Will the coronavirus finally kill cash in Germany?
Three things must happen for something to be accepted in Germany:
- It must be recommended by an authority
- It must be economical
- It must not have been abused by history
The last point holds a lot of weight. There is a guiding principle in Germany called, well, that’s the way it’s always been.
Another guiding principle: nur bares ist wahres (cash is the only truth). It’s not a hip-hop lyric, but an insight into Germans’ spending habits. Few countries in the European Union are as keen on cash as Germany. Only in 2018 did Germans make more payments with plastic than paper. The average German carries more than 100 euros in their wallet.
To premeditate the end of cash in Germany is akin to blasphemy. A 2017 survey gauging the nation’s opinion of a cashless society was met with “a yelling 90% rejection.” When a coffee shop in Kreuzberg began accepting only card payments, someone posted a note out front calling the practice “undemocratic.”
“German citizens value cash very highly, and that’s quite simply a fact,” said Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany’s central bank, in 2016. Two guiding principles collide.
But why? Germans see lessons in history. Card payments trigger deep-rooted insecurities about debt and privacy, which manifested through previous generations’ experience with hyperinflation and state surveillance.
“The most important reasons for the intimate relationship of Germans to cash are their needs for protection of personal data, security and confidentiality of payments and for simple, universal usability,” says Doris Neuberger, head of the money and credit department at Germany’s University of Rostock.
So while countries like Sweden are almost exclusively cashless, it might take another generation for Germany to catch up. Unless, of course, a harrowing historical event expedites the process. Like COVID-19.
The coronavirus is causing Germans to associate cash with health risk. Many businesses have already adjusted. Signs at supermarkets are encouraging customers to go contactless. Pull out your card to pay for your Splitterbrötchen at a centuries-old bakery and you might now hear aber natürlich (but of course) instead of geht nicht (impossible).
The longer COVID-19 continues to dictate our lives, the more it becomes a fact that contactless is the hygienic way to pay. Never before have we considered that by not sharing data, we’re sharing germs. As the historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari writes in an article titled ‘The world after coronavirus’, “when people are given a choice between privacy and health, they will usually choose health.”
In a recent newsletter, author Mark Manson wrote, “if you look throughout history, the biggest and most necessary changes typically come in the wake of crises, much like our most important personal changes often come in the wake of our traumas.” In The Great Leveler, Walter Scheidel explains how mass violence and catastrophe curb global inequality.
Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Germans staged nationwide anti-nuclear protests. Less than three months later, the German government said it will shut down the country’s 17 nuclear power plants by 2022.
COVID-19 is not a nuclear disaster, nor is going cashless a profound societal revolution. In Germany, you say gesundheit (health) when someone sneezes. In the near future, you might do the same when choosing to pay by card.
