Card payments in hospitality: 89 per cent of restaurants accept cards
Card payments in hospitality: a DSGV analysis of 70,364 Google Maps listings shows that 89 per cent of the restaurants that state a payment method accept cards. Around a quarter give no information at all, and in Ludwigshafen one in three venues that does state a method is cash-only.
What happened
On 4 September 2026 the Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband (German Savings Banks Association) published an analysis of card acceptance in hospitality. It is based on publicly visible Google Maps entries for 70,364 restaurants in Germany’s 101 most populous cities, collected as at 30 July 2026 via the data service Outscraper. Of the restaurants that state their accepted payment methods at all, 89 per cent offer card payments. Konstanz leads with 97.6 per cent, followed by Gütersloh with 96.8 and Kiel with 95.8 per cent. At the other end stands Ludwigshafen am Rhein: there, 34.3 per cent of restaurants that state a payment method accept cash only. Around a quarter of all businesses recorded give no information at all about payment methods. For context, the association cites around 4.2 billion girocard transactions in the first half of 2026.
Who it affects
Restaurateurs in cities with heavy footfall and tourism, whose guests check their phones before walking in. Operators who accept cards but have documented it nowhere. And every landlord still wondering whether a terminal at the table pays for itself.
What it means
These figures measure two things at once, and they should be kept apart cleanly. They measure card acceptance, and on that the matter is settled: anyone running a restaurant in a German city today without a terminal belongs to a shrinking minority. But above all they measure how well people look after their own Google profile. The fact that a quarter of businesses list no payment method does not mean they take cash — it means those landlords are leaving a free sales advantage on the table.
From a payment network operator’s point of view that is the most expensive gap in everyday practice. I regularly see businesses paying three-figure sums a month for terminal and transactions and mentioning it neither on the door nor in their Google listing. The guest decides at the street corner, not at the till. And anyone in Ludwigshafen who is part of those 34.3 per cent should not argue about the statistics but about the average basket: in hospitality, card payers do not spend less.
What to do now
- Open the Google Business profile and enter every accepted method under payment options — girocard, debit and credit cards, mobile wallets. Takes five minutes, costs nothing.
- Put the same notice on the entrance door and the menu, including the tipping function on the device.
- If you still take cash only: test your actual terminal requirement against reality — a portable table device with mobile connectivity rather than a fixed till, and weigh the per-transaction fees against the revenue you are losing, not against zero.