Every year the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta runs a survey of 1,000+ adults on how they spend their money — and the latest results make for some interesting reading.
Cash is trash, card is king
Last year cash accounted for fewer than 19% of all transactions — a record low. The pandemic appears to have accelerated the demise of cash, which as recently as 2015 was responsible for around one-third of all payments.
Overall, cards of some sort — whether debit, credit or prepaid (like gift cards) — accounted for more than 57% of all payments.
When you look at the data based on the number of transactions, as we have in the chart above, checks look like they are on their way out as they represented just 6.5% of all transactions. However, if you slice the data differently, and look at the share by dollar value, rather than just the number of transactions, checks were actually used for 20% of dollars spent. That's even more than credit cards by dollar value — suggesting we whip out those checkbooks only when we need to spend big.
It would be a pretty tame prediction to suggest that the use of cash continues to fade — but how long until it completely disappears is a much more difficult bet: 10, 20, 50 years? Never? All seem possible.
