Consumers are smarter as cards replace cash

AUSTRALIAN consumers are accelerating their shift towards digital payments and away from cash and cheques, according to figures released by an electronic payments industry group.

Card payments have surged while people are making fewer trips to ATMs, AusPayNet said.

Consumers made more than 8.3 billion card payments last year — equal to a rate of almost 23 million transactions a day, according to a report from the group.

The bulk of those payments — 5.6 billion — were made on debit cards, AusPayNet said.

Credit cards tended to be used on more expensive purchases, but there was still an increase in the volume and value of transactions carried out with such cards.

At the same time, the number of cheques fell almost 20 per cent to 89.7 million for the year, and the number of ATM withdrawals fell 5.9 per cent to 610.1 million.

AusPayNet chief Leila Fourie said the high uptake of technology and internet use in Australia, where smartphones were owned by almost 90 per cent of the population, was behind the increase in new ways of conducting transactions.

“This is driving uptake in digital payments and laying down a powerful base for the next wave of payments innovation,” she said.

AusPayNet said more 60 per cent of consumers with a smartphone used their devices to make payments.

Among the technological shifts aiding the uptake of digital payments is the New Payments Platform — a digital and near-real-time payments system allowing instant peerto-peer payments that was launched in February.

AusPayNet also found Australia had a high number of Eftpos terminals and low number of ATMs compared with other countries.

Australia ranked above Canada, Italy, Singapore and Britain for Eftpos concentration, while it lagged Korea, Canada, Belgium and Russia in the ATM count.