Irish shoppers increase use of electronic payments
Irish consumers’ use of online and mobile payment methods has continued to increase despite the easing of restrictions on physical retail, according to Banking and Payments Federation Ireland.
Meanwhile the move away from cash continued, with contactless payments hitting a new record in July.
A new report by BPFI shows that the volume of online and mobile payments grew by 15.3% in the April-June period when compared to the same three months of 2020.
It recorded 32.2 million payments during the quarter.
That was despite easing Covid-19 restrictions giving customers more options in terms of in-store spending, though the BPFI also cited Central Bank data which showed that online represented a smaller share of Irish card transactions in July than in January.
Separate data from the European Central Bank also shows a sharp drop in cash transactions at Irish bank branches last year, with over-the-counter deposits and withdrawals falling by almost a quarter in volume terms in 2020.
Together that points to card-based payments – including online – taking a far larger share of consumers’ overall spending than before.
That came alongside a sharp increase in card usage, with more customers opting to use contactless when in-store.
The BPFI said that contactless payments hit a new daily high in July – with 2.5 billion payments made each day, to the value of €40.5m.
“July saw the highest daily levels of contactless payments since BPFI started collecting this data in 2016,” said its chief executive Brian Hayes.
“July payment volumes rose by 29% year on year to 77.5 million, while the value of contactless rose by 33.7% to almost €1.3 billion.”
“The payment value, meanwhile, saw an increase to €16.21, from €15.63 a year earlier.”
Article Source – Irish shoppers increase use of electronic payments – RTE – Adam Maguire
