Posted by Sarah Jordan

The Federal Reserve released their 2007 Payments Study on Monday. The study covered 2003 to 2006, finding that all types of electronic payments grew while paper check payments decreased. The annual use of debit cards increased by about 10 billion payments, surpassing credit cards as the most frequently used payment type. The number of Automated Clearinghouse (ACH) payments increased by 6 billion and credit card payments grew by 3 billion. Even as the most common types of electronic payments increased, another noteworthy increase was in the number of checks being processed electronically. Almost 3 billion consumer checks that were written to billers were converted and cleared as ACH payments rather than check payments. The 2007 Federal Reserve Payments Study’s major findings include:

• From 2003 to 2006, electronic payments grew 12.4 percent per year, now making up over two-thirds of all non-cash payments.
• Payments made by debit, credit, or EBT cards constituted over half of all non-cash payments in 2006.
• The number of debit card payments now exceeds the number of credit card payments. (With lower rates, that’s great news for business!)
• ACH payments increased 18.6 percent per year from 2003 to 2006, 38.4 percent of which were checks converted to ACH.

Read the full executive summary of the 2007 Federal Reserve Payments Study

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