U.S. Cashless Statistics (2024): Is America Going Cashless?

Highlights. 47.8% of American adults make no cash purchases in a typical week.

An estimated 69% of Americans used cash for few (if any) purchases over the last 12 months.
In a year, the share of cashless American consumers grows 13.1%.
63.9% of Americans expect a cashless future; among them, 44.3% believe a cashless society is very likely.
Globally, point-of-sale transactions are 85% cashless in 2024; trends indicate that 90% of POS transactions will be cashless by 2028.

Bar Graph: Share of Cashless American Consumers, i.e. share of Amerians who use no cash in a typical week, including the years 2015 (24%) to 2022 (41%) with estimates and projections from 2023 (44%) and 2025 (52%) according to Insider Intelligence/eMarketer

Cashless Consumer Statistics

By 2025, 51.6% of American consumers will use no cash in a typical week according to recent trends.

An estimated 13.4% of American consumers will not use any cash at all in 2024.
In 2022, 11.0% of American consumers did not use any cash at all.
The share of American adults using little to no cash on a weekly basis grew an estimated 16.6% between 2022 and 2024 for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.96%.
As of 2022, 73% of Americans made less than half of their purchases in cash.
From 2016 to 2022, the share of Americans using cash for less than half of their purchases increased 55.3% (CAGR 7.61%).
28.3% of all American consumers in 2024 believe a future cashless society is very likely.
The share of Americans who say a cashless society is more likely than not increased 3.06% between 2016 and 2024.
Those who say a cashless society is very likely, however, represent a shrinking share of consumers (down 5.67% from 2016).

Bar Graph: Cashless Share of Global POS Payments, where POS is point-of-sale, fro 2018 (73%) to 2023 (84%) according to the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) with estimates/projections from 2024 (85%) to 2028 (90%)

Cashless Consumer Demographics

Data indicate that consumers under 45 and those with higher household incomes are significantly less likely to use cash.

Consumers aged 35 to 44 years will use cash in 9.80% of payments in 2024.
35- to 44-year-olds are 1.71% less likely to use cash than consumers aged 18 to 24.
Consumers aged 18 to 24 years will use cash to make 9.97% of their purchases in 2024.
25- to 34-year-olds are the most likely to use credit cards; it is the primary payment method among 35% of this age group.
Consumers with annual household incomes exceeding $150K use cashless payment methods most often (90% of the time; they use cash for ≤1% of bill payments).
Households with annual incomes between $50K and $100K make cashless payments 85% of the time (they use cash for less than 5% of bill payments).
Low-income households (with less than $25K annual income) use cashless payments for 68% of purchases.

Grouped Bar Graph: Share of Cashless Purchases by Select Age Group from the years 2017 and 2020 according to the U.S. Federal Reserve wtih estimates for 2023

Cashless Payment Statistics

Cashless payment options continue to grow in popularity in the U.S. and worldwide.

An estimated 85.0% of worldwide POS transactions are cashless as of 2024.
In the U.S., an estimated 86.9% of all transactions are cashless in 2024.
Projections indicate that by 2027, 94.1% of payments in the U.S. and 89.0% of global POS transactions will be cashless.
From 2018 to 2023, the share of cashless POS transactions worldwide increased 15.1% (CAGR 2.85%).
In 2018, 74% of U.S. payments and 73% of global POS transactions were cashless.

Bar Graph: Global Value of Cash POS Payments in billions from 2018 ($11.6) to 2023 ($6.00) according Worldpay with estimates from 2024 ($5.72) to 2027 ($4.60)

Credit Card Statistics

Credit cards are the most popular form of payment among most American consumers.

81% of U.S. shoppers prefer to pay with cards over cash.
Consumers are twice as likely to use credit cards rather than cash for any given transaction.
Consumers with annual household incomes exceeding $150,000 use credit cards for 50% of all payments; among these, 48% are bill payments.

100% Stacked Bar Graph: Primary Payment Methods by Age Group according to the share of the age group most likely to use each payment method in 2022 according to the U.S. Federal Reserve

Digital Cashless Statistics

Some mobile payment apps function similarly to credit or debit cards, and some digital wallets may support traditional credit cards.

Data indicate there may be over 5.2 billion digital wallet users worldwide in 2026.
Similar projections place the 2026 global value of digital wallet transactions at $12 trillion.
Apple Pay is the #1 most popular digital wallet accounting for 92% of mobile wallet debit transactions.
PayPal is the #1 most popular online payment processor, and 94% of users are smartphone owners.

Pie Chart: Global POS Payments Distribution 2023 according to Worldpay

Cashless Accessibility Statistics

Access to cash may be in decline based on trends of the early 2020s.

There are approximately 450,000 ATMs in the U.S. as of 2024.
The number of ATMs in the U.S. declined 3.83% between 2019 and 2022.
An estimated 13.3% of banked households will use ATMs at least once in 2024.
Between 2017 and 2022, the share of banked households using ATMs declined 21.8% (CAGR -4.80%).
An estimated 16.9 million American households will make use of ATMs or bank kiosks in 2024.
The number of households using ATMs declined by over 60 million between 2017 and 2024.

Unbanked Consumer Statistics

Cash is still critical to some, such as the estimated 5.2 million “unbanked” U.S. households (i.e., those without active bank accounts).

Approximately 3.96% of U.S. households are unbanked as of 2024.
The share of unbanked households in the U.S. declines at an annual rate of 4.18%.
Between 2009 and 2022, the share of American households without bank accounts declined 43.3% (CAGR -4.27%).
Unbanked Americans accounted for 8.2% of households in 2011.

Pie Chart: Global POS Payments Distribution Projections for 2027 according to Worldpay

Cash User Statistics

Some consumers still use cash for most or all of their purchases, but the number declines 14.3% annually.

3.5% of American consumers will use cash for all of their purchases in 2024.
A total of 19.2% of American consumers will use cash for at least half of their purchases.
Cash-only consumers represent 18.2% of those who will use cash for at least half of all purchases.
The share of American consumers using only cash declined 30.0% from 2022 to 2024.
From 2016 to 2022, the share of American consumers using only cash declined 58.3% (CAGR 13.6%).

Cashless Statistics