COVID-19 pandemic increases the divide between cash and cashless payment users in Europe
基于22个欧洲国家5000多名受访者的调查，研究发现疫情前使用无现金支付的消费者在疫情期间更频繁地使用无现金支付，而现金用户则基本保持不变，导致两者之间的鸿沟扩大，可能引发金融包容性问题。
This paper investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed an important aspect of everyday life, viz. how people make payments. The empirical study is based on a survey of over 5000 respondents from 22 European countries. It shows that consumers who had been making cashless payments prior to the outbreak of the pandemic have been even more likely to do so since it broke out. On the other hand, the consumers who had mostly been paying in cash have often continued to do so. The divide between those who pay in cash and those who do not, therefore, seems to have widened during the pandemic. It may suggest financial inclusion issues. Additionally, we found that the probability of more frequent cashless payments as a result of the pandemic differs considerably between countries and therefore indicate the role of country-specific factors.