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Cash still most popular payment approach for consumers

November 11, 2016

While shoppers may be conducting more mobile payment transactions, cold hard cash is still pretty popular and is actually the most used, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank study.

"The typical Silicon Valley hyperbole is that cash is dead, that no one uses cash," Wendy Matheny, a co-author of the study and a manager at the Fed’s Cash Product Office in San Francisco, told the Wall Street Journal. "But people do use cash."

Last year consumers used cash 32 percent of the time, a drop from 40 percent in 2012, notes the WSJ. Prime reasons are new digital payment options and increasing use of credit cards, notes the WSJ.

"The data show that cash and electronic payments can be thought to have opposite consumer uses: Cash is used most often for small-value purchases, while electronic payments are used less frequently, but primarily for large-value purchases and bill payments," states the study, as cited by WSJ.