The 2014 SCPC reflects widespread diversity and the influence of new payment innovations, but also a persistent reliance on cash. Combined with similar data from the preceding years, the SCPC begins to suggest trends in consumer payments, including an ongoing steady decline in check payments at an average rate of nearly 10 percent per year from 2008 to 2014. This agrees with a longer-term trend in check use by the entire economy since at least 2000, as identified by the Federal Reserve Payments Study. Money orders and traveler’s checks have shown similar declines.
Another recent trend is the steady increase in consumers’ adoption of nonbank payment accounts (for example, PayPal) since 2011. The overall picture of consumer payments that emerges from the 2008–2014 SCPC may provide useful information and background for assessing potential policy changes, such as those discussed in the Federal Reserve’s strategic plan for the U.S. payment system (Federal Reserve System 2015a). For example, despite frequent security breaches in recent years, consumers’ assessments of the quality of payment security generally have improved since 2008. Consumers continue to prefer PIN as a method of authorizing debit card payments, and so far there is no apparent evidence that Regulation II (debit card interchange fees) has had a measurable impact on consumer preferences.

In 2014, the average number of U.S. consumer payments per consumer per month decreased to 66.1, in a statistically insignificant decline from 67.9 in 2013. The number of payments made by paper check continued to decline, falling by 0.7 to 5.0 checks per month, while the number of electronic payments (online banking bill payments, bank account number payments, and deductions from income) increased by 0.6 to 6.9 of these payments per month. The monthly shares of debit cards (31.1 percent), cash (25.6 percent), and credit cards (23.3 percent) continued to be largest; while the share of electronic payments rose a significant 1.2 percentage points to 10.5 percent. Consumers’ average cash holdings dropped by about 10 percent to $207 in 2014. The number of cash withdrawals made by consumers per month also declined by about one withdrawal per month to 5.6. There was no significant change in cash use, however. About half of 1 percent of U.S. consumers held bitcoin or other virtual currencies. The 2014 SCPC includes a formal measure of “underbanked” consumers for the first time.