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Cash has fewer and fewer followers.

It had been happening for a long time and the pandemic has accelerated it.

In 2020 alone, the use of coins and banknotes as the preferred payment method

plummeted from 53% to 35.8%

, although the drop is much greater if one takes into account that in 2014 that percentage was close to 80%.

In the middle of the digital race, the decline of physical money is slow but it seems unstoppable.

Faced with these data, 54.1% opted for the

debit card

as their preferred means of payment, mainly because they consider it more convenient and faster, according to the

National Survey on the use of cash

published this Monday by the Banco de Spain with data from 2020. Its conclusions allow us to check the progress of digital forms of payment and especially the impact of the pandemic on the behavior of citizens and companies in our country.

The coronavirus and specifically the risk of infections caused

2.5% of the population to stop using cash last year for hygiene reasons

. "The habit of paying with cash has fallen especially since the period of confinement by Covid-19, largely due to the stimulus in favor of other means of payment exercised by almost half of the businesses, as well as the hygienic measures derived of the health alert, as manifested by 61.2% of the population ", points out the survey.

69.1% of the citizens and 61.3% of the establishments that have changed their habits indicate that they will maintain them in the near future and, in this sense, up to 40% of the people interviewed plan to use or increase the use of means of payment linked to new technologies, compared to 24% who declared this intention in 2019.

But not only is less cash being used, we are

paying lower amounts with it every time

.

If before 2020 the threshold from which it was preferred to use the card to cash was 106 euros, the year of the pandemic reduced that amount by half, so that Spaniards prefer to keep the tickets and throw away the card from the 52 euros.

It has also influenced that establishments have offered more and more facilities for the use of plastic money or other alternative means.

"The amount of sales collected in cash is around 30%, a figure lower than the average declared by the population", clarifies the Bank of Spain.

84% of the businesses no longer impose any restriction to pay by card and 16% maintain a minimum payment established on average of 11 euros.

Rounding and prices

One of the questions raised by the race for digital money is whether it will cause the final disappearance of coins and bills or whether citizens will continue to consider cash useful.

The Bank of Spain has asked those surveyed precisely about the utility and all groups believe that it is still useful that they exist,

"fundamentally to keep prices adjusted

.

"

52.5% of citizens discriminate or do not accept 1 and 2 cent coins at all;

however, there is still 65.9% who oppose a possible rounding, arguing its possible impact on the rise in prices.

On the other hand, 51.9% of merchants and hoteliers admit that they already practice rounding to avoid using the smallest coins.

For their part, those responsible for the department stores interviewed believe that the supply of means of payment should satisfy the needs of each client and are not very favorable to rounding the peaks to multiples of 5 cents.

What do we carry in our wallet?

Reality prevails, above all, in the portfolio and that is where the vast majority of citizens are clear about their preferences.

88.5% carry at most five banknotes in their wallets

(70.6% carry no more than 50 euros in total), while 72.7% of the population carry no more than 5 coins (which normally they do not suppose more than 5 euros).

Regarding high-denomination banknotes, 89.4% of the public have not had a 200-euro or 500-euro banknote in their hands in the last year, and 56.2% of merchants reject the collection 100, 200 and 500 euro bills, mostly due to lack of change.

A final curiosity in this regard is that almost half of those surveyed, 47.9%,

save amounts greater than 500 euros outside their bank.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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