Cash’s share of US consumer payments fell to 14% in 2024, down from 31% in 2016, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, built on October 2024 data from the Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Boston. Credit cards climbed to a record 35% share the same year, up from just 18% in 2016, while debit held near 30%. This is not a story of cash vanishing overnight. It is a decade-long shift that appears to be settling at a floor: cash payments have stayed flat at about seven per month since 2021, even as the total number of payments consumers make keeps climbing.
How much has cash’s share of payments actually fallen?
Cash has lost more than half its share of US consumer payments since 2016, sliding from 31% to 14% over eight years of Federal Reserve diary data. The decline was not a straight line. It dropped sharply during the pandemic, from 26% in 2019 to 19% in 2020, then kept sliding through the post-pandemic years to 18% in 2022, 16% in 2023, and 14% in 2024.
Figure 1: Cash’s declining share of all US consumer payments. Source: Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Boston, 2025 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.
The number of cash payments consumers make each month tells a steadier story than the share does. Consumers made 14 cash payments a month in 2016 and have made seven a month every year since 2021. The share keeps falling mainly because total monthly payments jumped from 39 in 2022 to 48 in 2024, almost entirely through added credit and debit card use, not because people are physically handing over less cash than they did a few years ago.
What is replacing cash at checkout?
Credit cards are doing most of the replacing. Their share of US payments nearly doubled between 2016 and 2024, and the number of credit card payments consumers make each month more than doubled too, from 8 to 17. Debit cards grew more modestly, from 27% to 30% of payments, while automated clearing house transfers, mostly bill payments, held around 13%.
Digital wallets and payment apps are adding a second layer on top of card growth rather than reviving cash. PayPal alone processed $1.79 trillion in payment volume during 2025, and mobile phone payments in the Diary data climbed to 23% of all US payments in 2024, up from a much smaller share in 2016. Adults aged 18 to 24 lean hardest on this shift, using their phones for 45% of all their payments, more than double the reliance shown by any other age group.
Preference data helps explain why the decline keeps compounding. In 2024, only 17% of consumers said they preferred cash for in-person payments, down from 27% in 2016, while 78% preferred a credit or debit card. Consumers mostly pay with their preferred instrument, so as fewer people prefer cash, fewer cash payments get made in the first place.
What does the full 2024 US payment mix look like?
Credit and debit cards together accounted for 65% of every payment US consumers made in 2024, more than four times cash’s 14% share. Checks, once a checkout staple, fell to just 3%.
Figure 2: Share of all US consumer payments by instrument, 2024. Source: Federal Reserve, 2025 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.
Info
Cash is used more often as a backup than a first choice. The same Federal Reserve data found that 66% of actual cash payments in 2024 were made by people who said they preferred a card, not cash. Only 34% of cash payments came from consumers who genuinely prefer paying with cash.
Cash has not disappeared from checkout counters. Small purchases still lean on it more than any other category: 70% of all cash payments in 2024 were for less than $25, and consumers made about as many small-value cash payments as small-value credit or debit payments that month. Small purchases are also where a mobile wallet increasingly competes with cash rather than a card, since tap-to-pay removes the friction that used to make cash the fastest option at the register.
Do younger and older shoppers use cash differently?
Age is one of the strongest predictors of who still reaches for cash. Adults 55 and older used cash for 19% of their payments in 2024, compared with 14% among adults 25 to 54 and just 10% among adults 18 to 24.
Figure 3: Cash’s share of payments by age cohort, 2024. Source: Federal Reserve, 2025 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.
Income shapes the same gap. Consumers in households earning less than $25,000 a year used cash for 24% of their payments in 2024, more than twice the rate reported by consumers earning over $100,000. The Federal Reserve researchers describe this pattern as consistent across every year of the Diary study: cash use concentrates among older and lower-income consumers, which is exactly the population a business risks excluding if it drops cash entirely.
That concentration also shows up in how much cash people carry. Consumers held an average of $67 in cash on their person in 2024, down from $74 in 2023, and kept another $306 in cash elsewhere as a backup or store of value, down from $369 the year before. Close to 80% of consumers carried some cash on their person on at least one day during the study period, a share that has held steady since 2018 even as the payments themselves shifted to cards.
Are businesses legally required to accept cash?
In most of the United States, no. Federal law does not require any private business to accept cash, and the choice is left to individual retailers unless a state or city says otherwise. Massachusetts has required cash acceptance since 1978, and New Jersey followed in 2019 under P.L. 2019, c.050, which states that a retailer “shall not require a buyer to pay using credit or prohibit cash as payment.” A handful of other cities have passed narrower versions of the same rule aimed at restaurants and retail stores.
Figure 4: The legal test for whether a US business must accept cash. Source: Massachusetts G.L. c. 255D; New Jersey P.L. 2019, c.050.
