There are huge differences in Europe.

In Scandinavia you can pay with credit card almost everywhere, starting from a food truck at a festival. They'll have a tablet and a credit card reader connected. Some places don't take cash at all.

Varies wildly: come a few km northwards to Denmark and you'll easily go on for months without seeing a single banknote while living here. Hell in the past couple years I've withdrawn euros many more times than I did dkk because of trips to Germany: I need it far more often there than anywhere else in western and southern Europe. It's incredibly annoying.

Really? That's pretty surprising - I live in Barcelona, and I use cards 99% of the time, and in the UK it was even easier. Even taxis here have card machines, and every small shop definitely does. The only holdouts are the occasional tiny old wine bar here and there, but even most of them have moved with the times.

Unfortunately I didn't find more actual stats, but there is a report from Deutsche Bundesbank (German Federal Bank) from 2014 which states that in 2014 the share of cash payments in Germany was 79.1% and only 1.3% credit card transactions.[0, page 27] If I remember correctly, there is no other European country with such a low percentage of credit card transactions.

[0] https://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/EN/Downloads/Publication... [PDF]

The relevant page is 31 (pdf-page 33), containing a figure "Share of payment instruments broken down into various transaction amount categories in 2014, 2011 and 2008". In particular, 96% of transactions below 5€ were in cash, and 90% for transactions between 5 and 20€.

A breakdown by age group is on page 33. Unsurprisingly, young people pay by card more often than older people.

Various other figure breaking down card/cash usage along different lines are on the subsequent pages. Poorer people use cash for a larger percentage of their transactions than richer people.

Page 63 breaks down usage by occasion/purpose of payment (gas/restaurant/retail/...).

Lastly, 97% of Germans have a girocard (debit card), but only 1 in 3 have a credit card.

Barcelona may be special within Spain because it's such a huge tourist destination. This statistic (from Mastercard) says that only 16% of payments are cashless in Spain: http://www.mastercardadvisors.com/_assets/pdf/MasterCardAdvi...

Singapore, Netherlands, France and Sweden are way ahead (~60%). I'm a bit surprised that the US is only 45% cashless.

I totally agree.

And relevant to the actual topic: Even in big cities like Hamburg or Berlin it is not guaranteed that you can pay by card in a taxi. So I ask every time I enter one whether they accept credit cards or not. I would say 80% of my cab rides are paid in cash.

Depends on rural vs urban, and I suspect it would be the same in Germany. In London I can live cashless easily. When I went to the west highlands I had to start carrying cash.

Nope. Good luck paying by card at a bakery or in a bar. The canteen where we eat at work is cash-only, too. Cash is still very popular in Germany.

I went to small towns and big cities there and the only cash I paid was for tolls. Where specifically are you talking about?

Are we talking about the same Germany? There are extremely few toll roads (as in: most Germans will never use one in their life) and uniformly across the country, small shops (such as bakeries and food stalls) operate on cash only. Basically mostly national chains take cards, for the rest it's hit and miss.

In other European countries things look different: On the other extreme is Sweden which I visit regularly. I couldn't even tell you how their cash looks like because I haven't used any for a long time.

In Austria almost everybody takes Maestro, but even large stores don't always take Mastercard/Visa.