U.S. Consumers and Debit: Shift to Online May Inhibit Use
- Date:January 22, 2018
- Author(s):
- Karen Augustine
- Research Topic(s):
- North American PaymentsInsights
- PAID CONTENT
Overview
The latest Insight Summary Report from Mercator Advisory Group’s CustomerMonitor Survey Series reveals that 57% of all respondents and 78% of young adults aged 18 to 34 use person-to-person payment services such as PayPal, Venmo, Google Wallet, Facebook Messenger, and others accessible online and in app by mobile devices and nearly half of them use a P2P service at least once a month. The report, U.S. Consumers and Debit: Shift to Online May Inhibit Use, presents the findings of an online survey of 3,011 U.S. adults conducted in June 2017.
Using a person-to-person payment service is becoming a common way to pay back family and friends, to split at bill at restaurants or events when purchasing with a group, to pay rent or other household bills, and even to pay at a checkout in some stores and for more convenient payment from mobile devices. It is especially popular with young adults, 58% of whom use a P2P service at least once a month and 28% of whom use it weekly or more often.
As U.S. consumers make a greater share of purchases online and by mobile using a wider range of payment options, credit cards are often preferred to debit cards online. And with the rising use of online payment services, consumers may start to bypass traditional payment cards and keep funds in their payment service rather than transfer it back to their checking account.
“The rise in use of online and mobile commerce may be shifting the payment methods used. We continue to see slight declines in debit card use as consumers are faced with an ever increasing range of payment options which may circumvent debit transactions,” states the author of the report, Karen Augustine, senior manager of Primary Data Services at Mercator Advisory Group, which includes the CustomerMonitor Survey Series.
The report is 75 pages long and contains 33 exhibits
Companies mentioned in the report include: Amazon, American Express, BillMeLater, Bitcoin, Discover, Dwolla, Google, Facebook, MasterCard, MoneyGram, PayPal, PeoplePay, PopMoney, Zelle, Square, Venmo, Visa, Walmart, and Western Union, Visa, Mastercard.
One of the exhibits included in this report:

Highlights of this report include:
- Year-over-year trending of payment type used in households, including debit card use in the U.S. and the ways that consumers use debit cards
- Ownership and interest in obtaining EMV-enabled debit cards
- Comparison of debit card ownership to debit card use
- Preferred payments for online purchases and reasons for not using debit cards at online retailers
- Preferred payments in stores
- Cash use and reasons for using cash
- Checking account opening, methods used and checking account features including instant issuance
- A shift in demographics of debit cardholders
- Use of person-to-person payments by brand, frequency of use and use cases
- Use of online payment services by brand and primary reasons for using online payment services
- Awareness and use of Bitcoin
- Comparison of use of financial institutions of specific payment services with use of alternative services initiated in supermarkets, discount stores, and other outlets
- Types of fees paid for use of checking account
- Cash spending and reasons for cash use
- Debit card rewards, type of rewards and motivation to use card more often
- Interest in mobile-based account controls for debit cards
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