Digital Payments Statistics 2026-2027
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sarah Davis | Last updated: November 11, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
South Korea recorded 859.7 cashless payments per resident in 2024, Singapore 820.5 and Australia 769.9, against 646.3 in the United States and 143.5 in India, whose count doubled in two years. Across 23 jurisdictions reporting to the Bank for International Settlements, China, India and Brazil supplied 74.4% of the 372.7 billion payments added between 2022 and 2024.
Quick Answer
Digital payments are routine where cards and fast transfers are everywhere, and uneven elsewhere. South Korea leads at 859.7 cashless payments per resident a year, Brazil (679.0) has passed the United States (646.3), and India (143.5) is adding payments fastest. Cash is about 14% of US payments, 8% in the UK and 52% of euro-area shop payments.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research’s Everyday Cashless Frequency Index (ECFI) puts South Korea at 133.0 and Brazil at 105.1, against the United States at 100.0 (BIS data, 2024).
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates that China, India and Brazil supplied 74.4% of cashless payments added across 23 BIS jurisdictions between 2022 and 2024.
- Cash was 52% of euro-area point-of-sale transactions by number in 2024, down from 59% in 2022, according to the European Central Bank’s SPACE study.
- Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas reports digital payments at 64.69% of Philippine retail payments by volume in 2025 but 53.32% by value.
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates that mobile-wallet use explains only 32% of the variation in cashless payment frequency across 23 jurisdictions (r = 0.56).
Source: axis-intelligence.com/digital-payments-statistics/
Which Countries Make the Most Digital Payments Per Person?
South Korea, Singapore and Australia, in that order, among the 23 jurisdictions where the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) publishes a comparable 2024 count of cashless payments. The figures below divide each country’s reported total by its population, then index the result to the United States.
The Everyday Cashless Frequency Index (ECFI) is that index: the number of cashless payments a resident makes in a year, divided by the US figure, multiplied by 100. An ECFI of 133.0 means a resident of that country makes 33% more cashless payments than a resident of the United States. Payments per resident per day is shown next to it because it is the number people repeat.
| Rank | Jurisdiction | Cashless payments 2024 (billions) | Per resident per year | Per resident per day | ECFI (US = 100) | Growth 2022–2024 (per year) | Wallet use, Q2 2026 (GWI) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Korea | 44.5 | 859.7 | 2.36 | 133.0 | 7.1% | 25.1% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 2 | Singapore | 5.0 | 820.5 | 2.25 | 126.9 | 5.6% | 40.4% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 3 | Australia | 20.9 | 769.9 | 2.11 | 119.1 | 7.1% | 33.0% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 4 | Sweden | 7.2 | 685.3 | 1.88 | 106.0 | 4.3% | 26.1% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 5 | United Kingdom | 47.1 | 680.5 | 1.86 | 105.3 | 7.8% | 36.0% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 6 | Brazil | 144.0 | 679.0 | 1.86 | 105.1 | 29.9% | 31.6% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 7 | United States | 219.7 | 646.3 | 1.77 | 100.0 | 5.3% | 33.0% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 8 | Belgium | 6.6 | 555.6 | 1.52 | 86.0 | 8.7% | 14.5% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 9 | Switzerland | 4.6 | 513.7 | 1.41 | 79.5 | 9.0% | 29.0% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 10 | Canada | 20.2 | 488.6 | 1.34 | 75.6 | 12.7% | 26.4% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 11 | France | 32.5 | 473.7 | 1.30 | 73.3 | 5.8% | 19.2% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 12 | Germany | 36.4 | 436.2 | 1.20 | 67.5 | 10.2% | 28.4% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 13 | China | 565.9 | 401.7 | 1.10 | 62.1 | 11.9% | 