Danes lead race to give up cash

It is just a couple of years since Denmark announced it was closing its 278-year-old Royal Danish Mint. Now the news is that Danes are making far fewer cash payments than elsewhere in the EU.

A report issued by Danmarks Nationalbank in December indicates that Danes prefer digital payments to cash. This is particularly common among the youngest Danes who carry little or no cash.

While the feeling of the Nationalbank is that even more Danes are expected to dispense with using cash in the future, Denmark is not heading for a cashless society. Current government policy is directed towards ensuring that those citizens who want to have and to hold cash will always have that option available.

Just 23 percent of Danish households pay their bills in cash. This compares with the 79 percent average in the euro area. Some 46 percent of Danes carry less than 100 kroner and just 14 percent of Danes have savings of more than 10,000 kroner. As might be expected, cash is most commonly used for small payments.

These results are similar to those found by the Danish Payments Council in 2016, which employed quite different survey methods. The Danmarks Nationalbank study was conducted by Kantar Gallup.

In the euro area the use of cash is most common in Spain, Austria and Italy where more than 85 percent of households use it as their preferred means of payment. Germany and Portugal are close behind with some 80 percent of households.