French people still value cash, despite using it less and increasingly turning to cards and mobile payments
Bulletin No. 256, article 1. In December 2024, the European Central Bank published its fourth study on the payment attitudes of consumers in the euro area, based on surveys carried out between September 2023 and June 2024.
In a payment landscape conducive to innovation and digitisation, cash is used less and less for payments. The rate of the decline in France over the 2016-24 period is broadly similar to that of the euro area. The number of card payments at local points of sale exceeded cash payments for the first time in France in 2024.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of French people continue to value cash and recognise its many advantages. Lastly, they also consider cash accessibility and acceptance to be very satisfactory.
1 Use of cash continues to decline as people turn to cards and mobile payments
The European Central Bank’s (ECB) SPACE 2024 survey on the payment attitudes of households in the euro area follows the same model as its three previous surveys.
The market share of online payments has increased again
In 2024, POS transactions accounted for less than 73% of the total number of transactions, with their share continuing to diminish from 84% five years ago. This decline was reflected in an increase in online payments (to a 25% share, up 5 percentage points in two years). The share of private transactions between individuals (P2P) was stable at 3%.
French consumers make more payments online (25% in 2024) than their counterparts in the euro area as a whole (21% on average), while growth in the share of online payments in France and the euro area has been identical since 2019, with a 14 percentage point increase.
This trend, which was amplified by the Covid-19 crisis, shows that lockdowns and travel restrictions permanently changed the payment habits of French consumers. In 2024, purchases of food, clothing and other household durables accounted for almost half of total online
purchases, meaning that some of the purchases that would have been made at points of sale have structurally shifted to online retailers (see Chart 2).
The growth in online payments is also contributing to the decline in the use of cash. Indeed, non-cash payments have now captured almost all of this market: in 2024, as in 2022, cards remained the most common payment instrument for online transactions with a 53% share, but online payment solutions (electronic wallets such as PayPal and other applications) recorded the strongest increase over the two-year period (up 6 percentage points). In 2024, online payment solutions accounted for almost one third (27%) of the payment methods used for online purchases. This figure includes the PayPal digital wallet, which alone accounted for almost 18%.
Card use exceeded cash use in shops for the first time in France
In France, the share of cash in POS payments contracted by 25 percentage points between 2016 and 2024, dropping to 43% of the total number of transactions. …
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Updated on the 18th of April 2025