Take a Look: Accelerated Growth in Contactless Payments

The Federal Reserve, responsible for monitoring the health of the U.S. economy, publishes a series of studies every three years to discover trends in noncash payments across the country. These payments include credit cards, prepaid and non-prepaid debit cards, ACH and checks.

According to their most recent findings published in 2020, the Federal Reserve has seen accelerated growth overall in noncash payments compared to the previous report.

• The transaction count of noncash payments reached 174.2 billion, an increase of 30.6 billion
• The dollar value of these payments totaled $97.04 trillion, an increase of $10.25 trillion
• Even though a gap remains between the number of remote and in-person card payments, the dollar value of remote card payments nearly equaled that of in-person payments
• Over half of in-person card payments were chip authenticated

A significant development in recent years has been the adoption and widespread issuance of chip-based EMV cards and the deployment of Point-of-Sale terminals that support chip-based technology.

Given the current digital landscape, will contactless payments experience even more rapid growth in the years to come? Stay tuned for their next publication to find out!

To read more about this study and additional key findings, take a look here.