About one in ten in-store purchases is made with cash. The percentage of people reporting that they paid with cash for their last in-store purchase declined sharply between 2010 and 2020, levelling off in the 2020s and increasing slightly in 2023 (see figure 3). The 2024 Payments Report emphasises that one possible explanation for the increase in 2023 could be that individuals used the cash buffers withdrawn in the context of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine the year before. At the same time, other data show that cash use continues to decline, such as the amount of cash in circulation and cash withdrawals, see figure 1 and figure 4.

Figure 3. Only 10 per cent paid cash for their last in-store purchase. Percentage of people who paid cash for their last in-store purchase.

Figure 4. Cash withdrawals continuing to decline Cash withdrawals, number of millions of transactions and transaction value in SEK billion

One of the reasons for the decline in cash usage over the past 10 years is the early development of instant payments by Swedish banks through the Swish payment service. In many cases, cash payments between individuals have been replaced by the payment service. Swish was launched at the end of 2012 and the number of payments made via the service has increased significantly since then. The service has evolved from private-to-private payments to include payments in e-commerce, physical trade and to the public sector, for example for tax payments. By the end of 2024, more than 345 000 businesses and almost 9 million individuals were connected to Swish. The large changeover of banknotes and coins in 2015-2017 has also been cited as an explanation for Sweden's low amount of cash in circulation.

In other countries, the use of cash is not as low as in Sweden, although the declining trend is common to most. In the euro area, cash remains the most common method of payment in physical stores in 14 out of 20 countries, according to an ECB report. About one in two in-store purchases is made with cash in the euro area, but the share varies from 67 per cent in Malta to 22 per cent in the Netherlands. Furthermore, just over 40 per cent of payments between private persons in the euro area are made in cash, but here too there are large differences between Germany, with the highest share at 74 per cent, and Finland, with the lowest at 19 per cent.