Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

This is definitely fuel for Germany and Austria where cash is used everywhere almost exclusively.

It has changed a lot over the last few years. In a typical supermarket in Berlin you will see that the majority of customers pays electronically, these days. Adoption rates may be lower among older people and in rural areas, though.

Berlin is not really as conservative as the rest of Germany, especially that so many foreigners live there which makes it seem so much more progresive and is not representative for the whole ~80 million people country but is more of an outlier (even Germans will tell you that Berlin isn't very 'German'). If you go to smaller cities the situation is vastly different.

In Austria I only see cash being exchanged at the supermarket and when I see someone paying by card or, God forbid, phone or watch, it's most likely a foreigner form another country where cash payments are not popular rather than a local who went cashless.

Here in Dresden - where "conservative" can sometimes feel like a charitable understatement - it's pretty mixed, based on my observations, I'd probably estimate about 50/50 card vs cash, at least in the supermarket, with a smattering of people using phones or something fancier. There's also a lot more self checkouts in supermarkets now, and most people who use self checkouts tend to also use card in my experience.

Here in Cologne I see most people paying with debit cards, with the exception of very old people.

Cologne is also a bit bigger, out in the smaller towns around Cologne they still pay with cash most of the time. But last year I did notice an increase of card payment at the supermarket. At the local baker and butchers you can forget about it though, they don't even have a terminal for it.

I think the change can be observed through retailers like Aldi now accepting card payments, which was not true until very recentrly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com