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Report
The 2017 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice
This paper describes key results from the 2017 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC), the fourth in a series of diary surveys that measure payment behavior through the daily recording of U.S. consumers' spending. The DCPC is the only diary survey of U.S. consumer payments available free to the public. In October 2017, consumers paid mostly with cash (30.3 percent of payments), debit cards (26.2 percent), and credit cards (21.0 percent). These instruments accounted for three-quarters of the number of payments, but only about 40 percent of the total value of payments, because they tend to be ...
Report
2019 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice
In October 2019, almost half of all payments (43 percent) U.S. consumers made were for groceries, gas, and shopping, both in person and online. The distribution was different by value, as 40 percent of payments were for financial services, including mortgages, credit card bills, other loan payments, insurance, investments, and so on. The most commonly used payment instruments were debit cards, cash, and credit cards, which jointly accounted for 80 percent of all payments by number and 37 percent by value. By value, about 40 percent of consumer payments were made via ACH payments, executed ...
Report
2018 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice
In 2018, U.S. consumers made 72 payments per month on average, not a significant change from 2017.As in 2017, the most frequently used payment instruments were debit cards (34 percent of alltransactions), cash (24 percent), and credit cards (23 percent). Over the 11 years of the survey, debit,cash, and credit have consistently been the most popular ways to pay. For the first time in 2018, debitcards replaced cash as the payment instrument used most frequently for in-person purchases.Some key findings about medium-term trends from 2015 to 2018 include the following:• The share of consumers ...
Working Paper
Cash-Hedged Stock Returns
Corporate cash piles vary across companies and over time. A firm's cash holding is an implicit position in a low-return asset that is correlated across firms. Cash generates variation in beta estimates. We show how investors can hedge out the cash on firms' balance sheets when making portfolio choices. We decompose stock betas into components that depend on the firm's cash holding, return on cash, and cash-hedged return. Common asset pricing premia — size, value, and momentum — have large implicit cash positions. Portfolios of cash-hedged premia often have higher Sharpe ratios because ...
Report
The 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice: summary results
The 2015 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) was implemented using a new longitudinal panel, the Understanding America Study (UAS), and results are not yet comparable to the 2008?2014 SCPC. In 2015, U.S. consumers made 68.9 payments per month. Debit cards remained the most popular payment instrument among U.S. consumers in 2015, accounting for 32.5 percent of their monthly payments, followed by cash (27.1 percent) and credit or charge cards (21.3 percent). For nonbills, consumers used cash and debit equally?about one-third of the time for each. For bills, consumers used payment cards for ...
Report
2018 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice
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 ...
Report
2020 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice
This paper describes key results from the 2020 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC), the seventh in a series of diary surveys that measure payment behavior through the daily recording of consumer spending and payments in the United States. The DCPC is the only diary survey of US consumer payments with data and results that are available to the public free of charge. In October 2020, US consumers made most of their payments with debit cards, credit cards, and cash. Together, they accounted for three-quarters of all payments by number and one-third by value. In the pandemic year 2020, ...
Working Paper
Payments Evolution from Paper to Electronic Payments by Merchant Type
The use of paper instruments—cash and checks—has been declining in the United States, and consumers have been gradually replacing paper with cards and electronic payments. Stavins (2021) examines the evolution of payments from paper to cards and electronic payments, while Shy (2020) shows the payments landscape across merchant types. This paper combines the cross-sectional analysis across merchants with the aggregate time series study to analyze the evolution of consumer payments by merchant type. Using data from a representative diary survey of US consumers collected annually over the ...
Report
2021 Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice
In October 2021, US consumers reported making 36 payments per month on average, up about one payment from 2020. As a share of all payments by number, most payments were by debit card (29 percent) or credit card (28 percent). By value, 40 percent of payments value was made electronically from a bank account using one of two ACH methods and 35 percent were made using a card (debit, credit, or prepaid). For 2021, the Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice found the following: • The total value of payments, around $4,800, increased 10 percent from 2020, a change that is not statistically ...
Report
The 2014 survey of consumer payment choice: summary results
In 2014, the average number of U.S. consumer payments per consumer per month decreased to 66.1, in a statistically insignificant decline from 67.9 in 2013. The number of payments made by paper check continued to decline, falling by 0.7 to 5.0 checks per month, while the number of electronic payments (online banking bill payments, bank account number payments, and deductions from income) increased by 0.6 to 6.9 of these payments per month. The monthly shares of debit cards (31.1 percent), cash (25.6 percent), and credit cards (23.3 percent) continued to be largest; while the share of ...