Cash Holdings in Germany and the Demand for “German” Banknotes: What Role Is There for Cashless Payments?

Generally speaking, all euro-area national central banks issue euro banknotes. Following the introduction of euro cash at the start of 2002, the cumulated net issuance of euro notes by the Deutsche Bundesbank (“German” euro notes) increased from an initial €73 billion to €508 billion at the end of 2014. Figure 4.1 shows that the volume of these German euro banknotes outstanding has grown very much faster than could have been expected on the basis of earlier growth rates of D-Mark currency. For the first two years after the launch of euro cash, this strong growth could be explained by the need to replenish stocks of hoarded banknotes both inside and outside the euro area after the currency changeover. However, this should have ceased to have an effect at the end of 2003 when the volume of German banknotes outstanding returned to the hypothetical level that would have been reached had euro cash not been introduced. Nevertheless, the pace of growth in the volume of banknotes outstanding continued to be much more dynamic than in the D-Mark era in the 1990s. As shown in Bartzsch et al. (2011a), this huge surge is due to foreign demand for euro banknotes. They find that, at the end of 2009, around 70% of the cumulated net issuance was held outside Germany.