Consumers' desire to monitor liquidity is one of the key reasons why the share of cash transactions remains high in many countries, according to a Bundesbank paper published on Monday.

Ulf von Kalckreuth, Tobias Schmidt and Helmut Stix, the paper's authors, use survey data on consumers' payment and withdrawal patterns in Germany to test why cash usage has declined only slowly in some countries. The authors note that despite broad diffusion of non-cash means of payment, cash continues to be used