Paying in 2015: America's Preference

There was a time when everyone walked around with cash in their pockets. That was the way of paying for items, whether it was grocery or gas for your car. Supermarkets and retail stores allowed you to pay by check, but that was usually after you went through an approval process.

The next method for being able to pay for purchases was the credit card. The earliest reference that I have seen is when Western Union began issuing charge cards to its frequent customers in 1921. The charge cards from this time were printed on paper card stock. In 1938, several companies started to accept each other's cards.

Today we have the availability of a wide variety of payment methods, both physically and electronically. Blackhawk Network recently released its findings of preferred payment methods in a new study titled "How America Pays in 2015: Traditional, Digital and Mobile Convergence in Payments." The survey interviewed over 1,000 Americans to determine how they pay in today’s environment.

Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc. is a leading prepaid and payments global company, which supports the program management and distribution of gift cards, prepaid telecom products and financial service products in a number of different retail, digital and incentive channels.

With all of the options currently available, it is not really surprising that 93 percent still prefer to use cold hard cash, in the form of paper money. I fall into the 68 percent category whose preference is the debit card. I am surprised to see that the same percentage applies to people who still write checks to pay their bills.

When asked to select the most convenient payment methods, 93 percent of the consumers surveyed said that cash was still their first choice. Credit cards came in at a very close second with 92 percent, PayPal came in at 90 percent and retailer-specific gift cards accounted for 87 percent.

It seems that gift cards have become a very popular item. Eighty-seven percent of consumers surveyed think that merchant specific gift cards are convenient to use. I think that as the name suggests, they are also a very convenient form of gift giving. Having the ability to get a store gift card allows you to select the amount you want to offer, while at the same time, offering the recipient the option of buying exactly what they want.

It appears that the survey shows that money, in the form of cash, unlike checks will never go out of style. I prefer to pay all my bills online using my debit card. Older people, such as my mom still need to feel the comfort of writing out and mailing in a check.

Electronic wallets or e-Wallets are becoming very popular; they can contain pre-registered credit cards, debit cards, as well as gift and loyalty cards providing access to alternative payment methods, such as online bank transfers. Some e-Wallets allow the consumer to preload money into their wallets.

Teri Llach, who is chief marketing officer at Blackhawk Network made the following comments, "Consumers still have a strong preference for traditional payment methods like debit cards and prepaid cards. Those payment tools are not going away anytime soon, even as interest in and usage of new payment methods grows. Our findings prove that payments is not either/or when it comes to legacy payments versus emerging products; it's really about convenience and providing a mix of options."