Online and mobile banking payments reached fresh record highs in the second quarter, outnumbering direct debit payments for the first time, while contactless payments also continued to surge, according to new figures from Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI).
The volume of digital banking payments grew 11.7 per cent year-on-year to 36 million payments in the April-June period, with this figure the highest quarterly level of online and mobile payments since the industry body began tracking the data in 2016.
Quarterly contactless payment volumes rose 34.7 per cent year-on-year to 268.5 million, or 3 million payments per day, in the quarter. The value of these contactless payments increased 40 per cent to more than €4.5 billion, or a sum of €49 million per day. This is the highest daily contactless spend in any quarter to date.
The BPFI’s latest report also shows that cheque volumes fell 2.6 per cent year-on-year to 4.8 million, which is about half the volume seen in the second half of 2018.
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BPFI head of payments Gillian Byrne said this was the first time that digital banking payments outnumbered direct debit payments, which stood at 34.9 million in volume for the quarter.
“The report also shows that the average contactless payment value increased to €16.61, from €15.96 a year earlier,” she said.
“Combining Central Bank of Ireland and BPFI figures, it has become clear that contactless is increasing its penetration of card payments. Some 57.3 per cent of card payment volumes were contactless in Q2 2022, the highest proportion on record and up from 51.3 per cent a year earlier. Similarly, some 39.2 per cent of the value of payments at physical points of sale were contactless, up from 35.4 per cent Q2 2021.”
