WASHINGTON—U.S. noncash payments totaled more than 144 billion with a value of almost $178 trillion in 2015, up almost 21 billion payments or about $17 trillion since 2012, according to the 2016 Federal Reserve Payments Study.
Total noncash payments—including debit card, credit card, ACH, and check payments—increased at an annual rate of 5.3% by number or 3.4% by value from 2012 to 2015, the report shows.
The number of debit card payments (including payments with prepaid and non-prepaid
cards) grew to 69.5 billion in 2015 with a value of $2.56 trillion, up 13.0 billion or $0.46 trillion since 2012. This was the largest increase in number of payments among the payment types considered, the Fed reported. Debit card payments grew at an annual rate of 7.1% by number or 6.8% by value from 2012 to 2015 with most of the growth occurring in non-prepaid debit card payments.
The number of credit card payments reached 33.8 billion in 2015 with a value of $3.16 trillion, up 6.9 billion or $0.61 trillion since 2012. Credit card payments grew at an annual rate of 8.0% by number or 7.4% by value from 2012 to 2015, the largest growth rates among the payment types considered, the Fed reported.
The number of total ACH payments is estimated to have grown to 23.5 billion in 2015 with a value of $145.30 trillion, up 3.1 billion by number or $16.29 trillion since 2012. Total ACH payments are estimated to have grown at an annual rate of 4.9% by number or 4.0% by value from 2012 to 2015.
The number of check payments fell to 17.3 billion with a value of $26.83 trillion, down 2.5 billion or $0.38 trillion since 2012.
Check payments fell at an annual rate of 4.4%
by number or 0.5% by value from 2012 to 2015. The decline of checks over the period was slower than previous studies had shown for prior periods since 2003, the Fed stated. The decline of checks over the period was slower than declines in previously documented periods since 2003.
Payments with general-purpose cards using embedded microchips, have grown by 230% per year since 2012. But payments with the chip-based cards amounted to only about 2% share of
total in-person general-purpose card payments in 2015, reflecting the early stages of a broad industry effort to roll out chip card technology, the Fed explained.
In 2015, the proportion of total general-purpose card fraud by value attributed to counterfeiting, the most prevalent type of in-person card fraud in the United States, was substantially greater than in countries where chip technology has been more widely adopted, the Fed reported.