The Green Sheet Online Edition

September 24, 2012 • Issue 12:09:02

ISOMetrics

Consumer payment habits

• Typical U.S. consumers have nine payment instruments available to them, keep five of those in their wallets and use 3.8 payment instruments in a typical month, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

• Just 59 percent of Americans had checking accounts in 2010, down from 96 percent in 2005, according to a survey by Hitachi Consulting and the Bank Administration Institute.

• Globally, 58 percent of consumer payments are made using cards, according to the World Payments Report 2010.

• The average consumer kept $291 in cash in his or her wallet or pocket in 2009 (Boston Fed).

• In 2010, 80 percent of U.S. consumers under age 35 had debit cards, compared with 64 percent of the over-65 crowd (Hitachi-BAI).

• Overall, 74 percent of U.S. consumers had debit cards in 2010 (Hitachi-BAI).

• A mere 11 percent of consumers had contactless payment devices in 2010 (Hitachi-BAI).

• The average consumer made 64.5 payments during a typical month in 2009 (Boston Fed).

• Americans spent $1.6 trillion with debit cards in 2010, according to the Federal Reserve Board.

• In 2010, 33 percent of consumers used reloadable prepaid debit cards (Hitachi-BAI).

• Spending with reloadable prepaid cards topped $80 billion in 2011 (FRB).

• The total dollars deposited to reloadable prepaid cards is growing at an annual rate of 42 percent, according to Mercator Advisory Group.

• Forty percent of U.S. households use prepaid cards, according to Synergistics Research Corp.

• Eighty-seven percent of U.S. residents had mobile phones in 2011 (FRB).

• More than one in three Americans have made payments using their mobile devices, according to IDC Financial Insights.

• As of year-end 2011, U.S. financial institutions had issued 1 million Visa Inc.-branded, chip-embedded Europay/MasterCard/Visa cards (Visa).

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