23.8% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 14 | Spain | 17.7 | 362.1 | 0.99 | 56.0 | 12.0% | 24.9% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 15 | Saudi Arabia | 11.6 | 328.5 | 0.90 | 50.8 | 19.4% | 39.8% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 16 | Turkiye | 23.7 | 276.6 | 0.76 | 42.8 | 25.2% | 12.9% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 17 | Argentina | 12.4 | 270.6 | 0.74 | 41.9 | 40.4% | 19.5% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 18 | Italy | 14.6 | 247.3 | 0.68 | 38.3 | 12.6% | 23.3% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 19 | Japan | 20.8 | 167.8 | 0.46 | 26.0 | 15.3% | 15.1% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 20 | South Africa | 10.3 | 160.7 | 0.44 | 24.9 | 16.9% | 26.9% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 21 | India | 208.2 | 143.5 | 0.39 | 22.2 | 41.4% | 23.5% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 22 | Mexico | 16.5 | 125.8 | 0.34 | 19.5 | 23.1% | 18.5% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
| 23 | Indonesia | 12.3 | 43.2 | 0.12 | 6.7 | 18.6% | 17.0% | BIS; World Bank; GWI |
Sources: BIS CPMI cashless payments statistics (2022–2024 counts); World Bank population, 2024; GWI Core survey, Q2 2026 (internet users aged 16+ using mobile payment services each month). ECFI and growth rates are Axis Intelligence Research calculations; every input is a row in the CSV.
Sarah Davis, Digital Finance: The top of the table is not where the news is. Korea, Singapore and Australia lead because nearly every purchase there already runs over a card or a transfer rail, so each extra point is a refinement of habit. The interesting rows are Brazil, at 105.1 and ahead of the United States, and Belgium, at 86.0 with the second-lowest wallet-use reading in the table (14.5%). The BIS brief credits card payments for cashless growth in advanced economies and credit transfers, helped by fast payments, in emerging ones; Belgium shows frequency can be high without a phone wallet doing the work.
Who Is Adding Cashless Payments Fastest?
India, Brazil and China, by a wide margin. Across the 23 jurisdictions, cashless payments rose from 1,129.9 billion in 2022 to 1,502.6 billion in 2024, an increase of 372.7 billion. Axis Intelligence Research calculates that China supplied 30.7% of that increase, India 27.9% and Brazil 15.7%, together 74.4%. The United States supplied 5.8%.
| Jurisdiction | 2022 (billions) | 2024 (billions) | Growth per year | Payments added (billions) | Share of the 23-jurisdiction increase | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | 104.1 | 208.2 | 41.4% | 104.1 | 27.9% | BIS; Axis calculation |
| Brazil | 85.3 | 144.0 | 29.9% | 58.7 | 15.7% | BIS; Axis calculation |
| China | 451.6 | 565.9 | 11.9% | 114.3 | 30.7% | BIS; Axis calculation |
| Argentina | 6.3 | 12.4 | 40.4% | 6.1 | 1.6% | BIS; Axis calculation |
| Turkiye | 15.1 | 23.7 | 25.2% | 8.6 | 2.3% | BIS; Axis calculation |
| Mexico | 10.9 | 16.5 | 23.1% | 5.6 | 1.5% | BIS; Axis calculation |
| Saudi Arabia | 8.1 | 11.6 | 19.4% | 3.5 | 0.9% | BIS; Axis calculation |
| Indonesia | 8.7 | 12.3 | 18.6% | 3.5 | 1.0% | BIS; Axis calculation |
India’s count rose 2.00 times in two years, from 104.1 billion to 208.2 billion, which leaves it at 94.8% of the US total of 219.7 billion. Per resident it is still at an ECFI of 22.2, which is the other half of the story: India’s volume is large because its population is, and the habit per person has room to build. South Africa’s reported count fell 8.9% from 2023 to 2024 (11.3 billion to 10.3 billion), a decline the BIS series shows without explanation.
How Many People Pay Digitally Worldwide?
Most adults hold an account, and a smaller share use one digitally. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 puts account ownership at 79% of adults worldwide in 2024, up from 74% in 2021 and 51% in 2011, with 1.3 billion adults still without an account. In low- and middle-income economies, 61% of adults made or received a digital payment in 2024, which is 82% of account owners and 27 percentage points more than in 2014, per the World Bank’s Findex release. Digital merchant payments reached 42% of adults in 2024, per the same release.
Mobile money carries much of that growth in Africa and Latin America. In 2024, 40% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account (27% in 2021) and 37% in Latin America and the Caribbean (22% in 2021).
How Big Is Mobile Money?
The GSMA’s 2026 industry report puts mobile money at $2.1 trillion of transaction value in 2025, across 2.3 billion registered accounts of which 593 million were active in the previous 30 days, a 30-day activity rate of 25.7%. Merchant payments were $155 billion, which Axis Intelligence Research calculates as 7.4% of the total value, a small slice of what mobile money carries.
Why Do Account Owners Not Always Have a Digital Account?
Because holding an account and being able to pay by card or phone are different things. Axis Intelligence Research divides the Findex share of adults with a digitally enabled account by the share with any account to get an activation ratio. Findex defines a digitally enabled account as a mobile money account, or an account that can be used to make or receive payments by card or phone, and reports it for developing economies only.
| Economy | Adults with any account | Adults with a digitally enabled account | Activation ratio | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kenya | 90.1% | 89.4% | 99.2% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| China | 89.4% | 83.2% | 93.1% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| Brazil | 86.4% | 70.8% | 82.0% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| Thailand | 91.8% | 69.2% | 75.4% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| Nigeria | 63.3% | 53.1% | 84.0% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| Indonesia | 56.3% | 37.4% | 66.4% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| Egypt | 43.1% | 28.2% | 65.5% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| Mexico | 53.0% | 34.4% | 64.9% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| Philippines | 50.2% | 32.7% | 65.2% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
| India | 89.0% | 31.1% | 34.9% | World Bank Findex 2025; Axis calculation |
Kenya converts 99.2% of accounts into digitally enabled ones and China 93.1%. India converts 34.9%: 89.0% of Indian adults hold an account, 31.1% a digitally enabled one. That sits awkwardly beside the BIS series, which shows India’s cashless payments doubling in two years. Axis does not merge the two. Findex counts adults who can pay by card or phone; BIS counts payments per resident. One possible reconciliation is that use is concentrated in a minority of heavy users, but neither source tests it. The two measures answer different questions, and an analyst quoting one should not imply the other.
Is Cash Disappearing? Cash Share of Payments by Country
Yes, but at different speeds and on different bases, which is why one global “cash share” figure does not exist. Each source below measures something slightly different, so the table states the basis next to the number.
| Jurisdiction | What is measured | Cash share | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Euro area (18 countries) | Shop (point-of-sale) transactions, by number | 52% | 2024 | ECB SPACE 2024 |
| Euro area (18 countries) | Shop (point-of-sale) transactions, by value | 39% | 2024 | ECB SPACE 2024 |
| United States | All consumer payments, by number | 13.7% (6.48 of 47.3 a month) | 2025 | Federal Reserve Diary of Consumer Payment Choice |
| United States | In-person payments | about 20% | 2025 | Federal Reserve Diary of Consumer Payment Choice |
| United Kingdom | All payments | 8% (3.9 billion) | 2025 | UK Finance |
| Sweden | Last in-store purchase | 5% | 2025 | Sveriges Riksbank |
| Philippines | Point-of-sale spending | 42% | 2025 | Worldpay GPR 2026 (company-reported estimate) |
| Japan | Point-of-sale value | 38% | 2025 | Worldpay GPR 2026 (company-reported estimate) |
| Indonesia | Point-of-sale value | 36% | 2025 | Worldpay GPR 2026 (company-reported estimate) |
| Vietnam | Point-of-sale value | 33% | 2025 | Worldpay GPR 2026 (company-reported estimate) |
| Hong Kong / South Korea | Point-of-sale value | 6% / 6% | 2025 | Worldpay GPR 2026 (company-reported estimate) |
| China | Point-of-sale value | 4% | 2025 | Worldpay GPR 2026 (company-reported estimate) |
How Fast Is Cash Falling in the Euro Area?
