Irish consumers increasingly use card payments

The use of card payments increased rapidly in Ireland. Source:?shutterstock.com

Consumers in Ireland are rapidly increasing their usage of card payments, Ecommerce News?reports. At the same time, paying with cash is getting less popular. The fast growth in the popularity of card payments goes hand in hand with a significant increase in online shopping in the past year.

This is shown by new data from the?Central Bank of Ireland. Card payments saw an increase of 9% to 17.2 billion euros in the first three months of this year, compared to the same period last year. At the end of March, there were over 6 million active debit and credit cards in Ireland.

According to the Central Bank, spending in shops increased by 18% year-on-year in March to 259 million euros, while debit card point of sale spending grew 19% during the same period to 3.4 billion euros. At the same time, credit card spending did increase but at a slower pace: by 10% in shops.

Online shopping spending showed an increase in the past year, data from the Central Bank of Ireland shows. Total e-commerce spending was 1.7 billion euros in March, with 1.2 billion euros and 451 million euros in debit card and credit card transactions respectively.

Irish e-commerce spending in the first quarter of this year increased by 15% compared to the same period in 2018. In March alone, online spending was 19% higher than during the same month last year. E-commerce currently accounts for 24% of all debit card expenditure and 50% of credit card spending.

SEE ALSO:?Cashless economy: pros & cons