Produce your Apple Pay or debit card to pay for an espresso in Rome, and you’re often met with a pained expression. “Solo contanti,” they’ll plead — cash only. 

Unlike, say, Scandinavia, the U.K. and the Netherlands, where many citizens have stopped carrying cash altogether, in Italy having a few euros in your pocket is a part of daily life. Italians, alongside Germans and Austrians, are among the most “cash prone” in Europe. Cash is how you pay for your morning cup of coffee, for fruit and vegetables at the grocer, for taxis, snacks and gelato. A survey in 2019 showed that 86% of transactions at the point of sale were in cash.

In 2020, the government introduced a new “Christmas cashback” scheme to try to encourage card payments, by offering people rewards and rebates. For every card payment people made up to 150 euros, the government would refund 10%. But right before the holidays this year, the country’s new hard-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni announced a budget that seemed to take Italy backwards, just as the rest of Europe, and indeed Italians, were embracing card payments — particularly contactless — in ever greater numbers.

“Cash must be king,” Meloni told Italians. She proposed that in 2023 business owners would be allowed to refuse digital payments for transactions below 60 euros without a fine. On top of that, she would raise the current limit for cash payments from 2,000 euros to 5,000 euros.