US payments study highlights strong trends in card use

From 2012 to 2015, credit and debit (including prepaid and non-prepaid) card payments continued to gain ground in the US payments landscape, accounting for more than two-thirds of all core non-cash payments in the United States, according to a Federal Reserve study of US non-cash payments.

Automated clearinghouse (ACH) payments grew modestly over the same period, and check payments declined at a slower rate than in the past.

The 2016 Federal Reserve Payments Study, which presents 2015 US payments data, found that the number of domestic core non-cash payments totalled an estimated 144 billion–up 5.3% annually from 2012. The total value of these transactions increased 3.4% over the same period to nearly $178 trillion.

Key findings:

Card payments grew 19.9 billion from 2012 to 2015, led by non-prepaid debit card payments which grew by 12.4 billion, and credit card payments, which grew by 6.9 billion. Prepaid card payments grew by less than 1 billion.
Remote card payments, sometimes called card-not-present payments, reached 19% of card payments in 2015, an increase of less than 4% compared with 2012. Gains in remote cards’ share of total card payments were mitigated by substantial growth of in-person card use.
Credit card and non-prepaid debit card payments nearly tied for first place in growth by number from 2012 through 2015, both growing by roughly 8% over the period.
The number of general-purpose card payments initiated with a chip-based card increased substantially from 2012, growing by more than 230% per year, but amounted to only a roughly 2% share of total in-person general-purpose card payments in 2015, during a broad industry effort to roll out chip card technology.
In 2015, the proportion of general-purpose card fraud attributed to counterfeiting was substantially greater as a share of total card fraud in the United States compared with countries where chip technology has been more completely adopted. Nonetheless, the total share of remote fraud is already substantial (46%) compared to its share in total card payments (19%).
The number of ACH payments is estimated to have grown to 23.5 billion in 2015, with a value of $145.3 trillion. ACH payments grew at an annual rate of 4.9% by number and 4% by value from 2012 to 2015.
Check payments fell at an annual rate of 4.4% by number or 0.5% by value from 2012 to 2015. For the first time since the descent began in the mid-1990s, check payments posted a slowing in the rate of decline.

“The data collected for the 2016 study was substantially expanded,” comments Mary Kepler, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which sponsored the study.

“This reflects an increased desire within the US payments industry for additional fraud-related information,” she said. “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.”

Beginning in 2017, some survey data will be collected annually, rather than every three years, to enhance the value of the study, Kepler added.