Consumer Payment Trends in the U.S.

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Businesses routinely seek to appeal to consumers by understanding which goods or services they want to buy. But understanding how shoppers prefer to buy—that is, which forms of payments they favor, and why—is also critically important. Marketers, retailers, card associations and other product and service providers hope to make transactions easy and convenient for consumers, but they must also balance these requirements against their own needs. Meanwhile, in the post-recession U.S. marketplace the world of payments keeps evolving as consumers back away from credit cards, debit cards move toward saturation, online payment options proliferate, and contactless payments and mobile payments move closer on the horizon.

This all-new report from Packaged Facts examines consumer payment forms of all kinds, including credit cards, debit cards, gift/prepaid cards, cash, checks, online payment and emerging forms, with a focus on how consumer preferences have changed during the past five years and vis-à-vis the economic downturn and recovery. It includes:

• Analysis of how Americans’ financial outlook influences their spending and payment preferences.
• Demographic and psychographic profiling by payment form and consumer age, gender, race, geographic region, income, educational level, etc.
• Focus chapter on cash, whose straightforwardness and immediacy makes it the payment choice of more than half of U.S. adults.
• Focus chapter on checks, which despite declining usage remain popular for bill paying and are getting new legs via “digital reinvention.”
• Focus chapter on credit cards, which have reached saturation and face other challenges including more restrictive legislation and declining usage among consumers looking to reduce their debt.
• Focus chapter on debit cards, which continue to win followers but whose rise may be diverted by laws restricting overdraft fees.
• Coverage of gift cards and other prepaid debit cards, which are creating a fast-growing “second-tier” banking system for those without access to traditional banks.
• Focus chapter on new payment methods, including contactless, cell phone and Internet-based, all of which are jockeying for position in the next wave of payment forms.

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