Mobile wallet payments more common than in-store cash transactions in 2020
Last year, for the first time, people used digital payment methods more often than cash.
Mobile wallet payments became more popular than cash transactions worldwide at in-store points of sale (POS) in 2020, said the Global Payments Report 2021 published by FIS’ Worldpay.
That trend represents the first time smartphone-based transactions were more common than cash.
The data presented in the Global Payments Report 2021 showed that there was a considerable 10 percent drop in the use of cash to pay for purchases in-store. This took into account the fact that there was a reduction of about 20 percent in worldwide in-store transactions of all forms. However, the number of contactless mobile wallet payments transacted at store POSs grew quite rapidly. Moreover, the use of smartphone-based transactions grew faster than the use of plastic cards such as debit and credit cards.