In countless old black-and-white movies, street newspaper vendors would shout out the latest sensational news from hot-off-the-press special editions. The Fed is no different in that we want to shout out that it is no longer necessary to mine the PDF-based Federal Reserve Payments Study report to extract the study's data. For the first time, we are offering our entire aggregated data set of estimated noncash payments in an Excel file. The report accompanying the data is here.
The data set is very rich and covers the following categories:
|
Accounts and cards
|
Private-label credit processors
|
|---|---|
| Checks | Person-to-person and money transfer |
| ACH | Online bill pay |
| Non-prepaid debit | Walk-in bill pay |
| General-purpose prepaid | Private-label ACH debit |
| Private-label prepaid issuers & processors | Online payment authentication |
| General-purpose credit | Mobile wallet |
| Private-label credit merchant issuers |
Here is another table that is just one extract from the non-prepaid debit card portion of the extensive payments data available.
To get a taste of what this data can teach us, let's look closer at the cumulative volume distribution by payment dollar value threshold for non-prepaid debit cards (the data are shown above) along with general-purpose credit cards. The number and value of both types of payments grew substantially from 2012 to 2015, the last two survey periods. The chart compares these distributions, showing more vividly how this growth affected the relative proportions of payments of different dollar values.
For example, debit card payments below $25 accounted for 59.1 percent of all payments in 2012 versus 61.8 percent in 2015—evidence that debit card purchases are migrating to lower ticket amounts. The trend is even more dramatic over the same time span for general-purpose credit cards.
Because this is a distribution, increases in the relative number of small-value payments must be offset by decreases in the relative number of large-value payments. Unfortunately, our previous survey capped the payment threshold at $50 in 2012. Otherwise, we would see the dashed 2012 lines crossing over the solid 2015 lines at some payment value threshold above $50. In brief, the results suggest cash payments are continuing to migrate to debit cards, while credit cards may be garnering some share at the expense of both cash and debit cards.
The challenge is on for you data analysts out there. Please share your findings.
By Steven Cordray, payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed