What is the quickest way to pay at the checkout? According to a survey by the Deutsche Bundesbank the answer is clear: contactless with a smartphone or smartwatch. A payment takes an average of 14 seconds. In second place is contactless payment by card – which takes an average of 15.2 seconds – provided that no PIN entry is required. In third place, however, is by no means “normal” payment by card, as some readers might assume.
Instead, cash is in third place: a cash payment takes an average of 18.7 seconds. Incidentally, contactless payment with a card takes 23.2 seconds if a PIN entry is required – so it then ranks behind cash again. In this case, contactless payment with the card is hardly faster than payment with an inserted card, which takes an average of 25.7 seconds. However, contactless card payments now account for more than three quarters of all card payments.
The payment times are of course average values. If you want to stagger them more precisely, they also depend on the amount paid. Generally speaking, the higher the amount to be paid, the longer it takes to pay. This applies in particular to cash payments. Logically, because then you rummage around in your wallet longer. Payments with cash for amounts under 10 euros take an average of 15.2 seconds, while payments for amounts over 100 euros take more than twice as long on average (32.9 seconds).
According to the Deutsche Bundesbank, there could be many reasons for this. For example, it is possible that smaller amounts are paid more frequently, which then goes faster. In addition, cashiers check banknotes from 50 euros more frequently in real time. When making payments by card, smartphone or smartwatch, the differences between low and high payment amounts are smaller because the technical processing of the payment process for cashless payments usually does not depend on the amount. Irrespective of the means of payment, the payment process may also take longer for larger payment amounts because more goods are purchased and the payment process is then interrupted more frequently by the customer packing up the goods.
The Bundesbank’s survey also shows that the average time required for a payment transaction differs depending on the industry. The everyday purchase in the supermarket is usually paid for faster than the new sofa in the furniture store. On top of that, the transaction duration in bakeries, for example, is significantly below and in drugstores slightly above the average of the overall sample.
For the survey by the opinion research institute Forsa on behalf of the Bundesbank, the payment duration of more than 10,000 payment transactions in various retail sectors was evaluated. The measurement of the payment duration starts with naming the purchase amount and ends with the handing over of the purchase receipt, handing over the change or closing the cash drawer. In the second part of the study, a selection of retail companies is asked about the costs that arise in connection with the various means of payment. Together, both parts serve to determine the costs of payment transactions in German retail.
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