Denmark

In 2025, 91% of payments in Danish shops (93% by value) were digital. Physical cards were used for 54% of store payments and card wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay for 32%, up from 17% in 2021; MobilePay stayed at about 5% and cash fell to 9%. Denmark has a national debit scheme, Dankort, often co-badged as Visa/Dankort or Mastercard Dankort; it has lost ground to international cards but reached Apple Pay at all banks in 2025. Staffed shops must accept cash. Outages at the main Danish card processor in July 2025 and May 2026 highlighted the value of offline card acceptance.

Dansk Erhverv’s E-handelsanalysen put Danish consumers’ online spending at DKK 199.2 billion in 2025, up 3.8% on 2024 and about 37% higher than in 2019. In 2025, 55% of online purchases were made on a smartphone (27% in 2019) and 47% of those surveyed paid with an app. Foreign webshops take a meaningful share: Germany accounted for 24%, Sweden 21% and China 18% of purchases from abroad. The 20 largest online retailers held 32% of the market in 2025. Part of the growth in card e-commerce reflects in-store app payments, such as supermarket scan-and-go and QR ordering in restaurants, which are technically card-not-present transactions.

Finanstilsynet (the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority) authorises payment and e-money institutions under the Danish Payments Act, which implements PSD2 including strong customer authentication. Danmarks Nationalbank oversees the payment infrastructure, and instant payments in Danish kroner settle in TIPS-DKK. The Danish Competition and Consumer Authority supervises card fee rules: merchants may not surcharge consumers paying with personal EU cards, although fees on business cards may be passed on. Dankort merchant fees in physical commerce are price-regulated through a revenue cap, and a 2025 political agreement aims to fund new Dankort features. Physical shops must accept cash, with exemptions for e-commerce, unstaffed outlets, business customers and staffed shops between 22:00 and 06:00.

Banking is effectively universal. According to the World Bank Global Findex, 98.7% of adults in Denmark had an account in 2024 and 97.3% owned a debit card; in 2021, 58.5% owned a credit card. Danmarks Nationalbank reports that 51% of citizens had a mobile wallet such as Apple Pay or Google Pay on their phone in 2025. Staffed shops’ obligation to accept cash, in place since 1984, also keeps in-person payment open to people who do not use digital methods.