fallen by nine percentage points. 

Greater use of bank counters gives branch access a renewed role in the economics of merchant cash handling. Companies may accept cash because customers still demand it and because it performs well on reliability, yet the value has to travel from till to safe to bank before it becomes centrally visible liquidity. 

Pressure is already visible among businesses choosing to go cashless. More than a third of non-acceptors now cite difficulty depositing or withdrawing cash. Any reduction in access to convenient cash services can therefore affect a company’s payment policy as directly as consumer behaviour at the checkout. 

Treasury visibility can also depend on when that physical money becomes a bank balance. Groups collecting takings across numerous locations may have to reconcile what stores report, what sits in smart safes or tills and what has actually been deposited. Digital acceptance removes some physical handling, although a broader set of electronic methods still has to feed cleanly into the same reporting environment.

Automation reaches both sides of the till

A quarter of euro area businesses with physical payment locations have taken measures during the past year to encourage digital payments or reduce cash use. Among them, 37% acquired tills that accept cashless payments or reduced the number of tills accepting cash. Another 30% promoted or advertised cashless methods. 

At the same time, businesses that continue taking notes and coins are automating the work around them. Some 38% of cash-accepting companies have introduced automated cash registers at the payment point, operated by customers, cashiers or both. Smart safes, which count, validate and monitor cash deposits in the back office, are used by 37%. 

Self-checkout can narrow access to cash without a retailer abandoning it altogether. Only 13% of cash-accepting businesses have introduced self-checkout terminals, but 48% of those companies accept no cash at any of them. 

Behind the checkout, transaction data, bank reporting and reconciliation have to keep pace with every method added. A customer option that creates another exception queue or manual matching process simply moves the friction into finance.

One euro area, different payment habits

Country differences complicate any attempt to standardise payment policy across a European footprint. Among SMEs, cash acceptance reaches 99% in Greece and Italy, compared with 81% in Belgium and 76% in Cyprus. Since 2024, acceptance has risen by nine percentage points in both Cyprus and Slovakia, while Belgium has fallen by 10 points and Ireland by nine. 

Sector patterns are steadier. Around 93% of SMEs in retail, restaurants and hotels accept cash, compared with 84% in arts, entertainment and recreation. Across individual retail categories, acceptance remains above 90%. 

A retailer or hospitality group operating across several euro area markets may want one payments architecture while still needing different acceptance policies from country to country. Centralised systems can simplify reporting and control, but local customer habits still determine what businesses need to offer at the till.

Some 42% of companies now sell online as well as through physical locations, up from 39% in 2024, while the share operating exclusively online has fallen from 6% to 4%. More businesses are therefore bringing online and in-person receipts into the same finance operation. 

Payment choices test infrastructure

The ECB data leave finance teams with a wider payments landscape to manage. Mobile acceptance has expanded at extraordinary speed, cash acceptance has edged higher and card coverage remains close to universal. Most cash-accepting companies expect to retain it for another five years, while a quarter are simultaneously encouraging customers towards digital methods.

The complication arrives when those channels meet the finance function. Card settlement, instant payments, cash deposits and online credit transfers all have to reach systems that can identify the transaction, reconcile it and feed an accurate cash position.

Banks have to support both sides of that payments mix. Merchant clients still rely heavily on counters for cash deposits and withdrawals while also expecting connectivity for faster digital payments.

Pathak said: “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, tokenised deposits and stablecoins as the ecosystem evolves.”

Taking a payment is only the start of the finance process. Finance still has to know where the money is, when it becomes available and whether it can be reconciled cleanly. Physical and digital receipts can reach the company’s accounts on very different schedules. As customers gain more ways to pay, finance has to preserve a clear line from each sale to the cash finally visible in the bank.