Austria

Cash is still used for most in-store purchases. The OeNB’s 2025 survey found cash accounted for 55% of point-of-sale transactions by number and 45% by value, down from 63% and 48% in 2022. Cards are the main alternative: the everyday card is the bank debit card (Bankomatkarte), issued through the Bankomat system run by Payment Services Austria. Phone wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are growing from a low base; for purchases under €10 their share rose from 4% in 2022 to 8% in 2025. Younger people pay digitally far more often, making 62% of their in-store payments without cash.

Eurostat data show 76% of Austrian internet users bought goods or services online in the 12 months before the 2025 survey, close to the EU average of 78%. Cross-border buying is unusually common: in 2023, 43% of Austrians aged 16 to 74 had bought from sellers in other EU countries in the previous three months, almost as many as bought from Austrian sellers (44%). With a shared language, German webshops and marketplaces, including Amazon’s German store, compete directly with domestic retailers. Merchants should show prices in EUR including Austrian VAT, and offering eps alongside cards and wallets helps with domestic buyers.

Payment and e-money institutions are licensed and supervised by the Financial Market Authority (FMA) under the Payment Services Act 2018 (ZaDiG 2018), which implements PSD2, so strong customer authentication applies to online payments. The OeNB oversees payment systems and the supply of cash. Under the EU Instant Payments Regulation, euro-area payment service providers have had to receive instant euro credit transfers since 9 January 2025 and to send them, with verification of payee, since 9 October 2025, at no higher charge than a standard transfer. Gambling is reserved to the federal state and operated only through a limited number of strictly supervised concessions.

Austria has near-universal banking. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 (2024 survey data) found that over 99% of adults had an account and about 96% owned a debit card. Cash nevertheless remains culturally important: in the OeNB’s 2025 survey, 94% of respondents did not want to give up cash entirely, and more than 76% of 16 to 29-year-olds used cash at least once during the survey’s seven-day payment diary.