Credit and debit card payments continued to grow in 2022, reaching 153.3 billion transactions and $9.76 trillion in value, according to data released today by the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s triennial payments study found that from 2021 to 2022, general-purpose card payments grew 6% by number and 10.5% by value, “effectively continuing the growth trajectory from 2018 to 2021, when they grew 6.5% and 10.3% per year, respectively.”
Remote payments slowed in the period studied compared to previous years, according to the report. In-person payments accounted for 63.8% of total general-purpose card payments by number. At the same time, cross-border payments with cards issued in the U.S. grew significantly, reaching 7.5 billion transactions and $470 billion in 2022 compared to just 1.4 billion and $140 billion in 2018.
Private-label card payments totaled 12.8 billion transactions and $640 billion in value in 2022, down 2.1% by number and 18.1% by value from the previous year.
Mobile wallet payments — mostly purchases and some person-to-person transfers — continued to exhibit strong growth, reaching 14.4 billion transactions in 2022, up from 2.9 billion in 2018 and exceeding the 11.2 billion check transactions estimated for 2021. Nearly 56% of the 13.8 billion mobile wallet purchases in 2022 were made via in-person merchant terminals, with the remainder remote. P2P and money transfer payments also continued to grow, reaching 9.5 billion in 2022, up from 1.6 billion in 2018.
