ECB survey: cash acceptance rises to 92% of euro area companies, mobile acceptance nearly doubles

On 13 August 2026 the ECB published its 2026 study on the use of cash by companies in the euro area, based on interviews with 8,205 firms across all 21 euro area countries conducted between February and April 2026. Among companies selling at physical locations in retail, restaurants and cafes, hotels and arts and recreation, 92% accept cash, up from 90% in 2024.

Card acceptance was broadly stable at 88%, while mobile payment acceptance rose sharply from 36% to 68% of companies. A quarter of firms said they have taken steps to promote digital payments, and only 0.2% of online merchants accept crypto assets.

This is the ECB's own acceptance baseline, and it cuts against the assumption that cash acceptance is in structural decline: it went up. The far bigger move is mobile acceptance nearly doubling in two years, which is the merchant-side evidence for wallet and A2A rollouts finally reaching the counter rather than only the checkout page.

Both numbers feed directly into the digital euro legal-tender and acceptance debate, where the question of what a merchant must accept is the contested part, and they set the reference point any acquirer or scheme pitching acceptance coverage in Europe now has to argue against.

Whether the mobile acceptance jump is confirmed by scheme-side data, how the ECB uses these figures in the digital euro acceptance-obligation debate, and whether the 2028 wave shows cash acceptance holding above 90%.

• ecb.europa.eu
• ECB study