Fed Study Finds Continued Growth in Credit-Card to make Payments
Fed Study Finds Continued Growth in Credit-Card Payments
Central bank says credit-card payments grew 10.2% in 2016
By Kate Davidson Updated Dec. 21, 2017 1:13 p.m. ET
Americans increasingly relied on credit cards to make
payments in 2016, and made more of those payments remotely, according to new
data the Federal Reserve released Thursday.
The number of credit-card payments grew 10.2% last year,
to 37.3 billion, compared with an annual growth rate of 8.1% over the previous
three years.
The Fed attributed the increase in part to “continued
strong growth” in the number of remote payments, such as online shopping and
bill paying, which represented 22.2% of all general-purpose credit and
debit-card payments. Remote payments increased 1.5% from 2015, the Fed said. By
value, remote payments represented 44% of all general-purpose card payments.
The data released Thursday are part of a new annual
collection of information on trends in payments—including credit cards, checks
and other electronic payments—that will supplement the Fed’s triennial study of
the payments system.
Overall, American consumers paid with cards 111.1 billion
times in 2016, a 7.4% increase from the previous year, and the value of those
payments grew 5.8% to $5.98 trillion. Those growth rates were slightly slower
than the rates recorded during from 2012 to 2015, the Fed said, as growth in
debit-card payments slowed by number and total value.
The share of in-person general-purpose card payments that
rely on chip technology surged in 2016, to 19.1% in 2016 from only 2% in 2015,
“reflecting the coordinated effort to place the technology in cards and
card-accepting terminals,” the Fed said.
The data also showed more payments fraud has shifted
online. In 2015, roughly 53.8% of payments fraud by value from general-purpose
credit cards occurred in person. That flipped last year, when 58.5% of fraud
occurred remotely, the Fed said.
Data from the largest banks also revealed a continued
decline in the number and value of commercial checks paid in 2016, with the
data suggesting the average value of a check paid also declined slightly since
the previous year.
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