| Debit cards continued to be the most popular payment method for consumers last year.
In a typical month last year, consumers on average made almost 32 percent of their payments with a debit card, according to the Survey of Consumers Payment study recently released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Cash was the second most preferred payment option, with consumers on average making about 27 percent of all payments in a typical month, followed by credit card or charge payments at 23.2 percent of all payments in an average month. The survey had almost 3,100 responses.
The percentage of cash and debit payments have stayed largely the same since the end of 2015, while credit card payments are up about 2 percent.
Consistently over the past decade, U.S. consumers have mostly used debit cards, cash and credit cards when making payments. While payment trends have remained stable over the long term despite changes in technology, online purchases rose to an average of 8 percent of each consumer’s total transactions in 2017, a statistically significant increase compared to the findings from 2015.
More than half of U.S. consumers had six or more payment instruments in 2017, and the median credit card adopter owned three credit cards, so consumers had many choices when it was time to pay.