Even where cash acceptance is not legally required, refusing it carries a real business cost. The Federal Reserve data above shows 14% of payments and a disproportionate share of lower-income and older customers still transact in cash, so a cash-free policy quietly turns away a specific, identifiable slice of paying customers. Whatever payment methods a store decides to accept, a Refund Policy Generator makes it straightforward to spell out how refunds get returned, including the common rule that a cash purchase gets refunded in cash rather than store credit or a card that was never used.
Is cash disappearing outside the US too?
Cash is declining across other developed economies too, just from a much higher starting point. In the euro area, cash covered 52% of point-of-sale transactions in 2024, down from 59% in 2022, according to the European Central Bank’s SPACE 2024 study. That means cash still handles the majority of in-person spending across the euro area even as its own share keeps falling.
Figure 5: Cash’s share of point-of-sale payments, euro area versus US consumer payments overall. Sources: ECB SPACE 2024 study; Federal Reserve 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.
The gap is not uniform across Europe either. Slovenia, Malta, Austria, and Italy all still see cash used in more than 60% of transactions, while Finland and the Netherlands have fallen below 30%, closer to the US figure. Fourteen of the 20 euro area countries surveyed still report cash as their most frequently used payment method at the point of sale, even as 62% of euro area consumers, up from 60% in 2022, say it is important to keep cash available as an option.
Which purchases still get paid in cash, and where is this heading?
Cash holds on hardest at cash-intensive retailers and for the smallest purchases. Consumers made an average of six monthly cash payments at grocery stores, convenience stores, and restaurants combined in 2017; by 2024 that had fallen to three, even as total payments at those same retailers rose. Gas stations and general merchandise stores show the same pattern, with cash payments dropping from three a month to one over the same period, while card and mobile payments filled the gap.
Figure 6: Key milestones in the decline of cash’s payment share. Sources: Federal Reserve Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, 2016-2025 reports; New Jersey P.L. 2019, c.050.
Warning
Treat any specific forecast for cash’s share past 2024 with caution. The Federal Reserve’s own researchers describe the current seven-payments-a-month cash floor as consistent since 2021, but they stop short of projecting a future percentage, and we could not find a comparably rigorous, named forecast for where cash’s US share lands by 2030. The safest reading of the data is a continued gradual decline in share, not a specific end date for cash.
How does cash use compare across groups and countries?
| Group | Cash share of payments | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| All US consumers | 14% | 2024 | Federal Reserve Diary of Consumer Payment Choice |
| US adults 55 and older | 19% | 2024 | Federal Reserve Diary of Consumer Payment Choice |
| US adults 18 to 24 | 10% | 2024 | Federal Reserve Diary of Consumer Payment Choice |
| Euro area, all consumers | 52% | 2024 | ECB SPACE 2024 study |
| Instrument | 2016 share | 2024 share | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash | 31% | 14% | -17 points |
| Credit card | 18% | 35% | +17 points |
| Debit card | 27% | 30% | +3 points |
The Bottom Line
Cash has gone from the single most common way US consumers paid in 2016 to the third-most-used instrument in 2024, trailing both credit and debit cards by a wide margin. The decline looks less like cash disappearing and more like cash settling into a specific, durable role: small purchases, certain retailers, and a customer base skewed older and lower-income. That role is not going away in 2026, and two states already make it illegal to refuse cash outright. Any business rethinking how it accepts payments should plan its refund and payment policy around the instrument mix it actually sees at checkout, not the instrument mix headlines suggest is coming.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of payments are still made with cash? Cash accounted for 14% of all US consumer payments in 2024, down from 31% in 2016, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, based on October 2024 data.
Are businesses required to accept cash? No federal law requires it, but Massachusetts (since 1978) and New Jersey (P.L. 2019, c.050, effective 2019) both mandate that retailers accept cash, and several cities have passed similar local ordinances.
Is cash disappearing faster in the US than in Europe? Yes. Cash covered just 14% of US consumer payments in 2024, versus 52% of point-of-sale transactions in the euro area the same year, according to the European Central Bank’s SPACE 2024 study, though both shares are declining.
Which age group still uses cash the most? Adults 55 and older used cash for 19% of their payments in 2024, compared with 14% for ages 25 to 54 and 10% for ages 18 to 24, per the Federal Reserve’s Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.
Sources and References
- Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Boston, Federal Reserve Financial Services. (2025). “2025 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.” October 2024 diary data.
- Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Boston, Federal Reserve Financial Services. (2024). “2024 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.” October 2023 diary data.
- European Central Bank. (2024). “Digital payments continue to rise, albeit at a slower pace; cash remains significant.” SPACE 2024 study press release.
- New Jersey State Legislature. (2019). P.L. 2019, c.050 (Assembly Bill A591), cash payment acceptance requirement.
- PayPal Holdings. (2026). Q4 and full-year 2025 earnings release, cited via our own PayPal payment data coverage.
Note: All figures verified as of August 2026. Payment behavior shifts with each year’s holiday season and new Diary release, so headline figures here are refreshed at least twice a year.
