2024 statistics: Cashless payment with Girocard most in demand in retail

35 years after the introduction of paying with plastic and PIN using a debit card, cashless shopping continues to grow. In 2024, consumers pulled out a Girocard, as the debit card issued by German banks and savings banks is now known, around 7.9 billion times. The payment system thus recorded an increase of 5.6% compared to 2023 (almost 7.5 billion transactions).

According to Euro-Kartensysteme (EKS), the Girocard remained “the preferred cashless payment method at the checkout” last year. It is the technical service provider of the German financial institutions. In 2024, the Girocard had a total turnover of 307 billion euros, which represents an increase of nine per thousand.

According to EKS, German retailers are increasingly relying on the Girocard system and there are more acceptance points. In 2024, debit cards could be used at more than 1.2 million German payment points, compared to 1,132,000 in 2023. This corresponds to a 6.7 percent increase in active terminals. This growth is above the ten-year trend of 4.9% per year. The average invoice amount of Girocard payments was 38.85 euros, the first time it was less than 40 euros (2023: 40.69 euros). This figure has been falling for years. EKS is pleased that customers are also using their Girocard more frequently for smaller purchases.

Corona brought a breakthrough for contactless payments

Its predecessor, the EC card, still had a magnetic strip and was initially only designed for withdrawing cash from ATMs. Cashless payments were not yet widespread in this country in the 1990s and were at best associated with credit cards. The Girocard has been using chip technology for several years now. During the coronavirus pandemic, the debit card linked to the current account brought the contactless function to the masses – not least due to its high distribution of around 100 million cards issued.

In 2019, the year before the outbreak of the pandemic, Germany recorded 4.5 billion transactions with the Girocard. In 2020, the figure was 5.5 billion. In that year, the proportion of contactless transactions soared from 36% to 60%.

Many users no longer carry their card in their wallet, but digitally in a wallet on their cell phone. Self-service checkouts are also becoming increasingly common in retail, where payment can often only be made by card. Experts warn of a “world without cash”, as only cash offers a very high level of inclusion, data protection and resilience.

ATM cards are growing faster

There are around 100 million debit cards in Germany; on average, each card was used around 79 times for a transaction in 2024. This is low compared to Austria. The counterpart to the girocard there is called the ATM card. 10.2 million were in circulation at the turn of the year. They were used around 1.8 billion times in 2024 for transactions at home and abroad. That corresponds to a good 176 transactions per card per year. Austrian ATM cards are therefore used more than twice as often as German giro cards.

On December 23, 2024, alone, Payment Systems Austria (PSA) counted 7.46 million ATM card transactions, which is a new record for a single day. PSA is owned by Austrian banks and operates the ATM card system and more than 6,900 ATMs in Austria.

The 1.8 million transactions with Austrian banks in 2024 represent an increase of 13 percent. Of these, 1.6 billion are attributable to local retail purchases (+15%), of which more than 90 percent are contactless. 184 million transactions were made in eCommerce (+42%), 105 million cash withdrawals were made in Austria and abroad (-4%). In addition, there were 95 million age verifications (+6%) with ATM cards, as is mandatory at Austrian cigarette vending machines, for example. In 2024, cash was withdrawn 79 million times (-5%) from ATMs managed by PSA, including by foreign cardholders. Given the strong growth in cashless payments, it is no wonder that Austrians need to withdraw cash less often.

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