Federal Reserve Study: Noncash Payments In The United States

Americans still love to use the plastic in their wallets and purses. Just before the holidays, the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) released the results of its study about how Americans use non-cash payment methods: debit cards, credit cards, prepaid cards, ACH payments, and checks. The study included the total number and value of non-cash payments by consumers and businesses through 2015.

The total number of U.S. non-cash payments was more than 144 billion payments with a value of almost $178 trillion in 2015. That represented an increase of almost 21 billion payments or about $17 trillion since 2012. Other key findings from the study:

"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. Debit card payments grew at an annual rate of 7.1 percent by number or 6.8 percent 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 percent by number or 7.4 percent by value from 2012 to 2015, the largest growth rates among the payment types considered... 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 percent by number or 0.5 percent 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."

Prepaid cards typically include gift cards and payroll cards which consumers load money onto and which aren't linked to bank accounts (e.g., checking, savings). Past studies have documented numerous fees with prepaid cards while some consumers use prepaid cards instead of traditional bank accounts. "Non-prepaid debit cards" refer to debit cards linked to traditional bank accounts.

There are significant differences between the volume and value for each non-cash payment type. For example, debit cards generated the largest share of payment volume and the smallest share by value:

Another way of looking at the variety of non-cash payment types is the volume of payments over time:

Additional findings about prepaid cards:

"The number of prepaid debit card payments reached 9.9 billion with a value of $0.27 trillion in 2015, up 0.6 billion or $0.04 trillion since 2012. Almost all of the growth in prepaid debit card payments by number and value came from general-purpose prepaid cards, which can be used over the same general-purpose networks as non-prepaid debit cards. General-purpose prepaid card payments increased to 3.7 billion in 2015 by number, up 0.6 billion from 2012 to 2015, which was much less than the growth of 1.8 billion from 2009 to 2012... The average value of payments using these types of cards dropped slightly from $35 in 2012 to $34 in 2015.

Private-label prepaid card payments declined slightly by number, but rose somewhat by value from 2012 to 2015. In 2012, such payments totaled 3.7 billion by number or $0.05 trillion by value, while, in 2015, they totaled 3.6 billion by number or $0.07 trillion by value. Private-label prepaid card payments dropped at an annual rate of 0.3 percent by number but rose 15.0 percent by value. Hence, the average value of these payments rose from $13 to $20.

Payments made by prepaid EBT cards increased slightly from 2.5 billion in 2012 to 2.6 billion in 2015, or 1.7 percent per year, while the value of these payments also increased slightly from $0.07 trillion to $0.08 trillion, or 0.20 percent per year. The average value of prepaid EBT card payments declined slightly, from $30 to $29.

In 2015, non-prepaid debit and general-purpose prepaid cards were used in 5.8 billion cash withdrawals at ATMs, virtually the same level as in 2012, after dropping from 6.0 billion ATM cash withdrawals in 2009. The average value of ATM cash withdrawals rose from $118 to $122 between 2012 and 2015, continuing an upward trend in average value since 2003."

To minimize fraud and waste, banks and retailers began the migration to chip cards in the United States in 2015. The FRB study included findings about fraud:

"Payments with general-purpose cards using embedded microchips, which improve the security of in-person payments to help prevent fraud, have grown by 230 percent per year since 2012. But payments with the chip-based cards amounted to only about 2 percent 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. 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 United States was one of the last developed countries to switch to chip cards. So, chip card usage in the United States still has a long way to go. The types of fraud with debit/credit/prepaid cards:

• Counterfeit card: Fraud is perpetrated using an altered or cloned card.
• Lost or stolen card: Fraud is undertaken using a lost or stolen card.
• Card issued but not received: A newly issued card sent via postal mail to a cardholder is intercepted and used to commit fraud.
• Fraudulent application: A new card is issued based on a fake identity or on someone else’s identity.
• Other: “Other” fraud includes account takeover and other types of fraud not covered above.
• Fraudulent use of account number: Fraud is perpetrated without using a physical card.

Fraud is perpetrated via two channels: 1) in-person when the cardholder has their card, and 2) remote when the cardholder is not present (e.g., postal mail, online, telephone). To learn more, download the "2016 Federal Reserve Payments Study" (Adobe PDF) and/or read the FRB announcement.