Will Germany ever go cashless? (20/04)

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In Germany, cash is still king.

The most recent comprehensive data is from 2023, which shows cash accounting for 51% of card-present transaction volume and 26% by value. Equivalent figures for 2024 and 2025 are not yet available, but while card share has grown, it's not thought to have shifted dramatically. Cash is still likely 40-50% of card-present transactions.

As someone living in London, this is amazing. Here you rarely see anything except contactless card transactions with Apple Pay or a tap with a physical card.

That said, politicians in Berlin are trying to change things. SPD and CDU politicians who represent Berlin in the Bundesrat (Germany’s second chamber) are pushing for a nationwide law that would require businesses to offer a non-cash payment option. It would be a big step. Yet the law wouldn’t come into force until the end of 2026, or more likely 2027 at the earliest.

Part of the challenge is that some businesses don’t want to take cards. The article in Morgenpost highlights that restaurants and cafés can be particularly bad in insisting on cash, and ATMs in Germany often charge fees, so it can be inconvenient and costly for consumers too.

Gradually things are changing, and over time more consumers across the Eurozone are preferring non-cash payment methods. Germany is taking the long road.

Please find another week of fintech news, financings, and exits below!

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Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

Wamo raised a €10m Series A to expand its SME financial operating platform into Italy and the Nordics — the round was led by TCEE Fund IV (advised by 3TS Capital Partners), with participation from Oleka Capital

Ralio raised a $2.5m pre-seed round to build its agentic payments platform — the round was led by Sure Valley Ventures with participation from Antler, Seed X, Love Ventures, Plug and Play and others

SolvaPay raised a €2.4m pre-seed round to develop payment infrastructure for agentic commerce — the round was co-led by Redstone and MS&AD Ventures, with Antler and Greens Ventures also participating

UniCredit invested €4m in Italian tokenisation firm BlockInvest

🇬🇧 Monzo launched in Ireland with a 100,000 waiting list — it’s first EU market launch (the bank had recently its exit from the US market)

🇬🇧 Leading UK banks are set to access Anthropic’s frontier Mythos AI model in the coming week 

🇪🇺 Clearbank EU is set to offer stablecoins including Euro Coin (EURC) and USD Coin (USDC)

🇪🇺 Société Générale brought its USDCV stablecoin into MetaMask via its SG-Forge entity — providing access to a MiCA-compliant, bank-issued digital dollar

🌍 PCP is working with Digital Asset and the Canton Foundation to enable custody-native lending against tokenized assets on the Canton Network

🌍 Visa launches validator node on the Tempo blockchain, which is incubated by Paradigm and Stripe

🌍 The FBI’s annual crime report found that cryptocurrency was responsible for 181,565 complaints totaling more than $11 billion in losses

🌍 Australian fintech Zeller has launched in the UK with an integrated merchant offering

🌍 American Express launched its Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) Developer Kit — extending purchase protection to transactions made by registered AI agents

🌍 Visa launched Intelligent Commerce Connect — a protocol and network-agnostic on-ramp to agentic commerce

🌍 Lobster.cash partners with Mastercard to enable secure AI payments for existing cardholders

🇬🇧 🇪🇺 B2B Buy Now Pay Later provider Hokodo shut down 

🇬🇧 UK fintechs are set to meet Treasury and FCA officials to discuss how to make the UK a more attractive market to list and operate in

🇬🇧 The FCA has set out its vision for Open Finance

🇬🇧 Fintech Circle launched the world's first Fintech Board Programme

Hyperliquid: In Singapore With Jeffrey Yan — a long-read about Hyperliquid founder Jeffrey Yan in Colossus. The story of how he built Hyperliquid, a blockchain and crypto trading exchange, into the most profitable startup per employee on earth.

Reluctantly Influential: Inside Lenny Rachitsky’s Demandingly Chill Life — Behind the scenes with Lenny’s Newsletter and how he grew his Substack to more than 1 million subscribers