Thursday, August 8, 2024
Moreover, roughly two-thirds (66.3 percent) of those cards are active, meaning they are used at least once a month to pay for purchases. Active debit cardholders completed 34.6 debit transactions per month in 2023. The number includes 30.7 point-of-sale transactions, two account-to-account transfers and 1.9 ATM transactions.
The average debit card ticket was $46.89 in 2023. Average annual debit card spend was $17,274, representing an annual growth rate of 8.1 percent between 2018 and 2023.
"The ease and convenience of debit has made it a cornerstone of the retail banking customer experience," said Steve Sievert, executive vice president for marketing and brand management at PULSE. "With active cardholders now using debit for more than 400 transactions per year, a debt card serves as a daily reminder of the value of the relationship between a consumer and their financial institution."
Consumers are not just using their debit cards at the physical point of sale. Nearly a third (32 percent) have embraced debit as their preferred online payment method, PULSE reported. Credit cards rank second for online purchases at 26 percent, followed by PayPal (15 percent), and Apple Pay (7 percent). Interest in pay-by-bank remains muted, with just 4 percent of consumers citing this as their preferred online payment method.
In all, card-not-present payments accounted for 36 percent of debit transactions and 45 percent of debit spend in 2023 – a 5.2 percent increase over 2022. The average CNP ticket size rose 2.2 percent year-over-year to $60.81.
Mobile devices were used to originate 7 percent of all debit card transactions, and 15 percent of all in-store contactless payments in 2023, with Apple Pay the most popular.
Thirty-eight percent of all debit cards are loaded onto mobile wallets, according to the study. Debit card issuers reported an average of three digital wallet transactions per active card per month in 2023, with an average ticket value of $27.69. This is about 40 percent lower than the overall average debit ticket size, reflecting a mix of small-ticket in-person and small in-app purchases, according to the study.
The 2024 PULSE Debit Issuer Study was conducted by the management consulting firm Banking & Payments. It combines surveys and interviews with issuers and consumers across the U.S., and includes issuers of Discover, Mastercard and Visa debit cards that participate in a range of unaffiliated debit networks.
Polled issuers pointed to several potential market trends that could impact future growth in debit. These include the Federal Reserve's proposal to lower by about 30 percent the cap on debit interchange for those issuers with $10 billion or more in assets, and potential growth in real-time payments.
Real-time payments make it possible for consumers to send and receive money directly from their bank accounts in a matter of seconds, 24/7/365. The Clearing House, a payments company owned by many of the nation's largest banks, launched a real-time payment network, aptly named RTP, in 2017. More recently, the Fed launched a real-time payment network called FedNow.
Research conducted by the Fed reveals that the most common use of real-time payment options are payments to family and friends, transferring money between accounts and bill payments. 
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