In the 2022 survey, 34 per cent said they had paid with cash in the past month. This is a sharp drop from spring 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Back then, the corresponding figure was 50 per cent.

The pandemic thus accelerated the trend but it had been going on for a long time. In 2016, for example, 79 per cent had paid with cash in the last month. At the same time, the use of Swish has increased almost as much. In the 2022 survey, more than 80 per cent said they had used Swish in the last month, compared to 52 per cent in 2016. Swish is mostly used for payments between private individuals or for online purchases. Payments in physical shops, on the other hand, are rarely made with Swish. Figure 1 clearly shows the shift from cash to Swish in recent years.

Although the use of Swish has increased in recent years, cards are still the most common payment method. Nine out of ten people have paid by card in the last month; see Figure 1.