The ECB’s SPACE study, published on December 19, 2024, shows cash at 52% of euro-area shop transactions by number in 2024, down from 59% in 2022, 72% in 2019 and 79% in 2016. By value cash was 39%, down from 42% in 2022. Cards took 39% of transactions by number (34% in 2022) and mobile devices 6%, almost double the 2022 share.
Axis Intelligence Research converts those waves into a pace. Cash lost 2.33 percentage points a year from 2016 to 2019, 4.33 from 2019 to 2022 and 3.50 from 2022 to 2024. By value, the 2022–2024 pace was 1.50 points a year. Axis Intelligence Research estimates that if the 2022–2024 pace holds for another two years, cash would read about 45% by number. That is arithmetic, not an ECB forecast, and the next SPACE release will show whether the line held.
Cash also pays smaller tickets. Its share by value (39%) is 0.75 of its share by number (52%), so the average cash payment at a euro-area shop is smaller than the average payment overall.
How Much of US Spending Is Still Cash?
About one payment in seven. The Federal Reserve’s 2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice records 47.3 payments per consumer a month in 2025: 16.14 on credit cards, 14.70 on debit cards and 6.48 in cash. Cash was about 20% of in-person payments, and 76% of consumers carried cash. In a separate Pew Research Center survey published on September 30, 2026, 42% of US adults used no cash in a typical week (24% in 2015) and 12% used it for all or almost all purchases (24% in 2015).
Ticket size explains why cash survives in surveys and vanishes in revenue. Pew, reporting Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta data, puts the average cash purchase at $58 and the average mobile payment app purchase at $98, with credit cards at $80 and debit cards at $74 in 2025.
Where Is Cash Lowest: The UK and Sweden?
Both are close to the floor on their own measures. UK Finance’s Payment Markets 2026 summary puts cash at 8% of UK payments in 2025, from 17% in 2020 and 45% in 2015, a loss of 37 percentage points in ten years. Cash payments fell from 4.3 billion in 2024 to 3.9 billion in 2025, down 9.3%, and UK Finance forecasts about 2.1 billion, roughly 4% of payments, by 2035.
The Riksbank’s 2026 Payments Report found that 5% of Swedes’ last in-store purchases in a September 2025 survey were in cash (10% in 2023). Debit cards were 61% of last purchases, mobile card services 18% (9% in 2023) and Swish 2%.
Which Markets Still Run on Cash?
The Philippines, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam. Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2026 puts cash at 42% of Philippine point-of-sale spending in 2025, the highest rate in its report, with Japan at 38%, Indonesia at 36% and Vietnam at 33%. Indonesia’s cash share was 77% in 2019, so it has more than halved in six years. Worldpay puts cash at 14% of global point-of-sale value in 2025, forecast to fall to 12% by 2030, and at 2% of e-commerce value. At the other end, China is at 4%, and Hong Kong and South Korea at 6%.
How Many People Use Mobile Wallets?
About 24% of internet users worldwide use a mobile payment service such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay each month, and the reading has stayed flat. GWI’s survey puts it at 23.9% in Q2 2026, the same as in Q2 2024, with nine quarterly readings between 23.2% and 24.3%. By country, Taiwan (42.7%), Ireland (41.6%), Singapore (40.4%), Denmark (40.0%) and Saudi Arabia (39.8%) lead the GWI chart; Türkiye (12.9%), Nigeria (11.9%) and Morocco (8.1%) are among the lowest.
