Traditional cash and card mix dominates Italian payments
A study by Banca d’Italia categorises Italian consumers into five behavioural profiles using payment diaries and artificial intelligence. The findings show that 50.2 percent of consumers maintain traditional cash and card habits, while 24.0 percent operate completely cashless.
Five profiles across four thousand diaries
Using 2024 SPACE survey data from 4,088 Italian respondents, researchers Giorgia Rocco and Camilla Savarese deployed a hybrid classification method combining human annotation, GPT-4, and supervised machine learning algorithms.
The ensemble approach, led by XGBoost with 89 percent accuracy, segments the population into five groups: Traditionalists form the majority at 50.2 percent, followed by Digital-only users at 24.0 percent and Well-connected consumers at 14.6 percent.
Structural exclusion remains limited, with Cash lovers accounting for 6.6 percent and Bank-tech skeptics representing 4.6 percent.
Notably, avoiding cash does not equal tech proficiency, as Digital-only users rarely adopt advanced mobile tools.
Demographic divides and currency design
Socio-demographic patterns reveal significant divides across payment profiles.
Younger cohorts and high-income earners dominate the digitally integrated groups, while older citizens and low-income respondents concentrate in cash-reliant categories.
For central bank digital currency design, adoption drivers diverge sharply: Well-connected users demand speed and innovative features, whereas Traditionalists rely on social recommendations, and Cash lovers prioritise privacy and zero costs.
Preserving physical cash access remains vital alongside digital infrastructure.
Cashless does not mean modern
The study convincingly debunks the simplistic binary between cash-dependent and tech-forward consumers by highlighting widespread behavioural inertia.
Policymakers pushing digital currencies must recognise that eliminating cash will not automatically drive technological engagement among ordinary card users.
Offline functionality and robust privacy protections remain essential prerequisites for broad public adoption.