WASHINGTON—The growth of payments using debit and credit cards and the automated clearinghouse (ACH) system continued to accelerate from 2015 to 2018, while check payments continued their long-run decline, according to U.S. noncash payments data collected by the Federal Reserve.
The 2019 Federal Reserve Payments Study shows the growth rate of core noncash payments, defined for the report as debit card, credit card, ACH, and check payments, was 6.7% per year between 2015 and 2018. During the prior three-year survey period, core noncash payments grew at a rate of 5.1% per year.
These core noncash payment types have retained their ability to be used in traditional ways even while they increasingly function as the means of settlement for innovative types of alternative payment methods and services, such as smartphone and Internet-based services, the Fed stated.
Total card payments (both credit and debit), which represented 7.3% of core noncash payments by value and 75.3% by number in 2018, grew at a rate of 8.9% per year between 2015 and 2018—up from the 6.8% yearly rate of increase from 2012 to 2015. Debit cards, including both prepaid and non-prepaid, were used almost twice as often as credit cards in 2018, but the value of credit card payments exceeded the value of debit card payments by almost 30%.
Other Data Trends
Other data points and trends, according to the Fed:
- For general-purpose (network-branded) cards overall, the value of remote payments in 2018 nearly equaled in-person payments, driven in part by growing e-commerce card payments and the use of cards for recurring bill payments. More than half of in-person general-purpose card payments were chip authenticated in 2018, compared to 2.0% in 2015, the Fed said.
- The number of ACH credit and debit transfers grew by 6.0% per year between 2015 and 2018, exceeding the 4.9% per-year growth rate recorded for 2012 to 2015.
- Payments made by checks fell 7.2% per year from 2015 to 2018, a faster rate of decline than the 2.8% yearly rate seen over the prior three years but in line with declines posted from 2003 to 2012. The number of check payments declined to 14.5 billion in 2018—falling for the first time below the number of ACH debit transfers.
- The rate of decline for ATM cash withdrawals slowed compared with the previous three years, falling 0.9% per year from 2015 to 2018. The decline in the number, combined with an increase in value, resulted in average ATM cash withdrawals of $156 in 2018, compared to $146 in 2015, the Federal Reserve said.