Dateline: Woking, 16th January 2025.My life is not that interesting, so I always look forward to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Survey of Consumer Payment Choice. It is an excellent snapshot on the real world of retail payments. In the last survey (June 2024) I was struck by the fact that three-quarters of US consumer have gone mobile with PayPal, Zelle, Venmo and Cash App (a statistically significant increase over the previous survey) and that 70% of consumers made a mobile phone or tablet payment at least once in the preceeding 12 months (also a statistically significant increase over the previous year).Subscribe nowThe Big PictureThe survey aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the payment behavior of US consumers. It brings in data from the ground up, bringing together the Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC) in which consumers report their adoption of payment instruments and the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice (DCPC) in which consumers record details of specific transactions (including dollar values) and their payment choices. Hence the findings are an invaluable picture of what is actually going on, free from fintech hype and crypto campaigning.The survey reports that 99% of US consumers have a credit, debit or prepaid card. This means that only 1% of US consumers are cardless, whereas 4% of US consumers remain unbanked. Of the US consumers without a bank account, around a third “did not like dealing with banks”, around a quarter said they didn’t write enough checks to make it worthwhile…The Real World of Consumer Payments