Irish consumers increasingly use card payments

Consumers in Ireland are rapidly increasing their usage of card payments. At the same time, paying with cash is getting less popular. The fast growth in 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 percent 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.

Spending in shops increased by 18%

According to the Central Bank, spending in shops increased by 18 percent year-on-year in March to 259 million euros, while debit card point of sale spending grew 19 percent 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 percent in shops.

Ecommerce spending: €1.7 billion in March

Online shopping spending showed an increase in the past year, data from the Central Bank of Ireland shows. Total ecommerce 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.

Ecommerce accounts for 24% of debit card expenditure

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