The cashless society: Financial transactions to top 100 billion in 2009

By Larry Dignan | October 13, 2009, 5:08 AM PDT

U.S. financial transactions—checks, debit, credit and automatic transactions—will top 100 billion by the end of the year as consumer spending has stagnated, according to Moebs Services, a research firm.

The takeaway: Cash is going away.

Moebs, which crunches Federal Reserve data, says paper checks usage has dropped from 85 percent of all transactions to 25 percent. Credit card usage is down, but debit transactions are up.

Here’s the breakdown of transactions:

Debit card transactions: 33 percent
Paper checks: 24 percent
Credit card transactions: 23 percent
Automatic Payments (ACH): 20 percent

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About Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is editor-in-chief of SmartPlanet.

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RE: The cashless society: Financial transactions to top 100 billion in 2009

Dear Not:

The full release (which you can Google for using "Moebs 100 billion") refers to 100 billion transactions, not $100B.

Posted by JavaJobber

13th Oct 2009

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RE: The cashless society: Financial transactions to top 100 billion in 2009

How can one deduce cash is going away if the stats in this article only count the electronic and paper check transactions? Don't we at least need to know what share of the 100 billion were cash and how that compares to the last few years to make any prediction on the role cash will play in future?

Posted by jimfla

13th Oct 2009

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Statistics Fail

My thoughts exactly, jimfla. The numbers only tell us how much people are spending electronically (I believe paper checks are now eventually processed electronically). We still don't know how much of TOTAL spending that is.

Posted by MichP

13th Oct 2009

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RE: The cashless society: Financial transactions to top 100 billion in 2009

US consumer spending is on the order of $8 trillion. $2.5 trillion of that is health care (much of which is handled directly between providers and insurance and Medicare), so that still leaves $5.5 trillion in non-health spending being done by consumers. I'm not sure how the $100B number aligns with that, since it is less than 2%.

Also, are prepaid cards included in these numbers?

Posted by notmyusualusername

13th Oct 2009

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RE: The cashless society: Financial transactions to top 100 billion in 2009

Dear Not:

The full release (which you can Google for using "Moebs 100 billion") refers to 100 billion transactions, not $100B.

Posted by JavaJobber

13th Oct 2009

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