That survey item names wallet apps, and the payments data shows why it should not be read as “digital payment use”. Axis Intelligence Research correlated the ECFI with the GWI wallet reading across the 23 jurisdictions in the table above and finds r = 0.56, so wallet use explains 32% of the variation in how often residents make cashless payments. The other two-thirds comes from rails, cards and transfers that the item does not ask about.
| Jurisdiction | ECFI | Wallet use (GWI, Q2 2026) | What the gap says | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Korea | 133.0 | 25.1% | Highest frequency, wallet reach near the world average (23.9%) | BIS; GWI; Axis calculation |
| Belgium | 86.0 | 14.5% | Frequent cashless payments, wallet reach among the lowest | BIS; GWI; Axis calculation |
| China | 62.1 | 23.8% | Mid-table frequency, wallet reach at the world average (23.9%) | BIS; GWI; Axis calculation |
| India | 22.2 | 23.5% | Wallet reach at the world average, frequency far below | BIS; GWI; Axis calculation |
| Saudi Arabia | 50.8 | 39.8% | Wallet reach well ahead of payment frequency | BIS; GWI; Axis calculation |
| Singapore | 126.9 | 40.4% | High on both | BIS; GWI; Axis calculation |
Measured by value rather than users, wallets are bigger. Worldpay puts wallets at 56% of global e-commerce value and 33% of in-store value in 2025, against 40% and 17% in the United States, and forecasts 63% and 42% by 2030. In its report, wallets reach 89% of e-commerce value in China and 68% in India. In the UK, 58% of adults used mobile payments at least once a month in 2025, and 37.6 million consumers were registered for a mobile wallet. In Sweden, 34% had used a card service in a mobile phone in the previous 30 days, against 3% in 2018.
Sarah Davis, Digital Finance: Reading a wallet survey as a payments census is the commonest error in this field. A question that gives Apple Pay and Samsung Pay as examples counts Apple Pay and Samsung Pay users. It cannot see a QR code scanned in a bank app or an account-to-account transfer. Quote the wallet number as wallet reach, and keep payment frequency for the BIS series.
What Does the Average Payment Look Like by Rail?
Cards win on count and transfers win on value. The Federal Reserve Payments Study counted 236.6 billion US noncash payments worth $140.01 trillion in 2024, an average of $592. Cards were 187.7 billion of them (79.3% by number) but $11.50 trillion (8.2% by value). ACH was 39.7 billion payments (16.8% by number) but $104.06 trillion (74.3% by value).
| US rail, 2024 | Payments (billions) | Value ($ trillions) | Average payment | Growth in number, 2021–2024 (per year) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debit cards | 120.6 | 4.99 | $41 | 4.1% | Federal Reserve Payments Study |
| Credit cards | 67.1 | 6.51 | $97 | 9.6% | Federal Reserve Payments Study |
| Prepaid cards | 21.3 | 0.65 | $31 | 4.0% | Federal Reserve Payments Study |
| ACH | 39.7 | 104.06 | $2,622 | 3.3% | Federal Reserve Payments Study |
| Checks | 9.2 | 24.45 | $2,653 | −5.9% | Federal Reserve Payments Study |
The BIS and the Federal Reserve do not report the same US total. The BIS series counts 219.7 billion cashless US payments in 2024; the Federal Reserve Payments Study counts 236.6 billion. Axis Intelligence Research attributes the 16.9 billion gap (7.1% of the Fed figure) to scope: the BIS note says its US total excludes card-with-delayed-debit and other payment instruments. That is why this page uses the BIS total only for cross-country comparison and the Federal Reserve figures for US rail detail.
How Does Payment Size Differ Between Digital and Non-Digital Payments?
In the Philippines, the digital payment is the smaller one. Using the central bank’s 2025 totals, Axis Intelligence Research calculates an average digital payment of $31.77 ($125,069.36 million over 3,936.86 million transactions) against $50.96 for everything else ($109,500.74 million over 2,148.63 million transactions). That is why digital’s share of volume (64.69%) runs ahead of its share of value (53.32%).
How Digital Are Payments in the Philippines?
Nearly two-thirds of retail payments by number, just over half by value. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reports digital payments at 64.69% of retail payment volume in 2025, up from 57.45% in 2024, a gain of 7.24 percentage points. By value the share fell from 58.98% to 53.32%, a drop of 5.66 points. In a typical month of 2025 the Philippines recorded 6,085.49 million retail payments, 3,936.86 million of them digital (BSP reports monthly figures, not annual totals).
