2024 Retailer Survey on Cashless Payments in Switzerland: The Main Results!

In physical stores…

• payments by debit cards account for more than half (!) of total sales for 43% of retail companies.
• a quite high or very high share of total sales comes from cash in 66% of retail companies and from credit cards in 56% of retail companies. 
• TWINT (still) plays quite a minor role for 85% of retailers, even though the payment method is accepted by more than 80% of the companies.

In online trade…

• TWINT accounts for more than half of online sales for 41% of the companies offering this payment method. This makes TWINT the most important payment method for online trade in Switzerland – ahead of the credit card!
• Paypal accounts for a moderate to very high percentage of online sales for more than half of the online retailers accepting this payment method.

The main acquirers in Switzerland

Many of the surveyed Swiss companies have contracts with multiple acquirers.
An interesting development compared to the 2022 retailer survey was that the significance of the market leader Worldline has fallen slightly in favour of the competition in 2024. So there is a certain dynamic in the market! It must be noted at this point, however, that the 2024 sample differs from the 2022 sample. The different assessment could thus also be down to the different sample composition.

The distribution of fee models for electronic payments

With Fixed Rate, Blended Rates, Interchange+ and Interchange++, acquirers offer a variety of fee models. We have summarised what is behind these fee models – and what pros and cons they offer for the retail companies – in our own article for you.

• The retailer survey also asked about the distribution of these different price models depending on payment method. The Fixed Rate model is the most widespread price model across all payment methods – often by a big margin.
• Despite the advantage of more transparency, the Interchange+ and Interchange++ models are the least popular price models.
• Between 10% and 20% of those surveyed (depending on payment method) did not even know which payment model they use. As we can assume that people taking part in the retailer survey are already extremely interested in the topic, these figures may even be much higher.

The differences in fee rates

• With the Fixed Rate model, the fixed fees are an average of CHF 0.27. In the case of the variable fee variant of the Fixed Rate model, they are an average of 1.31%.
• Between 8% (Diners Club) and 31% (PostFinance) of those with a Fixed Rate model stated that they did not know their average feerate.
• With the variable rates of the Fixed Rate model, the range of fees for American Express (between 0.77% and 3%) and Diners Club (between 0.77% and 3.05%) is particularly wide.

The amount of fees depending on annual turnover

• With both fixed fees and variable fees, a negative correlation between annual turnover and the transaction fee was recorded regardless of the price model. The higher the annual turnover, the lower the transaction fees on average. 
• The retailer survey shows that when annual turnover is doubled, the fixed fee per transaction falls by about one centime and the variable transaction fee by around 0,07 percentage points.
• What does this mean for you? If your turnover is growing, you should proactively renegotiate your transaction fees with your acquirer.

The biggest challenges for companies in the context of their cashless payments

• More than half of the surveyed companies find it difficult or very difficult to access information about their transactions. Only 15% stated that the information is (very) easily accessible.
• The majority of companies also rated the transparency and comprehensibility of the cost structures as poor. Only 3% of the surveyed companies rate the transparency of cost structures as good or very good.
• Growing dependence on acquirers is cited as the biggest challenge, followed by increased EFT costs and a lack of cost transparency.
• The first two topics were already cited as the biggest challenges in 2021 and 2022, and even more companies have supported this in the current survey. The low cost transparency has seen the biggest increase.

How do we see our role?

Why are we conducting this retailer survey? As experts in electronic payments, we would like to create transparency, build bridges and share EFT knowledge.  

Additionally, our software solutions help companies simplify the technical integration and operation of payment terminals or facilitate cross-channel reconciliation of electronic payments – thereby creating more independence and transparency.

How can I take part in the next retailer survey?

Are you interested in the topic? Then please do take part in the retailer survey too! 

The more companies that take part, the more transparency we can create over transaction fees in Switzerland. All participating companies are given exclusive first access to the results of the retailer survey. All data is of course completely anonymised. It is not possible to draw conclusions about individual companies – neither for us as the study organiser nor for other companies.

Just enter your email address here if you would like to participate in the next retailer survey. We’ll let you know by post as soon as the next retailer survey begins.

Many thanks in advance 🙂

More details from the 2024 retailer survey?

If you would like to learn more details about the results of the 2024 retailer survey, we would be happy to send you this information. Just write us a short email with a little information about your position and your company.