Entitled Attitudes to Different Payment Methods, the report was compiled by eService, a leading payment-service provider in Central and Eastern Europe, in association with credit card giant Visa.
The publication of the findings coincides with Cashless Payments Week, which starts on Monday, October 24, according to eService.
The study covered Poland and 13 other countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, eService said.
In all the studied countries, payment cards were the most popular transaction method, clearly surpassing cash payments, the researchers said.
Overall, 89 percent of respondents said they used traditional payment cards, with 78 percent mentioning them as their default payment method.
Meanwhile, cash and digital wallets were each identified as the default option by 61 percent of those asked, eService said.
59 percent of Poles prefer cashless payments
Poland leads the charge among the 14 surveyed countries in adopting non-cash transactions, the study found.
Only 41 percent of Polish respondents said cash was their default payment method, while 59 percent named cashless methods as their preferred option.
Poland was the clear leader in embracing non-cash payments, followed by Germany, Portugal and Slovakia, where 49 percent of those asked said they opted for such transactions, according to eService.
Many of those who pay in cash say they do so only when there are no other payment options, according to eService’s Communications Director Witold Siekierzyński.
Meanwhile, those who use cashless payments praise this method for being “secure and convenient,” Siekierzyński said.
92 percent of Poles use payment cards
The study also found that 92 percent of Polish respondents used payment cards, the same percentage as in Ireland.
This method is more widespread only in the Czech Republic and Portugal, where it is used by 93 percent of those asked.
“The future lies with online payments,” eService’s Siekierzyński said, adding that, besides payment cards, Poles were increasingly using smartphone payments.
In addition, the study found that, among all the surveyed countries, using cash in traditional, brick-and-mortar shops and service outlets was least popular in Poland.
Only 29 percent of Polish respondents said they paid in cash when shopping offline, fewer than in the UK (31 percent) and Ireland (34 percent), according to the study by eService and Visa.
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Source: eService