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Survey: How Americans pay each other

October 17, 2013

Financial services tech provider Fiserv Inc. has released the results of its 2013 "How Americans Pay Each Other" national survey. No surprise to ATM operators: Personal payments are typically made by cash or check.

The survey of more than 2,500 Americans was conducted in order to evaluate how people are making person-to-person payments (or "social payments "), and to whom.

Among the findings:

• though P2P payments are typically made using cash and checks, the majority of respondents are interested in a digital payment option from their bank;
• people most often gave or sent money to friends and family members — to whom and how money is sent varies by age and gender;
• splitting bill payments is the norm among U.S. households — typically one person pays the bills and others reimburse them for their portion of the costs;
• people are uncomfortable asking for money owed to them — so much so that nearly 50 percent have foregone payment rather than asking to be paid.

Survey findings indicate that, overall, digital payments have hit a critical mass, with 60 percent of respondents making a payment at least once a month using a laptop or desktop computer. Thirty percent have made a payment via their mobile phone and 22 percent via their tablet.

According to the survey, 88 percent of U.S. consumers have sent money to another person in the last 12 months. Among those, 56 percent used cash, 41 percent used a check and 31 percent used an online method such as a bank-based person-to-person payment service or PayPal.

The single most common way to exchange funds was giving someone cash in person, which accounted for one-third of all person-to-person payments. However, nearly one-third of respondents reported that they never have enough cash on hand to pay someone back, a number that rose to 39 percent among 18 to 24 year olds.

Seventy-nine percent of respondents said they would be open to using a digital person-to-person payment service from their bank.

The online survey of 2,533 U.S. consumers was conducted by Sentient Decision Science in May 2013 on behalf of Fiserv. The results are representative of the entire population of U.S. online households. The overall margin of error is +/- 1.7 percent.

Read more about trends and statistics.