The number of retail cashless payments in EU grew by over 160% between 2000 and 2008, to 87 billion transactions.

Global Information would like to present a market research report, "The Future of Cash and Payments" by Retail Banking Research Ltd..

Cash payments accounted for 78 % of the continents 388 billion retail payment transactions in 2008; the total cost of distributing, managing, handling, processing and recycling cash and of accepting cash payments was ¬ 84 billion. This was equivalent to 0.6% of Europes GDP or ¬ 130 per person.

Cash substitution will be driven by numerous factors including the Payment Services Directive, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), payment card interchange fees and Merchant Service Charges. The study says that contactless cards and mobile phones offer a large opportunity for increasing the number of cashless payments; and it expects to see a significant increase in the use of contactless cards in countries such as France and the UK from 2010 onwards.

The number of cash payments is forecast to fall by 2.3% per year in Europe up to 2014. However, despite this slow decline, cash will remain the predominant payment method for some years to come, still representing 63% of the continents 414 billion payments in 2014.