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IELTS Academic Reading Level: B2

Cashless Payments and Digital Banking

Comparing official payment reports across Europe, Sweden, and the UK.

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Target Time

18 Minutes

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How to use this lesson

For the Teacher:

Give learners 18 minutes to read and answer, then check the answers together using the short evidence lines.

Project each explanation to discuss why tempting numbers and words from the text trip up careless readers.

For the Learner:

First read paragraphs A to D once through to notice what each organisation measured.

Next answer questions 1 to 10 in order, and write exact numbers or words straight from the reading text.

Reading Passage

Three Official Studies of How People Pay

Paragraphs A–D

The European Central Bank (ECB) published a study of payment habits on 19 December 2024. It found that people used cash for 52% of shop payments, counted by number, in the euro area in 2024, down from 59% in 2022. In the same study 55% of consumers said they prefer to pay by card or other non-cash means in shops, and 22% prefer cash.

The Riksbank, Sweden's central bank, surveyed 2,008 people aged 18 to 84 in September 2025. Only 5% said they paid cash for their last in-store purchase, compared with 10% in 2023 and 40% fifteen years earlier.

UK Finance, an industry group for banks and payment firms, says that cash was 8% of all payments in the UK in 2025, compared with 9% in 2024 and 45% in 2015. It adds that debit cards were more than half of all payments in 2025.

These three studies seem to show that cash is used less in all three places, and I think the Swedish figures suggest that the change can be very fast. The studies count different things, so the facts here do not show which country has gone furthest.

✏️ Practice Tasks (Questions 1–10)

Answer the following questions based only on the passage above.

Questions 1–3

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the reading passage?

YES – if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO – if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN – if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks

1 Cash seems to be on the decline across all three regions reviewed.

____ YES ____ NO ____ NOT GIVEN

Why this works: The writer uses hedging words like "seem to show" in Paragraph D to describe the shared downturn in cash across all three studies.

2 The reported data proves that Sweden is currently further along toward a cashless economy than the UK or the euro area.

____ YES ____ NO ____ NOT GIVEN

Why this works: Don't assume Sweden is ahead just because its 5% figure looks smaller; the writer warns that you cannot determine who has gone furthest.

3 Older participants in the Swedish survey expressed a strong personal preference for paying with cash.

____ YES ____ NO ____ NOT GIVEN

Why this works: The survey surveyed adults up to age 84, but the text says nothing about what older people specifically preferred.

Questions 4–5

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

4 What did the European Central Bank study show about shop transactions in the euro area during 2024?

____ A. Exactly 55% of all in-store purchases were paid using digital cards. ____ B. Physical cash still made up over half of all shop purchases, despite what people preferred. ____ C. Cash purchases in retail shops fell by a full 10% since 2022. ____ D. The proportion of consumers wanting to pay in cash fell to zero.

Why this works: Notice the contrast between action (52% actually paid cash) and stated wish (55% preferred cards). Option A mistakes the wish for the actual payment count.

5 Why does the writer state that the figures cannot reveal which country has advanced the furthest?

____ A. Sweden and the UK gathered their information during different years. ____ B. Banking industry groups collected less dependable statistics than central banks. ____ C. The three research projects measured different payment categories and situations. ____ D. The Swedish study monitored only consumer opinions rather than retail transactions.

Why this works: The writer points out that one study counted shop payments, one asked about the last purchase, and another counted all payments nationwide.

Questions 6–7

Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

6 a comparison between recent cash transactions and figures recorded fifteen years earlier

____ Paragraph A ____ Paragraph B ____ Paragraph C ____ Paragraph D

Why this works: Don't get trapped by Paragraph C's mention of 2015 (which is 10 years earlier). Only Paragraph B uses the phrase "fifteen years earlier".

7 evidence of a mismatch between what payment method shoppers prefer and what they actually choose in shops

____ Paragraph A ____ Paragraph B ____ Paragraph C ____ Paragraph D

Why this works: The word "prefer" appears twice in Paragraph A, contrasting stated preference with real shop register data.

Questions 8–10

Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

National Trends in Sweden and the United Kingdom

Official reports show that reliance on physical money has declined sharply in northern Europe. In Sweden, when over two thousand people were questioned about their habits in September 2025, just

(8) ____ (number/words)

of respondents reported using notes and coins for their most recent in-store purchase. Meanwhile, figures from UK Finance revealed that notes and coins represented under a tenth of overall transactions by 2025. In that same year,

(9) ____ (words)

represented the majority of payments in the UK, a notable change from a decade earlier when physical money accounted for

(10) ____ (number/words)

of all transactions across the country.

Why this works (Q8): Look for the specific question asked in Sweden: what was used for the "last in-store purchase". The answer is exactly 5%.

Why this works (Q9): "More than half" in the passage matches the summary's phrase "represented the majority".

Why this works (Q10): "A decade earlier" means 10 years before 2025, which points directly to the 2015 figure of 45%.

Reading: Cashless Payments and Digital Banking

Cashless Payments and Digital Banking

How to use this lesson

Three Official Studies of How People Pay

✏️ Practice Tasks (Questions 1–10)

Questions 1–3

Questions 4–5

Questions 6–7

Questions 8–10

National Trends in Sweden and the United Kingdom

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