By payer type, digital was 74.91% of person-to-anyone payments, 98.92% of government-to-anyone payments and 18.75% of business-to-anyone payments by volume. By value the picture flips: business-to-anyone payments are $135.6 billion of the $234.6 billion monthly total (57.8%, an Axis Intelligence Research calculation) and only 34.16% of them are digital, so the weak spot in Philippine digitalisation is supplier and payroll money, not consumer taps. The Philippines is also the market where Worldpay finds the highest cash share at the point of sale (42%), and where the World Bank’s Findex shows 50.2% of adults with any account in 2024 and 32.7% with a digitally enabled one, an activation ratio of 65.2%.
Sarah Davis, Digital Finance: The share-of-volume headline and the share-of-value headline are both correct, and they point in opposite directions. Small payments went digital; the larger ones did not follow. If the value share is to catch up with the volume share, the business-to-anyone segment, at 18.75% digital by volume, is where the gap sits.
How Much Do Scams Cost Digital Payment Users?
US consumers reported losing $15.9 billion to fraud in 2025, from 3.0 million reports, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s testimony of March 25, 2026. Investment scams accounted for $7.9 billion and imposter scams for more than $3.5 billion. The FTC release gives 2.6 million reports and “over $12 billion” for 2024. For fraud by type and country, see the online fraud statistics page.
What Changes for Digital Payments in 2027?
The measured decline in cash continues in every series that has a forecast, and the next readings are dated:
- Euro area: the next SPACE wave should show whether cash is near the 45% that two more years at the 2022–2024 pace would imply (an Axis Intelligence Research estimate, not an ECB forecast).
- United Kingdom: UK Finance forecasts cash at about 2.1 billion payments (roughly 4%) and Faster Payments at 8.4 billion by 2035, a forecast it calls conservative.
- Wallets: Worldpay forecasts wallets at 63% of e-commerce value and 42% of in-store value by 2030, and payment apps at 46% ($15.6 trillion) of point-of-sale value.
- Cross-country comparison: the BIS published its 2024 data in a CPMI Brief on April 27, 2026; a 2025 reading would let this page’s ECFI show a second year.
For the rails behind these shifts, see real-time payments statistics and instant payments statistics; for the credit side of checkout, buy now, pay later statistics; for where payments meet shopping, mobile commerce statistics. Readers comparing banking access with payment habits can use online banking adoption by country and digital banking statistics. Card-network detail sits in Visa vs Mastercard statistics and credit card vs debit card statistics.
Methodology
Axis Intelligence Research assembled this page from official and company-reported releases fetched on November 11, 2026, and recorded each figure with its source, as-of date and retrieval date in the accompanying CSV. Cross-country frequency comes from the BIS Red Book statistics (CPMI cashless payments, total volume), retrieved through the BIS data portal API for 2022–2024, divided by World Bank population for 2024. The 23 jurisdictions are those with a numeric BIS total for all three years; the Netherlands has no BIS value in that window and Russia’s latest numeric value in the retrieval is 2020.
ECFI = (cashless payments in the year ÷ population) ÷ (US cashless payments in the year ÷ US population) × 100. Growth is (2024 ÷ 2022)^(1/2) − 1. The share of increase is each jurisdiction’s 2024 minus 2022 count over the sum of that difference for all 23. The wallet correlation is a Pearson coefficient across the same 23 jurisdictions, using the GWI Q2 2026 share of internet users aged 16+ who use mobile payment services each month. The activation ratio is the Findex digitally enabled account share divided by the account ownership share, both for 2024. Philippine average payments divide BSP value totals by transaction totals.
BIS publishes totals as reported by central banks, and instrument coverage differs by jurisdiction; the US note above is one example. Indonesia (43.2 payments per resident) and Japan (167.8) are the readings most likely to reflect reporting scope as much as behaviour, and the Worldpay cash shares for both countries (36% and 38%) point the same way as the low readings. Worldpay figures are company-reported estimates; GWI is a survey of internet users, and GWI removed Russia from its series from Q1 2026, so worldwide values are not comparable with earlier releases. Estimates are labelled as estimates in the text.
