Choice at the Checkout: Digital First Does Not Mean Cashless
By Joseph Lohmann, Director of Marketing and Communications
Retail checkouts have changed dramatically over the past decade. Contactless cards, mobile wallets, and buy-now-pay-later options have reshaped consumer expectations around speed and convenience, pushing retailers to invest heavily in digital-first experience. In 2025, contactless transactions in the United States grew by double digits1, reinforcing the idea that a digital first future is inevitable.
As retailers rushed to accelerate digital transformation, “digital first” somehow became shorthand for “cashless”, but they are not the same thing. In fact, the most resilient retailers aren’t removing options, they’re designing for flexibility. They are finding that when deployed as a single solution, cash and digital options work together to reduce friction, protect revenue, and strengthen customer trust.
The Risks of the Digital Surge
There’s no question that digital payments bring real advantages. They’re fast, they’re convenient, and they unlock data that’s valuable across the business. But what tends to get underplayed is the operational reality that comes with them.
Digital adds capability but also dependency. It relies on networks, processors, integrations, and constant system updates and in a live retail environment, those pieces don’t always behave the way they should. When something breaks or even slows down, it shows up instantly at checkout.
Lines stall.
Associates get pulled into exceptions.
Customers lose patience.
Transactions are abandoned.
Retailers lose customers and profit.
In a digital-only setup, there isn’t much room for recovery. If the system goes down, so does your ability to transact. And from a finance perspective, that risk compounds, especially when you’ve made large, inflexible investments in a single way of transacting.
Cash Isn’t Going Anywhere
Despite all the momentum behind digital, cash is still very much part of everyday retail.
According to the Federal Reserve2, in the U.S., consumers still average seven cash payments per month in 2024, with higher usage among households earning under $50K and shoppers aged 55+.
Many consumers are also holding more cash than they did pre-pandemic as a way to manage uncertainty.
Across Europe, the pattern is even clearer. According to the European Central Bank3, cash remains the most frequently used payment method in the euro area, accounting for more than half of all transactions in 2024, with nearly two-thirds of consumers wanting the option to pay with cash.
Cash still plays a role in how people manage spending, control their budgets, and move through quick, low-friction transactions. And that’s not something digital has fully replaced.
Customers Don’t Pay One Way and That Matters
There seems to be a myth that behavior is shifting in a straight line from cash to digital, but it’s not. It’s expanding. Customers switch between payment types all the time. The same person who taps a phone for a full weekly shop might use cash for a quick stop to grab a drink or a snack. The context changes, so the choice changes.
And that variability shows up in every store.
A single location is handling a mix of trips: quick, low-value transactions, larger baskets, assisted purchases, and self-checkout journeys. Each one comes with different expectations, including how the customer wants to pay.
When you remove options, you introduce friction. Transactions take longer to resolve, associates step in more often, and small delays start to stack up, especially during peak hours.
On the other hand, when customers can pay the way they want things tend to move more smoothly. There’s less hesitation, fewer interventions, and better flow across the front end.
In a retail environment defined by variability with different trips, different shoppers and different moments, flexibility is what drives efficiency and revenue.
Digital First Means Multichannel, Not Cashless
If digital-first is really about improving checkout performance, then the goal isn’t to remove cash, but to build a system that can handle the unexpected.
It allows retailers to support both cash and digital across formats, modernize without tearing out what already works, and keep transactions moving even when systems are under pressure. More importantly, it changes how checkout behaves when something goes wrong. Instead of failing all at once, the system has flexibility. It adapts. It keeps going. And that’s where cash plays an important role.
Digital delivers speed when everything is working as expected. Cash provides continuity when it’s not. Together, they create a more stable, more resilient checkout environment that reflects how stores actually operate day to day.
The future of checkout isn’t about choosing between cash and digital, it’s about designing systems that reflect the reality of how people shop and pay. As the role of checkout continues to evolve, the ability to serve every shopper, in every moment, will become a defining advantage.
To continue the conversation around what’s shaping the future of retail, explore Retail & Change, your go-to resource for the latest in retail innovations, trends, and insights. In each episode, we bring together leading voices from across the industry to unpack the forces redefining checkout, customer experience, and store operations, giving you practical perspectives you can apply in today’s rapidly evolving retail environment.
1 https://coinlaw.io/contactless-payment-statistics/
3 https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/ecb_surveys/space/html/ecb.space2024~19d46f0f17.en.html
