Cheques hit all-time low as consumers opt for 'tap'n'go'

/ 13th December 2022 /

Usage of cheques has fallen to an all-time low as contactless 'tap'n'go' and mobile phone payments hit record levels, banks have revealed.

Nearly €4.8bn worth of contactless payments were made between July and September this year, rising by over 25% in the past 12 months to almost €52m-a-day, figures show.

It is the highest contactless spend in any three-month period since the records started almost seven years ago.

Quarterly contactless transactions rose by almost 23% over the same period, to 285 million or 3.1 million payments per day, according to the figures from the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI).

BPFI head of payments Gillian Byrne said: "As consumers continued to reduce their reliance on cash and cheques, card payments continued to grow strongly.

"The contactless share of payment volumes increased from 54% in Q3 2021 to 59% in Q3 2022.

"Contactless payments accounted for 41% of the value of card payments in stores and other physical points of sale in Q3 2022, up from 36% a year earlier.

"Online and mobile banking - digital banking - payment volumes, meanwhile, grew by 8.4% year on year in Q3 2022 to €36.1m. This is the highest level recorded since BPFI began collecting this data in 2016. Cheque payments dropped to the lowest quarterly level since that data began in 2008, at €4.5m."

But despite the switch away, there are still around 50,000 cheques written every day, while direct debit payment volumes rose by 2.1% year on year to 35.9 million, the highest quarterly number since October, November and December of 2019.

Cheques
Tap'n'go — Nearly €4.8bn worth of contactless payments were made between July and September this year, rising by over 25% in the past 12 months to almost €52m-a-day (Pic: Getty Images)

Financial advisor John Lowe, of Money Doctors, said: "In personal banking, I do think the death knell has been sounded on writing cheques."

He added: "The chequebook has had its day; it has far, far less usage. You can put a debit card on your phone. I would say 50% of my transactions are with the phone."

Brendan Burgess of askaboutmoney.com said the low cheque numbers "shouldn't be a surprise".

However, he believes cheques are still popular with people who like to give them as gifts. "If you want to give some child, your godchild or someone, something, you give them a cheque, it's a piece of paper," explained Mr Burgess.