2018 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice

Claire Greene and Joanna Stavins

No 2019-3, Consumer Payments Research Data Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Abstract: This paper describes key results from the 2018 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC), the fifth in a series of diary surveys that measure payment behavior through the daily recording of the spending of U.S. consumers. The DCPC is the only diary survey of U.S. consumer payments with data and results that are available to the public without a fee. In October 2018, consumers made more payments with debit cards than with any other payment instrument (28 percent of payments). Cash, in all prior diary years the most-used payment instrument, followed with 26 percent of payments. Together with credit cards (23 percent), these instruments accounted for slightly more than three-quarters of the number of payments. By value, electronic payments accounted for 36 percent of the value of total payments, a statistically significant increase from 2017. The value share of payments made with paper instruments continued its steady decline, from 31 percent in 2015 to 23 percent in 2018. The average value of a cash transaction was $21, compared with $206 for the average noncash transaction (and $92 for all transactions). The average value of consumers' holdings of cash on their persons (in pocket, purse, or wallet) was about $60.

Keywords: cash; checks; checking accounts; debit cards; credit cards; prepaid cards; electronic payments; payment preferences; Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D14 E42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2020-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.frbatlanta.org/-/media/documents/banki ... r-payment-choice.pdf full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedadr:87821

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Consumer Payments Research Data Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rob Sarwark ().