New Study Shows Just How Dirty Credit and Debit Cards Actually Are

Try not to think about how many hands touch money.

We all know (even if we try to forget) that money is kind of disgusting. By that we mean that the germs that accrue on circulating cash are seriously troubling. That being said, a new study has revealed that cash and coins aren’t even that dirty in comparison to cards.

Debit and credit cards are much more dirty than you may have suspected. Credit and debit cards are, on average, dirtier than cash or coins. “After testing the front and back of 41 different debit and credit cards, 27 different bills, and 12 different coins, and calculating the average germ scores for each payment based on the results, debit and credit cards turned out to be the dirtiest payment method,” the study concluded. The same site also compared the dirtiness of coins and cash against many other dirty surfaces. It turns out that a card’s average ‘germ score’ was higher than the germ scores produced in Penn Station’s washrooms, which are pretty dirty, while cash is cleaner than the washrooms.

The results of the study were published on Tuesday by LendEDU.com. The researchers used Hygiena’s SystemSURE Plus handheld testing device to determine the results. The devices are simple enough, as they provide a simple numerical value for the dirtiness of any given surface. The surfaces of many credit and debit cards were tested, alongside various coins and banknotes.

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5 years ago
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