America’s preferred payment methods revealed in new survey

A debit card was the number one choice to pay for things in America as well as Australia, while Canadians preferred credit cards. Credit cards were likewise the second-most popular choices in Australia and America as well.

Much has been said about the inevitable slow death of physical money, but as Compare the Market’s survey shows, cold hard cash is still very much in use alongside the fantastic plastic banking cards.

America’s preferred payment methods revealed in new survey

Digital cards such as ApplePay or Google Wallets, as well as PayID, were more popular with younger age groups than older age groups. In the USA, digital wallets peaked among 24–34-year-olds and declined steadily from there. It was the same in Canada, while interest in this payment method peaked among Australians aged 18-24.

Other payment methods like Buy now pay later, personal cheques, online bank transfers and cryptocurrency barely got a look in, with few respondents saying it was their preferred method of paying for things.

The survey also asked if people would like their country to consider expanding their list of legally accepted payment methods, such as accepting cryptocurrency. Almost half of Americans said they wanted the government to support more legal tenders (45%), while 55% said no. The split was even closer in Canada at 49% for and 51% against, while Australians were more likely to be against it.

However, when we break the responses down by gender, there was a noticeable trend where men were more likely to want additional payment methods recognised than women.

America had the biggest split as 51.9% of men were in favour, compared to only 38.1% of women – a difference of 13.8%. In Australia, 42.1% of men were in favour compared to 30.1% of women, while 52.4% of men and 44.9% of women in Canada supported it.

When asked if they think the COVID-19 pandemic changed how businesses handle and accept money, the overwhelming majority of Australians, Canadians and Americans had noticed a difference.

In the USA, 17% of respondents hadn’t noticed any difference, compared to 41% who said it had changed for some places and 42% who said it had changed a lot across the board. Fifty per cent of Australians said it had changed significantly across the board, while 9% said they hadn’t noticed any difference at all. In Canada, 38% said it had changed significantly, followed by 15% who said they hadn’t noticed any difference.

But did it change the way we as customers pay for goods and services?

For a large portion of us it did, but not in the same way.

The most common response from respondents was “my purchasing habits were not affected.” This was the case for 40% of Americans, 34% of Canadians and 31% of Australians. However, overall most people did make some kind of change (60% of Americans, 66% of Canadians and 69% of Australians). For those that did make a change, the most common was to still primarily use a bank card, but to switch from swiping or inserting it to tap and wave payments.

The next most popular choice was to switch from mostly cash payments to mostly card payments.