According to a recent study conducted by the U.S. Federal Reserve, credit and debit card payments continued to gain ground in the payments environment and accounted for more than two-thirds of all core non-cash payments in the United States from 2012 to 2015.
The study found that a number of domestic core non-cash payments totaled approximately $144 billion in 2015, which is 5.3 percent higher than 2012. The total value of the transactions increased 3.4 percent over the same period to approximately $178 trillion.
“The data collected for the 2016 study was substantially expanded,” said Senior Vice President for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Mary Kepler. “This reflects an increased desire within the payments industry for additional fraud-related information. A limited amount of fraud information was ready for release today, and further results will be released in 2017 as the complete data set is more fully reviewed and analyzed.”
Some key findings in the report include evidence that card payments grew 19.9 billion over the studied period, led by non-prepaid debit card payments which grew by 12.4 billion. Prepaid card payments grew by less than $1 billion, and remote card payments reached 19 percent of card payments in 2015, which represents an increase of 4 percent compared to 2012.
Credit card and non-prepaid debit card payments nearly tied for first place in growth by number from 2012 to 2015, both growing by approximately 8 percent over the studied period.