I've been able to witness the change over the last 5 years in Germany. While gradual, it has been quite noticeable to see more plastic options become available, and my ATM visits have become less frequent.

It's still a far cry from home (Australia) where I hadn't needed cash on hand in quite a long time, but it in terms of convenience it's not a big deal. it certainly beats France where cheques are still in extremely frequent use vs. wire transfers.

A few years ago I was living in the UAE and I was surprised that cheques were so common. When you rent an apartment you typically give post-dated cheques for each quarter at the start of the year.

It sounds a bit crazy, but by law if a cheque bounces it was a criminal offence (I believe they recently changed it or were thinking about it).

There are a lot of interesting advantages to this, as you can effectively escrow cash without a third party. If you receive a cheque you know you can always (or should always) being able to cash it in.

I live in Sweden and I use cash more often in Germany than I do when I am at home, despite being there only for a week each year. But yes, I've noticed this effect as well - accepting cards is becoming mainstream and eventually I hope to be ably to visit without having to leave with lots of scrap metal in my pockets.

Agreed, most places in Berlin won't take cards or only take EC cards. That has made me use cash, and not fear of any kind.

This is somewhat frustrating as a tourist to Germany (withdrawing cash usually involves a 3% exchange fee, and bank fees if you use the wrong ATM), but wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to get a reloadable EC card (or bank account with EC card). But as far as I can tell, reloadable EC cards don't exist, and I don't think there's a way to get a German bank account without a permanent residence in Germany.

debit cards are more commonly used than credit cards in Germany. I'd expect almost all adults to have a debit card, but there are plenty that don't have a credit card. This might not so much reflect cash usage, but simply that the type of cards used in Germany is also different.

This is still the case in the Netherlands. Most stores don't accept credit cards, debit cards are prevalent here.

But at the same time, you have plenty of places where you cannot pay with cash.

To the contrary. Of the three closest grocery stores, only one of them has a single cash line. One of the stores is cards only, and one of them doesn't even have any live employees.

McDonalds didn't accept card payments anywhere until around 2002.

Is that really true? Whilst I probably haven't been to McDonald's in the same amount of years I'm not sure how that could have worked even 15 years ago in Sweden, which is one of the countries with the least cash usage in the world.