RESEARCH NOTES

Cash Disappearing from Wallets... Only 1 in 6 Payments Uses Cash: How Far Has the 'Cashless Society' Come?

According to a Bank of Korea survey, the proportion of cash payments among domestic adults stood at 15.9% by transaction count, plunging by about 61.5% over 11 years from 41.3% in 2013, leaving only 38.5% of that previous level. The year 2023 marked the first time (at 50.5%) that methods where physical cards are not presented surpassed physical cards in domestic merchant card transactions, with the gap widening further to 52.4% in 2024 and 54.3% in 2025. Simple payment services grew to an average of KRW 1.1053 trillion per day. According to parliamentary data, commercial bank ATMs decreased by approximately 7,700 units from the end of 2020 through mid-2025, with the reduction rate generally higher in regional areas than in Seoul. However, 88% of people still had experience using cash in face-to-face transactions within the past month, making the guarantee of cash accessibility a new policy challenge. On July 15, 2026, the Financial Services Commission officially designated Project Hangang Phase 2 as an innovative financial service, expanding participating banks to 9 and the deposit token holding limit per wallet to KRW 10 million, while the exact start date for live transactions has not yet been officially finalized.