The European Parliament is supporting No Cash Day on 5 April but, despite impressive uptake of contactless and other e-payment methods in northern Europe, cash's allure is enduring.

The sixth No Cash Day falls on 5 April 2016 and is a public call for Europeans to stop using cash payments for 24 hours. This year the European Parliament has announced it will support the event, making it a Europe-wide initiative for the first time. Other patrons of the event include Money2020, the annual fintech event held this year in Copenhagen on 4-7 April.

Manifesto for e-money in Europe

The No Cash Day project was launched in 2011 to raise awareness of digital payments, mainly among the general public. The event originated in Italy, a country known for its love of cash payments, although the government has now introduced a cash payment limit of €1,000. No Cash Day was founded by Geronimo Emili, president of the Italian ePayments Culture association, CashlessWay. At Money 2020, he will present an 'ePayment Manifesto', setting out guidelines for the development of e-money in Europe.

UK's contactless spend up by more than 200% in 2015

If you look at certain countries and certain sectors, digital payments have already taken off in Europe. Londoners have been tapping in and out of the tube and buses for several years with their Oyster cards and contactless payments in the UK are growing month on month – in December 2015, spend on contactless debit or credit cards increased by 17.3% on the previous month, while the increase seen during 2015 was 215.4%. Sweden, Finland and Denmark, meanwhile, are leading the way in Europe and are well on their way to eliminating cash transactions. Europeans like to feel that they are generally advanced when it comes to payments and gaze at cheque-paying nations as someone driving a shiny motor car might look at a man with a horse and cart. But how advanced are Europeans really? When you consider that Europe also includes Italy, Portugal and Germany, where cash is used in up to 80 per cent of transactions.

Demand for cash lingers

And it seems that, for all the UK's enthusiasm for tapping cards, the public is not ready to send their bank notes to the incinerator just yet. According to the UK's Link ATM network, cash withdrawals from its network of more than 70,000 ATMs in 2015 amounted to £128 billion, a slight increase of 0.8 per cent, while the value of those withdrawals increased by 2 per cent. Cash may be around for quite a while to come.