Is Cash Going Away? The Cashless Society in Numbers

How much Americans still pay in cash

The Federal Reserve's Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, published on 11 May 2026 with data for 2025, records how a national sample of adults pays for everything from coffee to rent. Its main finding is that little changed from 2024. The average consumer made 47 payments a month, and six of them were in cash.

Cash is now third behind credit cards (16 payments a month) and debit cards (15). In 2016 it was first, at roughly a third of all payments for every age group.

The gap now runs by age and place. Consumers aged 55 and over made 10 cash payments a month in 2025. Those aged 18 to 24 made two. Rural residents made nine, against six for urban and suburban residents, and households earning under $25,000 made seven, against five for households earning over $150,000.

Fewer cash payments, more cash outstanding

Spending with cash has fallen, but holding it has not. Currency in circulation averaged $2.49 trillion in the week ended 21 October 2026, up $68.7 billion from a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve's H.4.1 balance sheet release.

The Diary points to where some of it sits. In 2025, 45% of consumers kept cash outside their wallet for savings or emergencies, and the average amount was $364, up from $306 in 2024. The average amount carried on the person was $69, unchanged. The Fed's researchers link the rise in stored cash to precautionary saving after the pandemic.

Cash used as savings is exposed to inflation in the same way as a deposit that pays nothing. Our inflation calculator shows how much buying power a fixed sum of dollars has lost since any year.

Do stores have to accept cash?

Not under federal law. Dollar bills and coins are legal tender "for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues" under 31 U.S.C. 5103, but the Federal Reserve's own guidance says no federal statute requires a private business to accept cash, and businesses may set their own policies unless a state law says otherwise.

A growing number of states and cities do say otherwise. These are the laws we confirmed in each jurisdiction's own statute books or official releases:

The details vary. Connecticut, Delaware, Montana, New York State and New York City let a store stay cashless at the till if it offers an on-site machine that turns cash into a prepaid card without a fee. Connecticut's version also caps the minimum deposit at $1 and forbids asking for personal information. Online, phone and mail orders are generally exempt, and New York State lets stores refuse bills larger than $20. The newest laws are narrower. Illinois's governor signed its law on 31 July 2026. Maryland's covers essential consumer goods between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., and Illinois's will cover cash payments of up to $500.

The protections can be reversed. On 6 January 2026 a San Francisco supervisor introduced an ordinance to repeal the city's 2019 law. On 12 February 2026 the committee handling it continued it to the call of the chair, and as of 28 October 2026 it was still pending in committee.

The trade-offs: privacy, access and resilience

Three arguments recur in the debate over cash, and each has numbers behind it.

• Privacy. A cash payment leaves no record with a bank or card network. The Fed's Diary lists anonymity among the features other payment methods have not replaced. The exception is size. Banks report cash transactions over $10,000, as our guide to currency transaction reports explains.
• Access. In 2023, 4.2% of US households, about 5.6 million, had no checking or savings account at a bank or credit union, according to the FDIC's household survey. For them a cashless store is closed. The same is true, in practice, for anyone whose card or phone fails at the till.
• Resilience. Cash works without power, a network or a working bank. Sweden's experience in 2025, below, shows what happens when the cash system itself weakens.

Handling cash also costs businesses money and carries security risk. Even Sweden's new cash law, described below, lets a store refuse cash if accepting it would make the premises unsafe or the cost would force the store to close.

Sweden: what a nearly cashless country looks like

Sweden is the usual reference point. In the Riksbank's survey of September 2025, 5% of people said they paid cash for their last purchase in a physical store, down from 10% in 2023 and 40% fifteen years earlier. Cards, including cards stored on phones, covered about 92% of last in-store purchases, and 91% of people had used the mobile payment app Swish in the past month.

The country has since moved to protect what is left. According to the Riksbank's Payments Report 2026, up to 30% of the ATMs and deposit machines run by Bankomat, the bank-owned operator, were out of service at times between May and September 2025, which significantly reduced access to cash for several months. Almost half of Swedes surveyed said the decline of cash was somewhat or very negative.

On 27 May 2026 the Riksdag passed a law, in force since 1 July 2026, that requires grocery stores and pharmacies with a staffed checkout to accept banknotes and coins, with limits such as a maximum of 25 coins per payment. Banks must also provide places to deposit cash across the country. Sweden's central bank has tested an e-krona, and the Atlantic Council's tracker lists it at the pilot stage as of May 2026.

What would actually end cash in the US

Nothing in current federal law phases out paper money. The Federal Reserve continues to issue notes, and Title XI of Public Law 119-101, which became law on 11 July 2026, bars the Fed from issuing a central bank digital currency, directly or through banks, until the provision expires on 31 December 2030. Nor does the Fed's instant payment service replace cash. As our FedNow guide explains, it moves ordinary bank deposits.

Congress has bills on the other side. The Payment Choice Act, H.R. 1138 in the House and S. 2326 in the Senate, would require retail businesses to accept cash for in-person sales. Both have sat in committee since they were introduced in 2025.

The pressure on cash comes from habit and from business costs, not from a ban. The figures to watch are the Fed's annual Diary each spring, the H.4.1 currency figure each week, and the cash acceptance bills in state legislatures. Our CBDC and Stablecoin Tracker follows the digital alternatives being built around the world.