The German Government plans to ensure that, as a general rule, both cash and at least one digital payment option are offered for everyday payments. The BDGW is also calling for a mandatory requirement to accept cash and warns against providing greater legal protection for digital payment methods than for cash

The discussion extends far beyond the question of what is more convenient at the till. Electronic payments require a functioning technical chain: power supply, telecommunications, terminals, payment service providers and the banking system must all be available. Cash does not require this infrastructure at the moment of payment. For years, the Bundesbank has highlighted this function as a fallback solution for cashless payments.
For a security industry that demands redundancy, fallback systems and business continuity on a daily basis, this aspect is noteworthy. Critical processes are not usually made dependent on a single technical pathway by design. In payment transactions, cash fulfils a comparable function: it creates a second, technically largely independent route.
But it is about more than just resilience. Cash safeguards an aspect of personal freedom that digital payments, by their very nature, struggle to achieve: a payment without a digital transaction trail. With a cash payment, no payment service provider needs to know when, where or on what someone has spent their money. The Bundesbank has aptly linked this idea to the phrase ‘cash is freedom in coin form’, explicitly referring to privacy and informational self-determination.
For payment data is by no means insignificant. Over longer periods, it can provide insights into consumption habits and lifestyles. A fully digitalised payment environment therefore not only offers convenience but also creates an infrastructure in which an ever-increasing number of everyday decisions can be technically recorded. Citizens should not necessarily be turned into ‘transparent consumers’ simply because digital payments are possible.
This is precisely where the special quality of cash lies: it requires no justification, no digital identity and no functioning data channel. It functions directly between two people whilst simultaneously enabling control over one’s own expenditure.
Whether this should result in a general legal obligation to accept cash is a matter for political consideration. In terms of security and society, however, its function can be clearly described: cash is a means of payment, a fallback option and an instrument of informational self-determination all at once.
Anyone who takes freedom of choice in payment transactions seriously must therefore also consider whether a choice still exists if one of the two options is increasingly disappearing from everyday life. Cash is not the antithesis of digitalisation. It is its analogue safeguard – and a piece of freedom.

Dr Claudia Mrozek

Sources:

• www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/neues-digitalministerium-2346852? Digital progress and less bureaucracy | Federal Government;
• www.bundesbank.de/de/presse/ reden/hat-bargeld-noch-zukunft–710856? Does cash still have a future? | Deutsche Bundesbank;
• www.bundesbank.de/de/presse/reden/die-zukunft-des-geldes-710824? The future of money | Deutsche Bundesbank