About This Dataset
The dataset behind this page, Digital Payments Statistics 2027: cashless payment frequency, cash share, wallet use and account activation, 2015–2026, has one row per observation with source organisation, document, URL, retrieval date, a primary-source flag and, for Axis calculations, the formula. It is released under CC BY 4.0 by Axis Intelligence Research: download the CSV. It is updated when new BIS, ECB, Federal Reserve, UK Finance, Findex or BSP releases change a figure, not on a fixed calendar.
Cite This Page
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026, November 11). Digital payments statistics 2027: Usage by country, the cash decline and the Everyday Cashless Frequency Index (ECFI). Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/digital-payments-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Digital Payments Statistics 2027: Usage by Country, the Cash Decline and the Everyday Cashless Frequency Index (ECFI).” Axis Intelligence, 11 Nov. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/digital-payments-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Digital Payments Statistics 2027: Usage by Country, the Cash Decline and the Everyday Cashless Frequency Index (ECFI).” Axis Intelligence, November 11, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/digital-payments-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which country makes the most digital payments per person?
South Korea. BIS data for 2024 give 859.7 cashless payments per resident a year (2.36 a day), ahead of Singapore (820.5) and Australia (769.9) among 23 jurisdictions. Axis Intelligence Research’s ECFI puts South Korea at 133.0 against the United States at 100.0.
Why does Brazil record more cashless payments per resident than the United States?
BIS data show 679.0 for Brazil and 646.3 for the United States in 2024. Brazil’s count rose 29.9% a year from 85.3 billion in 2022 to 144.0 billion in 2024. The BIS brief says fast payments are a key driver of credit-transfer growth in emerging markets, and the brief puts Brazil’s fast-payment use at 298 per capita in 2024, ahead of Korea (189) and Argentina (149), which accounts for close to half of Brazil’s 679.0 cashless payments per resident (an Axis Intelligence Research ratio of 298 to 679.0). The series Axis used does not split Brazil’s growth by rail.
What share of payments is still cash?
It depends on the measure. Cash is 52% of euro-area shop transactions by number (ECB, 2024), about 14% of US payments (Federal Reserve, 2025), 8% of UK payments (UK Finance, 2025) and 5% of Swedish last in-store purchases (Riksbank, 2025). Worldpay puts cash at 42% of Philippine point-of-sale spending.
Do most adults in developing economies pay digitally?
Yes, on the World Bank’s 2024 data. In low- and middle-income economies, 61% of adults made or received a digital payment, which is 82% of account owners. Globally, 79% of adults have an account and 1.3 billion do not.
Why do wallet surveys show only 24% of people paying by phone?
Because the survey item counts wallet apps. GWI’s Q2 2026 figure of 23.9% of internet users covers services such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Across 23 jurisdictions, Axis Intelligence Research finds that wallet use explains 32% of payment-frequency variation (r = 0.56).
How digital are payments in the Philippines?
BSP reports digital payments at 64.69% of retail payments by volume and 53.32% by value in 2025 (monthly basis). The share by volume rose 7.24 points from 2024; the share by value fell 5.66 points. The average digital payment is $31.77 against $50.96 for non-digital payments, an Axis Intelligence Research calculation from BSP monthly totals. Business-to-business supplier payments are 27.65% digital by value.
How many payments does an American make in cash each month?
6.48 of 47.3, or about 14%. The Federal Reserve’s 2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice records 16.14 credit card and 14.70 debit card payments a month for 2025. Pew finds 42% of US adults used no cash in a typical week.
What will the next data releases show?
The euro area’s next SPACE wave tests an Axis Intelligence Research estimate of cash near 45% of shop transactions by number. A BIS release covering 2025 would give the ECFI a second reading. UK Finance forecasts cash at about 4% of UK payments by 2035.