Contactless share in the euro area, by country

According to 2022 payment diaries, there were significant differences between the euro area countries when it comes to mobile proximity payments. Slovakia, for instance, led a ranking that compared contactless payments against the overall card payments within each country, and was followed by Greece and Slovenia. Does this mean these countries are the biggest contactless payment markets in Europe? Not necessarily, as this survey does not include countries like the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, or Poland - all countries that do not have the euro (which was the scope of this survey) - and who have a reputation for being into contactless payments. Statista made its own contactless market share ranking within European POS sales, which includes the aforementioned countries. Additionally, card payments per capita varied greatly between the various European countries: Slovakia ranked as the 24th country in Europe in terms of how much each domestic consumer spent using either a debit card or a credit card.

Share of contactless (mobile proximity, tap to pay, NFC payments) transactions at POS in the euro area countries in 2019, and 2022

Characteristic	2019 (2017 for Germany)	2022 (2021 for Germany and Netherlands)
Cyprus	65.57%	88.31%
Slovakia	76.57%	84.36%
Greece	73.66%	84.24%
Netherlands*	61.81%	83.64%
Slovenia	71.59%	83.17%
Malta	38.64%	74.4%
Austria	62.1%	71.77%
Latvia	54.63%	71.65%
Finland	60.64%	70.29%
Luxembourg	50.96%	69.27%
Germany*	3.23%	69.04%
Spain	66.34%	67.17%
Ireland	57.74%	64.25%
Italy	54.34%	57.67%
Lithuania	54.12%	53.11%
France	38.1%	51.34%
Estonia	35.37%	47.82%
Portugal	24.18%	45.35%
Belgium	15.9%	38.69%

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Release date

December 2022

More information

Region

Survey time period

March 2019 to December 2019

Number of respondents

41,455 respondents

Age group

14 years and older

Special properties

Sample of the population of each country from Kantar Public's internet panels, based on three demographic characteristics: gender, age and region of residence. Purposive sampling was used.

Method of interview

Omnibus survey

Supplementary notes

* Excluded from this survey were Germany and the Netherlands, as both countries supplied information from their central banks. One important note for Germany: the figures it provided were for 2016 and 2017, not 2016 and 2019 like all the other countries.

The figures shown here are based off payment diaries, held in three waves from March 2019 to December 2019 and published in December 2020. The source mentions there was a small questionnaire in 2020 asking about the impact of COVID-19 on payments behavior. The source chose not to include this information as "the two surveys cannot be directly compared" and "it cannot be predicted how the changes in the methodology influence the results in terms of an over- or underestimation of cash usage".

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